Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 Thank you.
4:29 The first topic is a charter school application presentation,
4:42 Everest Academy Charter School.
4:45 Mr. Chair, members from the board of Dr. Meyer is going to
4:49 introduce the team.
4:51 She’s our director of choice, so she’s going to lead us off in
4:55 this presentation.
4:56 Everest Academy, Everest Academy has presented an application to
5:05 start a charter school.
5:08 Everest Academy has presented an application to start a charter
5:21 school, and they are here
5:27 to present.
5:27 I’m going to introduce Mr. Prats, and then he’ll introduce his
5:30 team.
5:30 Thank you.
5:31 Hi, everyone.
5:32 My name is Gus Prats.
5:33 I’m the future principal of Everest Academy, and I’m here with
5:37 two of our board members.
5:38 Hi, Darika Flagg.
5:41 Kimberly Johnson.
5:42 And so today’s presentation, they’ve asked us to do a
5:45 presentation in about 15 to 20 minutes,
5:48 just giving you a general overview of our proposed school.
5:51 Before we do that, I do want to congratulate your staff.
5:56 They’ve been amazing.
5:57 I’ve actually done applications in several counties, and it’s
6:01 very rare to find staff that understands
6:03 the meaning of sponsor when it comes to charter schools and
6:06 being able to support us and kind
6:07 of walk us through the process in a friendly manner and
6:09 understand that they’re going to be
6:10 there to support us and reinforce us moving forward.
6:13 And it’s been a phenomenal, phenomenal process.
6:16 So congratulations to you and your staff because it’s been an
6:18 amazing process from the original
6:20 application to the capacity interview to the evaluation tool.
6:24 It’s all been completely transparent and extremely, extremely
6:27 friendly.
6:27 So I do appreciate that.
6:31 So just to give you a general overview of our application, our
6:35 application’s very, very large.
6:38 I’m sure you’ve seen it.
6:39 And so I just kind of want to do a brief presentation of the
6:43 main sections, which is the first eight
6:46 sections of the application, which kind of gives you a general
6:49 overview of what the school’s
6:50 about and kind of what sets the difference of what we’re looking
6:53 to bring to your county.
6:55 So the first thing is the mission and the vision.
6:58 Basically, it’s more than just words, right?
7:01 And oftentimes you get charter schools or schools in general
7:04 that come and say, well, we’d like
7:05 to do something that’s based in character education.
7:08 Well, what does that truly mean, right?
7:10 So there’s a new wave of something that’s called humane sciences,
7:15 which teaches how to just become
7:17 a better human being.
7:19 And what does that really mean?
7:20 Well, it’s not about just learning a character trait every month
7:23 and moving on.
7:24 No, no.
7:25 Putting it into effect, how do we actually apply this?
7:29 So our schools do things like we go to retirement homes.
7:33 We ask elderly or retired teachers to come teach to our
7:36 kindergarten and first grade students
7:38 and do small groups with them.
7:40 We do pet adoptions on the weekends.
7:42 We do, we take them to music concerts.
7:45 We take them to teach them different kinds of music, different
7:48 kinds of art.
7:49 We actually get them to be involved in the community and
7:52 actually put an application to simple character
7:55 traits that usually you would see at a school.
7:57 So it’s the implementation of humane sciences within a regular
8:01 school setting.
8:02 And there is, it does support all curriculum.
8:04 So you’ll see it through math, reading, language, art, science,
8:08 and social studies.
8:09 Our target population, that’s kind of where charters come in and
8:12 mix things up a little bit,
8:13 because they don’t really know what the target population really
8:16 is.
8:16 And it’s important to understand Brevard, because Brevard has
8:19 very unique demographics,
8:22 especially when it changes by area, but you have to understand
8:26 it as a county as a whole.
8:27 So we used the FL DOE report card, which gets issued every year,
8:32 to just show the Brevard demographics.
8:35 This is not just done at a state of Florida level, it’s done at
8:38 a Brevard county level.
8:40 So there’s roughly, it was roughly last year, during the first
8:45 FT, 73,810 students, of which
8:48 3,508 were ELL, 41,680 were economically disadvantaged, 13,714
8:57 were students with disabilities, and 690
9:03 were considered to be homeless.
9:05 So there’s also a large population of military families with 2,245,
9:09 which also should be recognized.
9:12 Our board’s strong belief that military families go above and
9:17 beyond what most of the population
9:19 do, so we definitely give them a level of respect when they do
9:22 apply to our school and become
9:24 part of our school community.
9:25 And during our application process, they are one of the groups
9:28 that is benefited within the
9:30 enrollment process to our school.
9:34 As we move forward, you’ll see that there’s reference in the
9:37 application that we do take
9:38 into account the ELL population and the ESE population.
9:42 Now it’s important to understand the ESE population, because
9:45 that’s divided into two different categories,
9:48 the students who need additional help, and the students who are
9:50 considered gifted, who have
9:52 the EPS, who also deserve to be serviced.
9:54 Ultimately, that’s one of the areas that’s most overlooked
9:57 throughout charter applications,
9:59 and in reviewing other charter applications in the past that
10:02 have come before this board.
10:04 That’s one of the areas that was kind of set aside, and it wasn’t
10:06 given the same level of attention,
10:09 and that’s something that’s very important for us.
10:11 So both the students that require additional help, and those
10:14 that have the advantage of being
10:16 part of the gifted program, should equally be serviced, just as
10:19 a regular student is.
10:21 So it’s important to make sure that we’re targeting every single
10:23 student and being prescriptive
10:24 in our instruction, which is something that’s very big for us as
10:28 we move forward.
10:29 Our curriculum, we obviously do use the state-adopted curriculum.
10:36 We adopt curriculum from the state-adopted list, however, we do
10:40 want to make sure that we are
10:41 keeping up with the latest requirements of the state and
10:45 standards.
10:46 Sometimes this happens when you see, like, the best standards
10:49 that popped up overnight, basically.
10:51 Common Core was here for a whole year.
10:53 So we’ve been in this for about 20 years.
10:57 So we’ve seen the trends, so we want to make sure we’re ahead of
11:00 it.
11:00 And it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get rid of a
11:03 curriculum.
11:03 Sometimes when a new set comes out of standards, there is bridge
11:07 curriculum that will kind of
11:09 affect the old to the new without overwhelming the students.
11:12 This is where I make a pause.
11:14 Testing.
11:16 I know it’s important.
11:17 I know.
11:17 I understand.
11:18 I get it.
11:20 What’s more important to me as an educator and as a principal is
11:22 that the students in
11:23 my building are learning and that they’re safe.
11:26 So we do not want to overwhelm them with the testing.
11:31 We do not make it seem like it’s something negative.
11:34 We go above and beyond to make sure we make it seem like it’s
11:36 something exciting and that
11:38 we’re going to show the state how much we’ve learned and how we
11:40 can beat this.
11:40 And we go above and beyond.
11:42 We make themes.
11:43 For example, our theme in Broward County right now is Mission Possible.
11:48 So you’ll hear that we’ll come on the loudspeakers in the middle
11:51 of the day and do the whole
11:54 and we’ll throw math problems under the doors.
11:56 First class to solve it.
11:57 Runs it to the office.
11:58 They capture the villains for the day.
12:00 That’s what we need to do.
12:01 We can’t overwhelm these kids.
12:03 And now that it goes down to kindergarten, first and second with
12:07 star testing, we can’t
12:08 make school not enjoyable.
12:10 So we have to make, we have to understand the parameters that we’re
12:12 living in and making
12:13 sure that the curriculum and the teachers and the administration
12:16 are servicing the children while
12:18 we’re still holding on to the basics of things that we helped
12:21 valuable when we were in school.
12:23 So that’s part of the curriculum as we adopt it.
12:26 We do make sure that we include art, music, STEM, physical
12:30 education, and other electives
12:32 as well.
12:34 We make a promise that we will not eliminate any of that.
12:37 And I know that’s something that’s big.
12:39 As you pull from the Florida report card, you even pull the
12:42 enrollment per classes in middle
12:44 school.
12:45 And you’ll see your population is fully enrolled in classes like
12:48 math and language arts.
12:49 But the amount of students enrolled in art or music is really
12:54 small.
12:55 And that’s, that’s sad for us.
12:57 Because that’s sometimes the only class that a child will find a
13:00 sense of a relief in, or
13:02 be able to find themselves in.
13:03 And I think it’s really important to make sure that the arts and
13:06 the electives also hold the
13:08 same value as the reading, the language arts and math and the
13:10 science also.
13:11 So it’s kind of that balance that a school needs to find.
13:15 So as you research our curriculum or read through our curriculum,
13:18 you’ll find that we do hold
13:19 value to that while making sure that we also hold true to servicing
13:23 the ESC and the ESOL
13:24 populations with curriculum that would supplement their needs as
13:28 well.
13:29 The educational plan, there’s no reason to really bog you guys
13:32 down with a lot of this
13:33 in our application.
13:35 We use everything from differentiated instruction to blended
13:37 learning.
13:38 The big thing for us is differentiation.
13:40 You won’t see a classroom that’s set up in rows in our school,
13:43 because that’s, it doesn’t
13:45 work anymore.
13:46 It’s, it used to work for me, but it doesn’t work anymore.
13:51 So one of the hard things I had to get used to was this, the
13:53 small group environment and
13:55 the controlled chaos idea, right?
13:57 And so this generation is a lot more dependent on socializing,
14:01 even in those small group settings
14:04 at school, because unfortunately, when we used to be able to go
14:07 around the neighborhood
14:08 on a bike or play outside and we don’t see that anymore.
14:12 Now it’s, they’re stuck to a tablet or phone or whatnot.
14:15 So we do incorporate the, some of the small group setting at
14:18 school, so they won’t be individualized
14:21 as much and they do work together and collaboratively, but it’s
14:24 also at a level of differentiation.
14:27 So we make sure that we group them by their ability level.
14:29 Now this is something that sometimes you hear and you say, well,
14:32 does that mean the high
14:32 students go with the high students, the low students go with the
14:35 low students?
14:36 Absolutely not.
14:37 Your groups have to be fluid and they have to change.
14:39 And this goes into how you inform parents of how their students
14:43 are struggling.
14:44 It’s not fair for a parent to find out in May that your child is
14:49 struggling and in danger
14:51 of failing.
14:53 Why didn’t I know this sooner?
14:54 And usually they’ll get said, sent a letter that says your child
14:58 struggles in reading.
15:00 How do you help that as a parent?
15:03 Reading is a really broad umbrella.
15:04 How do you help?
15:06 So for us, we break it down and say, well, it’s phonics, phonemic
15:09 awareness, reading comprehension,
15:10 fiction, you know exactly where your child is struggling and
15:15 where they’re excelling.
15:17 So we kind of have to make sure that we’re breaking things down
15:20 for them.
15:20 And these groups are built on those subgroups of reading or of
15:26 math.
15:27 And it’s important to do that because sometimes schools focus on
15:31 getting a school grade and
15:33 simply focus on the highest tested areas.
15:37 That’s not okay.
15:38 That’s a disservice to the students.
15:40 Let’s take a step back.
15:41 Let’s teach them the entire subject.
15:44 Let’s teach them the way we were meant to teach, not teach to a
15:47 test.
15:48 So this helps by breaking up reading such a large umbrella into
15:52 smaller sections that
15:53 is manageable for the students, for the educators and the
15:56 parents.
15:57 It works a lot better for everyone involved.
16:01 Assessments I touched on briefly.
16:02 We do have to provide them because it’s required by the state
16:06 and required by the county.
16:07 However, we do just change the setting of it.
16:10 And we do allow teachers to make sure that they’re incorporating
16:13 some of their own assessments
16:14 in the class.
16:15 What do I mean by that?
16:16 There’s no reason to give 40 math problems as homework and a
16:22 test every Friday.
16:25 That’s antiquated and it doesn’t really work.
16:28 So we actually ask our staff to send minimal homework.
16:33 We’re not a school that believes in homework.
16:35 Why?
16:36 Because we respect family time as much as we possibly can.
16:38 I think that’s important to preserve is the family and their
16:41 time at home at the dinner table.
16:43 Because there’s going to be an age and a time when you’re not
16:45 going to want to do that anymore.
16:47 So you might as well take advantage of it early on.
16:49 So we respect that as much as possible.
16:51 So there’s minimal amount of homework that does go home.
16:55 And we do exit tickets.
16:58 So the math teacher can do a simple lesson.
17:00 Do their exit tickets by hand them out the last 10 minutes of
17:03 class.
17:03 Has three, four problems on it.
17:06 Kids do it.
17:07 Turn it in before they leave the class for the day.
17:08 Have a good day.
17:09 I’ll see you tomorrow.
17:10 Teachers can see that that same day.
17:12 See who understood the lesson, who didn’t and reroute their
17:14 groups for the next day based
17:16 on that.
17:17 There’s no reason to go above and beyond with these 40 problems
17:19 and a test every Friday.
17:21 That’s no longer needed to service the students.
17:25 We will obviously comply with all ESC and ELL requirements.
17:31 Those are two sections that are in the application, which I was
17:33 very happy to see that staff marked
17:35 it as being fully meeting standards because those are areas that
17:43 oftentimes in counties, it’s very
17:45 hard to get the meeting standards checked off on an evaluation
17:49 tool.
17:50 So I do appreciate that staff went through it and found that we
17:52 did apply all the necessary
17:54 components to both of those sections.
17:59 School culture and discipline.
18:01 We are very aware of Brevard County and what their recent
18:05 movement towards revitalizing the
18:08 discipline plan, the code of conduct and what’s kind of gone on
18:11 with that.
18:11 Thomas Johnson, who was our board president, kind of dove into
18:15 that full speed ahead and
18:16 kind of made sure that whatever we incorporate also incorporates
18:21 the plan from the district.
18:23 There’s three plans that we do plan to adopt with fidelity.
18:26 One is your reading plan.
18:28 Number two is your discipline plan and your pupil progression
18:31 plan.
18:32 You can’t be our sponsor if a school doesn’t understand that we
18:36 are the same team.
18:38 A student can’t be working one way at our school and then all of
18:41 a sudden transfer to one of their
18:44 public, the area public school and then it’d be completely
18:46 different.
18:46 It’s a disservice to the child.
18:48 They shouldn’t be penalized for that.
18:49 It’s a school of choice.
18:50 Parents can choose to go there, but it’s just a choice.
18:53 It doesn’t have to be drastically different.
18:55 There has to be the skeleton, the backbones have to be the same
18:58 because at the end of
18:59 the day, the county is supporting the charter school as a
19:04 sponsor.
19:06 And last but not least, we are a replication application, which
19:08 is different than what’s
19:09 I think come before you in the past a few times.
19:12 What is a replication?
19:13 Basically, it’s a proven model.
19:15 We opened a school called Summit Academy, MSID 5320, in Broward
19:21 County, Florida.
19:22 That was back in 2019.
19:24 It’s crazy to say that back then, it seems like yesterday.
19:29 So we’re in our sixth academic year in Broward.
19:33 And this is a replication of that.
19:34 So the model that we started there, we wanted to make sure that
19:37 it worked and the system worked.
19:39 And that’s kind of what we focused on.
19:41 And so Summit Academy is right now has an A as a school grade
19:47 and has just been renewed.
19:50 After five years, we were up for renewal and in our first
19:52 renewal period, Broward County
19:53 extended a 15 year renewal just to prove that, you know, our
19:57 grades were where they need to
19:59 be.
20:00 And we didn’t have any sort of financial distress or financial
20:02 issues along the way during
20:03 five years, including COVID and all that madness that happens.
20:09 So it is a replication application.
20:11 It is not a first time application, which is a little different.
20:14 And I wanted to bring that to your attention as well.
20:19 As far as governance and all of that component is part two of
20:23 the application, our board is
20:26 completely certified and trained by the state of Florida before
20:29 they even put an application
20:31 into the districts, which is very different.
20:35 Most of the time, board members will go get training after they’ve
20:38 been approved or after
20:39 they are sitting on a board for the preparation of an
20:42 application, which this board finds to
20:45 be a little bit reversed.
20:47 So we all go for training, including myself as a principal.
20:50 We go for training ahead of time and kind of get the board
20:53 training from the state of Florida.
20:56 So we understand what arm’s length policy is and what the
20:58 policies that needs to be followed
20:59 when negotiating any sort of contract, any conflict of interest
21:03 policies or ethics policies.
21:05 So that’s all been taken care of prior to even putting an
21:07 application before you.
21:08 Do you have anything to add?
21:11 All right.
21:12 I think I’ve covered everything as much as I could.
21:13 Our biggest focus, honestly, right now, I think you guys are a
21:16 phenomenal district.
21:17 Your grade reflects it.
21:18 Congratulations on that.
21:22 Our biggest thing right now is state initiative.
21:23 We do believe in it a lot right now.
21:25 It’s called closing the gap, which I’m sure you’ve heard of.
21:29 What they are trying to do is close the gaps for the subgroups.
21:32 So ELL, ESD, economically disadvantaged, they want to close
21:37 those gaps.
21:38 Brevard is right on par with what the state gaps are.
21:42 So it’s not something that’s unique to Brevard.
21:44 I think it’s something that happens across the board, but when
21:46 you see something like 17% difference
21:49 or 27% difference from a subgroup to the regular student
21:53 population, that’s a gap that definitely
21:56 can be closed down a bit.
21:58 And I think it’s just that prescriptive instruction kind of
22:02 taking things a step back to the basics.
22:05 And what I mean by that is simply understanding that we’re here
22:08 to educate the entire child and
22:10 not just saying it.
22:11 You actually have to do it.
22:13 At our school, which you’re all invited to swing by Summit
22:17 Academy in Broward, it’s very
22:19 different.
22:20 It’s a good morning, good afternoon from the students.
22:22 It’s a please and a thank you.
22:24 It’s the gentlemen and ladies and gentlemen, not boys and girls.
22:27 You’ll see the gentleman hold the doors open for the ladies.
22:29 She doesn’t want to.
22:30 She can say, no, thank you.
22:31 But let’s take a step back.
22:33 This used to exist in our schools.
22:34 This used to exist in our youngsters.
22:38 It existed in my generation, and I think it’s been lost.
22:40 And I think we’re responsible for having lost it.
22:43 So, we’re doing our small portions to try to bring some of it
22:46 back.
22:47 And that’s it.
22:48 - Thank you so much.
22:52 We want to ask any questions at this time?
22:56 Ms. Kelly.
22:57 - Thank you very much for the presentation.
23:02 And thank you, team, for that shout out was all about you guys.
23:08 So, very much appreciate that.
23:09 And we knew they were pretty awesome, but it’s good to hear it
23:11 from someone else.
23:13 Just have a few questions that I had when I was going through
23:16 the application.
23:17 And I know it’s been a few months since that giant binder was
23:20 put together.
23:21 So, I wanted to see if I could get some updates.
23:23 I noticed that you had listed your projected enrollment as a
23:27 little over 800.
23:29 Your school in Broward has about 400, if I read that right.
23:32 And the one that you’re planning on opening in orange is 500.
23:35 Did you already open the one in orange, or is that for next year?
23:37 - It’s for next year.
23:38 - Next year.
23:39 - So, bigger population, does that seem realistic, do you think?
23:43 - It does, because the parent surveys that we conducted in the
23:46 area and kind of the focus
23:48 groups that they held, they held two different focus groups, it
23:51 did reflect a general consensus
23:53 that they wanted something in the area that we’re looking.
23:55 - Okay.
23:56 - My biggest thing was hopefully to come here today and tell you
23:59 this is the location.
24:00 - That was one of my questions, was do you have a location yet?
24:02 - I wish I could.
24:03 Unfortunately, it blocked us into a nondisclosure agreement.
24:05 - Gotcha.
24:06 - And we can’t actually close on the property until we receive
24:09 your
24:09 approval.
24:10 - Okay.
24:11 - So, it’s kind of a catch-22.
24:12 - So, we can’t even know like what area of the county, because,
24:14 you know, I’m representing
24:15 the south end, and there’s tons of churches.
24:16 - I can’t say it’s in your district.
24:17 - Right, right, right.
24:18 Okay.
24:19 Thank you.
24:20 In your application, you said something about small class sizes.
24:27 Are you talking about like the class size amendment size, or do
24:31 you guys have a model that
24:32 you have even smaller than that?
24:34 - So, both.
24:35 There’s, within the application, we’d say small class size
24:38 because the state
24:39 mandate is the 18 and 22, which is considered to be small.
24:43 Part of our focus groups when we did that, and the parent
24:47 surveys, we discovered that some
24:48 of the area schools actually have more students enrolled per
24:53 classroom.
24:54 And we thought, well, that’s impossible.
24:55 So, we pulled the actual report from the state to kind of see
24:58 overages.
24:59 And what ends up happening is that when I called the school, or
25:02 a couple different schools,
25:04 and I asked, hey, I have a parent that says that we’re getting
25:06 ready for a kindergarten
25:08 birthday party.
25:09 And they had 25 students or 26 students in their kindergarten
25:12 class, how is that possible?
25:14 And they said, well, the thing is, it’s actually based on
25:16 averages.
25:17 And when you go back and you look at the way it’s calculated,
25:20 any support staff, which is
25:22 not necessarily a teacher in the classroom or an ESC teacher who
25:24 does pull outs, is being
25:25 factored in to that number.
25:28 So they’re not really having 18 to 22 in a classroom, it’s an
25:30 average.
25:31 We actually hold true to the 18 and 22 in a classroom.
25:34 You have the advantage of having an application process, so just
25:37 have to throw that out there.
25:39 Glad to hear what you’re saying about music.
25:42 Because you are doing a K-8, being a former music teacher, I did
25:45 want to ask, does that
25:46 go beyond just like a general music class when you get up into
25:49 the middle school level, which
25:50 you guys will start with seventh and eighth, is that correct?
25:52 Yes.
25:53 Are you talking about choir, orchestra, band, because you talked
25:56 about the low music enrollment,
25:57 that’s not necessarily true.
25:58 In our county, we are one of the best, I think, and I have some
26:02 of the data to prove it.
26:04 Yeah, counties in the state, but you guys, will you have more
26:08 than just the general music
26:10 for the elementary level?
26:11 We do.
26:12 We would plan to go everything from a music appreciation level
26:15 all the way through band.
26:16 Okay.
26:17 Some of it will be done through the school day and some of it
26:19 can be done as extracurricular
26:21 activities as well.
26:22 Okay.
26:23 Thank you.
26:24 And then just the governing board, you’ve got your board here,
26:27 and I appreciate that you’ve
26:28 already done the training, but do you have, do you already have
26:30 Brevard connections?
26:31 Do you foresee that you will have Brevard residents on your
26:35 board in the future as you, you know,
26:37 land here?
26:38 Yeah.
26:39 Part of the bylaws and the section on governance, we do
26:41 represent that we will bring two county,
26:43 two residents of Brevard County onto our board initially.
26:46 Okay.
26:47 They’re going to actually turn over to be a higher number as we
26:51 kind of get more community
26:52 stakeholders involved, but we always put a parent liaison and a
26:55 community stakeholder
26:56 onto our board.
26:57 Okay.
26:58 I appreciate that.
26:59 And the board meetings started.
27:00 No, no, go ahead.
27:01 The board meetings are local.
27:02 That’s something that a lot of charter school companies don’t do.
27:04 They hold them remotely from another county.
27:06 Right.
27:07 We will hold them from Brevard County.
27:08 Locally.
27:10 Thank you.
27:11 That’s all four in the year.
27:12 We don’t just do two.
27:13 It’s two is the minimum by the state.
27:14 We do four.
27:15 We do quarterly meetings and they are done from the county.
27:16 Okay.
27:17 Thank you.
27:18 And I definitely appreciate that.
27:19 And I asked you about, oh, transportation, you said you’re
27:21 include transportation.
27:22 Do you have a, you know, some of our charter schools have
27:25 transportation, some don’t, but
27:27 the ones that do, you generally have like a radius that they’ll
27:29 go out.
27:29 Have you, is that just to be determined based on where you’re
27:32 going to be or do you kind of already have a model of
27:34 how you do that?
27:35 Two to four miles out.
27:37 Okay.
27:38 And then, I think that was it.
27:43 Everything else was answered as I was going through the rest of
27:46 the big fat finder.
27:47 So, thank you for answering the questions.
27:49 I appreciate it.
27:50 Thank you.
27:51 Mr. Tyler?
27:52 Sure.
27:53 Well, first of all, thanks for your presentation.
27:55 Thank you.
27:56 I just have one question and that is, you mentioned closing the
27:59 gaps and that’s in some of those
28:01 various areas and that’s obviously huge.
28:04 What criteria did you use when you’re, I know you can’t tell us
28:07 where the site is, but what
28:08 criteria did you use to select your site?
28:11 Was it, were those gaps, were those gaps the most prevalent,
28:13 most important, or an important
28:15 factor?
28:16 Could you elaborate a little bit about that?
28:17 Sure.
28:18 So, as we did our focus groups in two different areas for two
28:21 different sites that we were looking
28:23 at, we actually put the home language survey, which is a
28:27 questionnaire of three questions
28:29 that actually gets incorporated into most of your enrollment
28:31 packets.
28:32 We actually put it as part of our survey, just to see how many
28:35 of those students would
28:36 actually even qualify for ESOL, just based on that.
28:39 Because you shouldn’t ask parents.
28:42 As a charter school, we’re not allowed to ask a parent if your
28:45 child is ESOL or ESC.
28:46 Because then you would open the doors to cherry picking and that’s
28:50 against the statute.
28:52 I would look at some of those enrollment applications.
28:57 But basically, because we’re not allowed to do that, we kind of
28:59 put it into our surveys
29:00 and just kind of said, is there another language spoken at home?
29:02 Is this, and we actually put all three questions.
29:04 And so we started to see how many of that community were ESOL
29:07 driven, how many were ESC driven.
29:09 For ESC, it’s a little bit more difficult, because part of the
29:12 question that we ask is, does
29:14 your child require or receive speech therapy, occupational
29:17 therapy?
29:18 But we don’t ask them if that was part of an IEP in the survey.
29:22 So we don’t know if that’s some of the surveys that’s being
29:24 received at school, or that’s
29:25 something that’s being received through private insurance.
29:28 We’ll find that out a little bit more once we get into the
29:31 community.
29:32 But there’s both communities that we kind of evaluated, reflect
29:36 that the data that Brevard
29:37 submitted for the state is accurate.
29:40 It is running about those percentages.
29:44 Your ESC population is north of, I think it’s like 16% or 18%,
29:50 actually 15.6%, I believe,
29:53 is what it was, for ESC.
29:56 Now you’ll see that some schools, you have to budget for that,
29:59 hold on, because that includes
30:00 consultation, which you don’t need to budget for, because that’s
30:03 done with your ESC specialist
30:05 locally.
30:06 But it’s running about 15.6.
30:07 Your ESC population is a lot lower.
30:10 It’s about 5%, 5% to 6%.
30:13 However, one of the areas that we are looking into did have a
30:17 higher ESC population.
30:19 So we actually had to make sure that within that population, we
30:23 actually hire a bilingual
30:24 support staff person to have them have a regular schedule,
30:27 because that is part of statute.
30:29 If you have over 10 students that speak a particular language,
30:32 you have to have somebody who’s fluent
30:34 in that, who is fully staffed and available to them for any sort
30:37 of translation.
30:39 So we actually, in our model, in our staffing, we have that
30:42 person for that bilingual support.
30:44 And thank you for that.
30:45 And just a follow-up.
30:47 So as far as site selection, looking at kids that were coming
30:51 from economically disadvantaged
30:52 families, was that an important factor in your choice of a site?
30:57 I don’t know if it’s an important factor.
31:01 It’s just a factor that needs to be taken into account.
31:05 So we can’t.
31:06 One of our things is when we saw the amount of economically
31:10 disadvantaged students, one
31:12 of the issues that we found is that a lot of charter schools
31:15 require volunteer hours.
31:16 We do not.
31:17 Why?
31:18 Because when you have this level of percentage of economically
31:21 disadvantaged, those parents
31:22 may be working multiple jobs.
31:24 And so it’s disrespectful on our behalf to come in as a charter
31:27 school and obligate them
31:29 in any capacity to spend additional time, which they may not
31:33 have.
31:34 Or else what?
31:36 You know, and so it’s penalized and it seems negative.
31:39 We want you to be involved.
31:40 Come on in.
31:41 You have the free time.
31:42 We want you involved.
31:43 We put on several events.
31:44 We put on a culture day.
31:46 We put on trunk or treat.
31:47 We put on holiday festivals.
31:48 We put on everything.
31:49 Come on over.
31:50 Help us out.
31:51 Book fairs.
31:52 We want the parents there, but it shouldn’t be an obligation.
31:55 So when it comes to economically disadvantaged, what it does, it
31:59 just simply takes the idea
32:01 of, the idea of being mindful of that when you’re developing
32:06 policies and procedures.
32:08 All right.
32:09 Thank you.
32:10 Mm-hmm.
32:11 Mr. Susan.
32:12 I wanted to say, thank you.
32:13 The presentation was right on.
32:14 There was a big push.
32:15 There was a big push now in exactly the area you’re talking
32:18 about when you talk about
32:19 the testing in there in some of those younger ages.
32:22 My son, funny you said that, my son today, his computer for the
32:26 second time crashed in
32:27 the middle of his testing and he’s in second grade.
32:29 So he had to retake his entire test a second time, twice, you
32:32 know what I mean?
32:33 So I get it.
32:34 I applaud you guys for thinking in that scope.
32:39 We do appreciate charter schools here.
32:41 You guys sometimes innovate and we can look at some of those
32:44 innovations, but we all teach
32:46 the same kids and we all are supporting the same kids.
32:49 And our mission is for everybody and we, you’re a part of our
32:52 family when you come up.
32:54 I appreciate you with not only the governing documents that you
32:58 have for some of your curriculum
33:00 and stuff like that, but then also having some of that local and
33:02 then focusing on having
33:03 the meetings local.
33:05 One of the things you see is, is a lot of these meetings are
33:07 done and it’s like, you look
33:09 at some of the, you’re like, what were they thinking and where
33:11 were they and all that other
33:12 stuff?
33:13 You’re right.
33:14 I mean, it is, and, and it, it’s not really our responsibility
33:16 to be in the middle of that.
33:17 We’re supposed to be here to help you, but we do a lot of stuff
33:20 between sports and innovation
33:21 games and a lot of other stuff that we’d love to have you be a
33:23 part of.
33:24 So welcome to our team.
33:25 And then we look forward to working with you guys in the future.
33:27 Thanks.
33:28 Thank you.
33:29 Great.
33:30 Dr. Adele, did you add anything?
33:31 Nope.
33:32 All right.
33:33 Same.
33:34 Great job.
33:35 Questions.
33:36 Thank you so much.
33:37 Preparedness was off the charts.
33:39 And again, we know we have a great staff, but it’s always nice
33:42 to hear from, from the outside.
33:44 So we look forward to working with you.
33:45 Thank you very much.
33:46 Thank you.
33:57 All right.
33:58 So the last topic is a presentation on the facilities.
34:04 Strategic Plan Update.
34:06 So I’m going to turn that over to Sue Hand first, and then she’s
34:11 going to turn it over
34:11 to the team from WXY to present the first part of a multi-stage
34:18 plan or experience.
34:20 So this is just the beginning.
34:23 I think that’s going to be stated several times throughout the
34:26 presentation.
34:26 Good afternoon.
34:27 Thank you, Dr. Rendell.
34:28 Yes, it is just the beginning.
34:30 And so this project was actually born out of a presentation that
34:34 most of you saw probably
34:35 about a year ago now that Ms. Black and Dr. Meyer did about
34:40 school choice and things that
34:43 drive parents’ decisions as to where their children go to school.
34:48 And so we were trying to get a handle kind of on the demand side
34:52 of the equation and also
34:53 look at the supply side of the equation as well as making sure
34:57 that we are providing educational
34:58 facilities that support our kids in every way possible.
35:01 So we embarked upon this project that is the development of a
35:05 strategic facilities plan.
35:07 And scope has several components to it.
35:11 This is kind of the tail end of the first component of the scope,
35:14 which is the baseline conditions
35:16 report.
35:17 So we have been working with WXY and feeding them all sorts of
35:21 data.
35:21 And they have done some analytics and reshuffling and have some
35:24 pretty interesting things to show
35:26 you today.
35:27 The next phases that we’ll talk about include community
35:31 engagement and options development.
35:32 So today we do have a live website that talks a little bit about
35:36 the project.
35:37 We have a community survey that’s just gathering some very basic
35:41 information about some preferences
35:42 that parents have and things that they’re concerned about in the
35:45 facilities realm.
35:46 And we will put all that together into some options that we’ll
35:50 bring back to the board in the future
35:52 and have some certainly more robust community engagement coming
35:56 up here once we have some options to look at.
35:59 We also have a handful of focus groups that will be starting
36:02 right after the first of the year engaging folks
36:04 such as our parent leadership team and a few other community
36:08 groups that are associated with the school district
36:10 and trying to get to some different perspectives before we
36:13 launch into the options development.
36:14 So with that I’m going to introduce Dare Brawley who’s the
36:18 project manager with WXY and Sarah Lee Morrissey
36:20 with Morrissey Consulting Group that’s assisting WXY.
36:23 So I will turn that over to you.
36:26 Is this on?
36:28 Yep.
36:29 Great.
36:30 Thanks so much Assistant Superintendent Hahn.
36:32 It’s wonderful to be here with you all with the board.
36:34 Maybe to speak into – just move it a little closer.
36:38 How about there?
36:39 There we go.
36:40 There you go.
36:41 Wonderful.
36:42 Saying thank you Assistant Superintendent Hahn.
36:44 It’s wonderful to be here with the board and with Dr. Rendell.
36:47 My name is Dare Brawley.
36:48 I’m the project manager with WXY Studio who is leading this
36:54 effort in coordination with Sarah Lee Morrissey
36:56 of Sarah Lee Morrissey Consulting.
37:00 The – as Sue mentioned, this is really the very beginning of
37:04 this process.
37:05 And we’re sharing our research so far on school facilities in
37:09 Brevard.
37:09 So to start off, WXY is a multidisciplinary design firm with
37:14 expertise in school planning.
37:16 We have a track record of data and engagement-driven work on –
37:21 with school districts across the
37:22 East Coast.
37:23 And this has included recent work in Hillsborough County,
37:27 Florida, as well as with the Washington,
37:28 D.C. Public Schools, and ongoing work with Anne Arundel County
37:32 in Maryland.
37:33 In addition to work here in Brevard with you all.
37:36 And we’re joined in this work by Sarah Lee Morrissey, who’s a
37:41 real expert in school planning
37:43 and lead planning and capital programming just north of here in
37:47 Volusia Public Schools for
37:48 many years.
37:50 So as Assistant Superintendent Han mentioned, I’m Dare Brawley.
37:54 I’m the project manager leading our team at WXY in this work.
37:58 And I’m here with Sarah Lee.
38:00 So in our presentation today, we’re going to be sharing the
38:03 vision and guiding principles
38:05 for this strategic planning effort that were crafted in
38:09 collaboration with BPS – the BPS
38:15 facilities team.
38:16 We’re going to share an overview of where we are in the process
38:19 and where we’re going.
38:21 We’re going to share preliminary ideas, preliminary findings and
38:25 kind of key definitional ideas
38:26 that support this work.
38:28 And we’re also going to share an analysis of Brevard Public
38:31 Schools through data covering
38:33 past trends, current conditions, and anticipated future
38:37 conditions before outlining the next
38:38 steps for our work.
38:40 Sarah Lee will introduce our vision and guiding principles.
38:44 So good afternoon.
38:47 Did that work?
38:48 It did.
38:49 Okay.
38:50 Good to see almost all of you again.
38:53 Mr. Thomas, welcome to the board.
38:55 I look forward to working with you.
38:57 And Dr. Rendell, thank you for having us back.
39:01 Jumping into our vision, I hope you have noticed that our vision
39:07 for this strategic facilities
39:09 plan seeks to be consistent with your mission statement, right?
39:14 Excellence is the standard.
39:16 And our vision is that BPS facilities can support 21st century
39:23 learning environments
39:24 for all students through an effective use of resources.
39:29 And that takes us to some guiding principles that we will be
39:36 using
39:36 while we analyze and evaluate both data and create some options.
39:42 One is the standard of excellence.
39:44 We hope to facilitate that, recognizing that the 21st century
39:49 environment and educational needs
39:52 are a little bit different than the days of past, 19th and 20th
39:58 century in particular.
40:01 And then additionally, addressing increasing demand.
40:08 Here in Florida, we know that growth is a key component of our
40:12 economy.
40:12 So demand is important to us as school districts.
40:16 High quality services, obviously both from a facility standpoint
40:20 as well as providing services to our students through programs.
40:25 And those services across facilities, you know, how we take care
40:31 of custodial, how we take care of maintenance.
40:34 And then lastly, in a fiscally responsible manner.
40:38 So those will be the guiding principles that we use.
40:43 Awesome.
40:44 And then just briefly, and we can return to this, this is a kind
40:48 of overview of what this process will involve and where we are.
40:51 So as Assistant Superintendent Han mentioned, we really are just
40:55 at the very beginning in the midst of and towards the end of the
40:59 baseline analysis,
41:00 where we have analyzed key data sets provided to us by VPS,
41:06 having conversations with you all on the board.
41:10 And we’ll be holding small group stakeholder conversations in
41:14 the beginning of the new year.
41:16 As well, there is a public survey that went live today.
41:21 And we can share that with that link with you all to solicit
41:24 input and gain an understanding of kind of key challenges that
41:28 folks in the community are seeing
41:29 and the priorities that folks have for facilities in VPS in
41:34 general.
41:35 Starting in January, we will then transition into work on
41:39 developing strategic facilities options guided by this research
41:44 and engagement work so far.
41:45 These will be potential sets of recommendations thinking about
41:49 the district as a whole, how to balance and work towards the
41:53 kind of vision and guiding principles that we just spoke about.
41:57 And they’ll communicate trade offs and provide a kind of
42:00 strategic system wide view of facilities options in Brevard.
42:03 And will be communicated to the public through an interactive
42:07 web tool.
42:07 And following the options development, we’ll have three virtual
42:14 community meetings open to the public district wide, as well as
42:20 additional meetings with you all as members of the board to
42:23 solicit feedback and input on those options that are presented.
42:27 Following the public engagement period will work with Brevard
42:32 public schools to synthesize the public and board feedback into
42:37 a final report and recommendations for a kind of strategic
42:41 vision of the use of facilities in Brevard moving forward.
42:45 So moving into the substance of the baseline analysis, we’ll
42:49 share some of the preliminary findings and key ideas from our
42:53 work.
42:53 All righty.
42:54 So I will be surprised if you are surprised by some of these
43:00 preliminary findings.
43:03 I think that, and certainly for those of you who’ve been on the
43:07 board for a while, you will, you will have heard of some of
43:13 these issues over time from Ms. Hahn and her staff as they’ve
43:19 presented to you in the past.
43:20 However, I think it’s really important that we identify those
43:25 for the sake of creating the plan and for sharing information to
43:30 all stakeholders as we move forward.
43:33 So as we go forward, I want you to know that a lot of what we
43:42 will go through is not unique to Brevard.
43:47 So we’ll be looking forward to the next slide.
44:07 So first, let’s look at enrollment as one of our key findings
44:13 and what we what we see.
44:18 The number of schools in Brevard with utilizations below 80% is
44:23 increasing.
44:24 We’re going to talk a little bit about utilization, how that’s
44:27 defined, and the why.
44:29 Enrollment growth, again, you already know this.
44:33 It’s uneven across your county.
44:35 You have areas of very high growth and then areas that are
44:38 relatively stable.
44:39 And then maybe a few areas where, in fact, you could be seeing
44:43 decline in your student enrollment.
44:46 Participation in traditional Brevard County schools is highest
44:55 in your high schools, grades 9 through 12.
44:58 That’s actually not a surprise, right?
45:00 You have a very rich curriculum in your high schools and it’s
45:05 not replicated as often in the choice world.
45:09 You know, we just heard an application for a new charter K-8.
45:14 While you do have some charters of grades 9 through 12, the bulk
45:20 of your charters and those across the state are focused on
45:24 grades K-8.
45:25 So it’s not a surprise that the participation rate is so high
45:30 based both on choice as well as a very rich curriculum and extracurricular
45:35 activities as well.
45:36 And then, of course, and as already been said, choice impacts
45:40 enrollment, which ultimately impacts utilization in our schools.
45:47 Facilities and programs.
45:50 Again, things that I think you already are aware, but for the
45:55 sake of everyone listening, your sales surtax, which is a voter
45:59 approved funding source, is a very primary source of funding for
46:04 your capital facilities.
46:05 Facilities is an important source and it is expiring in 2026.
46:12 You have many, many old schools.
46:16 That was a little bit of a surprise for me just to see the
46:20 extent of how many older schools you all have.
46:24 But if we think about the economy in Brevard, right, and when
46:31 the space program first came to our country, but Brevard
46:36 especially, right, more than 60 years ago.
46:40 And that was a big growth period for you.
46:42 So in some ways it’s not surprising that you have so many older
46:46 schools, but the number of older schools and what that means to
46:51 have older schools is significant.
46:55 And having older schools, listen, you have 13 million square
47:00 feet to take care of.
47:02 That’s more than roofs.
47:04 That’s more than HVAC, both of which are incredibly expensive
47:09 components.
47:10 But in the 21st century world, we’re talking about security.
47:14 And that’s a new feature for our schools.
47:16 Technology.
47:17 And how many of our systems are now dependent on technology to
47:23 run.
47:23 And just the life cycle of all of those systems and pieces of
47:28 equipment in addition to the things that are more traditional,
47:34 like our roofs, like our electrical and lighting systems, and
47:39 like our HVAC.
47:40 Which actually, air conditioning is 20th century, 1980s, is when
47:46 a lot of districts started installing that.
47:49 You’ve invested in growth.
47:55 You have some new schools.
47:56 And you’ve also expanded existing schools.
48:00 And then, as you know, your programs vary across your schools,
48:06 whether it be in the area of career and technical education,
48:11 exceptional student education, or even now with pre-K.
48:15 Those special programs, we call those, are not necessarily
48:20 offered at all schools.
48:22 You’re going to do it?
48:25 Yeah.
48:26 All right.
48:27 So what makes an excellent learning environment?
48:30 And before we get into what we’ve identified as three components,
48:35 I want to first say, what makes for an excellent learning
48:39 environment is absolutely the instructional team.
48:42 That should not be overlooked.
48:46 However, it’s not a key component to your strategic facilities
48:51 plan.
48:51 I just want you to know that we recognize the importance of your
48:55 instructional team and that that is one of your first priorities
48:59 as you’re looking at your budget, how you retain and recruit
49:04 your staff.
49:07 But making for an excellent learning environment can only
49:11 enhance what many of them do.
49:13 And we have three components that we’re going to talk about,
49:17 which we’ve actually already indicated in the preliminary
49:20 findings.
49:21 Enrollment, facilities, and programs.
49:24 So let’s look specifically at some considerations and especially
49:30 key concepts that I want to make sure we cover and that people
49:36 are understanding.
49:38 So when we look at enrollment, especially as it relates to the
49:45 use of our schools, we look at utilization.
49:50 We’re going to learn our schools to be well utilized, meaning
49:55 not overcrowded, over utilized, not under utilized.
49:59 Over utilization often means we’re bringing in a lot of extra
50:04 space as in portables that costs additional money that could
50:09 take up recess and play area.
50:11 Under utilization, we’re still paying for utility expenses, all
50:20 the expenses associated with operating the school.
50:23 So a very under utilized school can be a very inefficient use of
50:31 your resource.
50:33 So I want to go through two key concepts, utilization and
50:38 capture rate.
50:39 And I know you may be very familiar with this, but again, to
50:43 make sure that our listeners and our stakeholders understand
50:48 what we’re talking about.
50:48 With school utilization, we’re talking about that ratio between
50:53 the number of students enrolled at a given school and the school’s
50:59 capacity.
50:59 And we have two forms of capacity that we look at.
51:03 We look at our permanent capacity and then we also look at our
51:07 relocatable capacity.
51:09 So ideally, we would like to maximize the use of permanent
51:15 capacity and minimize the use of relocatable capacity.
51:21 Just as you know, an initial standard, we kind of look at
51:27 somewhere between 80 to 95% utilization as this is a good place
51:35 to be.
51:35 Recognizing that at any given school, what programs are offered
51:42 could impact the use of space and need to be considered, right?
51:47 So that ratio may or may not accurately reflect what kinds of
51:55 programs are offered.
51:57 Pre-K, as a good example, we often don’t have 22 or 25 students
52:04 in a pre-K room.
52:05 It’s often not recognized to the extent we’re providing it by DOE.
52:09 Same can be said for our exceptional student education program,
52:14 right?
52:15 We might have 10 students in a classroom instead of the 22 to 25.
52:19 So while we look at an initial range of 80 to 95% being well
52:24 utilized, we also want to look at what programs are offered if
52:29 we’re looking at over utilization or under utilization.
52:33 And what’s the trend with utilization?
52:37 You know, what is happening with enrollment?
52:39 Because ideally, we’d like to leave some room at schools where
52:42 we know growth is going to occur, right?
52:45 So that we’re not bringing portables onto a site the year it
52:50 opens.
52:50 So that’s a basic understanding of utilization, but I want to
52:56 make sure you also hear that there’s some issues that can kind
53:01 of affect that standard that we look for as a desired range.
53:07 And then capture rate.
53:08 This is a calculation that helps us get an understanding of the
53:14 role choice is playing in our schools, right?
53:18 So it’s looking at the proportion of students who attend the
53:23 school that they are zoned for.
53:25 And this is, you know, that percent can be impacted by our own
53:32 traditional Brevard schools, right?
53:35 Because you have a number of magnet programs at your high
53:39 schools.
53:39 You have international baccalaureate.
53:42 You have some CTE programs that aren’t replicated at all schools.
53:46 This can be a reason for choice.
53:48 So the capture rate could be affected by our own programs or the
53:54 capture rate could be affected by our charter schools.
54:01 Facilities near and dear to my heart, and I know how hard Ms.
54:05 Hahn works to do the best she can with 13 million square feet
54:10 and monies that are often committed and the need to prioritize.
54:17 We want to have safe, healthy, and high-quality facilities.
54:21 And you can have that even if they’re old, right?
54:26 But we want to make sure that our facilities are in good repair.
54:29 And I know you guys have a very healthy maintenance and update
54:37 program.
54:38 Your sales tax is very well used with keeping your systems
54:43 updated.
54:43 And I think I saw that you actually have a report on your
54:48 meeting tonight from your oversight committee.
54:52 And they talk a lot about exactly that, investing in the systems,
54:57 the commitment that you made to your voters, and that you, in
55:01 fact, are doing that.
55:02 And then programs and updating, we already mentioned security
55:06 and technology and what that means for our environment, but also
55:11 programs, right?
55:11 There are some programs where we’ve got to invest money to be
55:14 able to deliver the program.
55:16 And our career and technical education programs are some of our
55:20 best examples of where we need to spend money to provide perhaps
55:27 a manufacturing lab, or something that’s based on aquatics or
55:33 animals, agriculture.
55:35 So there’s two key concepts that we have identified and that we’re
55:40 looking at.
55:41 One is called the facility condition index.
55:45 And that is a metric that really reflects a specific point in
55:53 time.
55:54 And that is looking at the estimated cost of maintenance and
55:59 repair over the current replacement of a facility.
56:03 And the range for an FCI is zero to one, meaning Viera Middle, I
56:10 think that’s your newest school.
56:13 We fully expect, and we do, see a FCI of zero, right?
56:19 But some of your 70-year-old, 60-year-old schools, you will see
56:25 an FCI that’s up past .3 or .4, and that’s reflecting the age of
56:31 the facility,
56:32 not necessarily saying things are wrong, but what is needed to
56:37 keep that in relatively good repair over what it would cost to
56:43 replace the facility.
56:45 Ms. Hahn can speak more about this assessment that was done.
56:53 We were not a part of it, but you did undertake a full
56:57 assessment of all of your facilities and create that point in
57:02 time
57:02 FCI, which we think is useful to the work that we are doing, and
57:08 we are looking at that facility condition index.
57:17 a moment about funding because you can’t do anything without it
57:20 again i think you’re pretty
57:23 familiar with these three fund sources these are your primary
57:28 capital fund sources they’re
57:29 not necessarily your only but they are your biggest fund sources
57:35 and relatively speaking
57:37 stable your lcif that is a fund source that people see on their
57:44 property tax bills right
57:46 it’s 1.5 right now there was a time when it was 2.0 mills right
57:52 but the legislature changed that
57:56 during the great recession and statutorily they dropped it to 1.5
58:02 it is up to the board whether
58:04 they want to authorize 1.5 or less but that is a very primary
58:10 and important source of funding for you
58:14 your sales sort surtax you’ve been very fortunate to have a
58:19 sales sort surtax as are quite a few
58:21 districts but this is dependent on our voters and the sales tax
58:28 that you have now expires at the end
58:30 of 2026. so this effort that you’ve undertaken is a very
58:36 important effort as you think forward about
58:42 that tax and how you will want to create a project list for that
58:48 tax the one thing i will mention
58:51 is that tax while voter approved also has the flexibility of
58:56 being for a specified period of
59:00 time and i know that historically you all have done what i
59:03 believe is six years but we have districts
59:06 across the the state that are doing it for a number of different
59:10 periods of time 10 years period we in
59:13 volusia were in our second era of a voter approved sales tax and
59:19 our first and our second was for a 15
59:23 year period and then i’m aware quite frankly was a little
59:27 surprised by it but clay county has a 30-year term
59:31 on their sales tax so again that’s something that can be
59:35 considered as you’re developing a plan and then
59:38 lastly educational facilities impact fees which you do have you
59:43 do work very closely you have to work
59:46 closely with your local governments in particular the county in
59:51 order to assess that impact fee but
59:55 additionally that is a revenue source that has a restriction for
1:00:00 how it is used and that relates
1:00:03 to that it needs to be used for new capacity which you’ve been
1:00:06 doing that and new capacity can come in
1:00:08 the form of a new school or it could come in the form of
1:00:12 classroom additions at existing schools
1:00:17 and then lastly programs again um talked a little bit about that
1:00:25 uh we we will want to consider what the
1:00:29 needs are for the different programs across your district and in
1:00:34 particular specific programs uh especially
1:00:38 where you wish to see some expansion and so that being said i
1:00:43 would um the kinds of things that we look at
1:00:47 um that can impact um that can impact both your enrollment and
1:00:51 utilization as well as your facility career and
1:00:53 technical education exceptional student education pre-k ib and
1:00:59 ace as as as the most uh obvious examples
1:01:04 wonderful um so with that as a kind of framing introduction of
1:01:10 the kinds of things that we’re
1:01:12 looking at in this um in this study um and the uh types of
1:01:16 considerations around them we’ll dive into
1:01:18 the analysis that we’ve done so far um giving more detail to
1:01:22 those preliminary findings um uh that were
1:01:25 shared um so starting off um to look at um past trends related
1:01:30 to facilities um use and maintenance um in brevard
1:01:36 a couple of key takeaways um that we have seen in this um
1:01:40 analysis so far um there have been shifts in
1:01:44 enrollment um both in terms of the geography of where there are
1:01:47 kind of real areas of growth within the
1:01:49 county um as well as the shift in the market share of students
1:01:53 attending traditional bps um schools
1:01:56 as well in the past 10 years um brevard has been successful in
1:02:01 reducing the number of schools
1:02:03 with very high utilizations utilizations above 95 percent while
1:02:08 at the same time during that same period
1:02:10 the number of schools with lower utilizations utilizations below
1:02:15 60 percent um has increased
1:02:17 and that’s in part to do with the market share change and the
1:02:21 sort of shifting geographies piece in
1:02:23 the in the first bullet um as well um 61 percent of recent
1:02:27 expenditures on facilities have come from sales
1:02:30 surtax funding emphasizing how that really has been a key and
1:02:34 instrumental source of funds um for
1:02:37 facilities in the district um essential systems upkeep is the
1:02:41 largest expense which again absolutely
1:02:43 makes sense given the size of the district and the number of
1:02:48 square feet of assets um 13 million
1:02:51 square feet of assets impact fees have supported key capacity
1:02:55 additions in the last five years
1:02:58 in areas in the county that have seen um enrollment growth um so
1:03:02 diving in a little bit further um we see
1:03:08 this is a bar chart that shows each bar is a year from 2015 um
1:03:12 through this most recent school year that
1:03:14 we’re currently in and shows the number of schools within um
1:03:19 kind of five utilization bands um so the darkest purple
1:03:24 are the schools with below 60 percent utilizations and the most
1:03:28 orange are schools with above 100 and 105
1:03:32 percent utilization based on permanent capacity um so from this
1:03:37 we see that the number of schools with
1:03:40 enrollments that are less than 60 percent of the school’s
1:03:43 permanent capacity has grown from one school
1:03:45 in 2015 2016 and that school year to 14 schools in this current
1:03:51 school year um while at the same time
1:03:54 the number of schools that are over utilized above 95 percent
1:03:58 and even you know above 100 percent
1:04:01 has been reduced during this time period
1:04:03 um so this change in utilizations in bps traditional schools
1:04:09 is in part also related to enrollment trends across the district
1:04:13 enrollment across bps traditional and charter schools
1:04:17 this school year is slightly higher than it was 10 years ago
1:04:22 however the proportion of the students in the county
1:04:26 who are enrolled in charter schools is higher today than it was
1:04:30 in 2015.
1:04:32 so even though there’s kind of growth overall in in the student
1:04:37 population in the county where those
1:04:40 students are going to schools has somewhat shifted
1:04:42 in terms of facilities capital spending
1:04:47 again sales tax funding has been a consistent key source of
1:04:52 funds for facilities capital expenditures
1:04:54 and impact fees have supported key projects since 2020 to add
1:05:00 capacity to the district in areas
1:05:02 that have seen real enrollment growth
1:05:04 in the past five years the largest proportion of facilities
1:05:10 investments has gone towards building
1:05:12 systems and general renewal projects with about 50 percent of
1:05:19 expenditures going to those project types
1:05:22 and additionally 26 percent of expenditures in the last five
1:05:27 years have gone towards new schools
1:05:29 and expansions in these high growth areas
1:05:31 so what are we seeing that’s sort of a look over the past
1:05:38 several years of trends in in the county
1:05:40 what are we seeing today what are the present trends in brevard’s
1:05:44 use of school facilities
1:05:45 so in this section we go through key takeaways related to
1:05:49 enrollment facilities and programs
1:05:52 for enrollment 47 out of 85 total schools in the district have
1:05:59 utilization rates below 80 percent
1:06:01 while 10 schools 10 traditional bpf schools still have
1:06:06 utilization rates above 95 percent
1:06:09 and so there are some challenges related to both of those um
1:06:13 sort of spans of the spectrum of utilization
1:06:15 um that ms morrissey spoke about um as well um one of the things
1:06:20 that we were pleased to see so far
1:06:23 in our analysis is that many of the boundary schools um that
1:06:26 face enrollment pressure are overutilized
1:06:29 um are adjacent to school zones that have available capacity um
1:06:34 signaling that there may be opportunities to
1:06:36 to balance enrollment um through uh potential boundary changes
1:06:40 um as well as we mentioned this previously
1:06:43 um participation um is highest um in high school grades um in bps
1:06:48 traditional schools
1:06:50 so in terms of facilities um and programs um key takeaways here
1:06:57 um many schools in the district
1:07:00 are aging and of higher maintenance needs leading to um in
1:07:04 general um higher fci scores across the district
1:07:07 we really are using this as a relative measure given that it’s a
1:07:10 point in time um observation of facility
1:07:14 conditions um but it’s helpful to us in combination with other
1:07:17 factors to understand um potential strategies
1:07:20 for use of um facilities in brevard um as well facilities
1:07:24 capital spending um varies across the district
1:07:28 um and is really targeted um and there have been good
1:07:31 investments um by the facilities folks in areas
1:07:34 that need it the most um program offerings are uneven across the
1:07:39 district um serving different populations
1:07:42 and then as well schools with higher utilizations tend to have
1:07:46 higher school grades according to the florida
1:07:50 school accountability reports um so moving in um to these um in
1:07:55 some more detail um again we’ve mentioned this
1:08:00 um already but enrollment is really impacted um by school choice
1:08:04 um enrollment in bps traditional schools
1:08:06 countywide um across all grade levels 17 percent of students um
1:08:11 choose to attend charter private schools home
1:08:14 education or enroll in virtual school um with fewer alternative
1:08:19 charter school and other options for high
1:08:23 school grades and participation in bps traditional schools is
1:08:27 highest for these grades um this sort of
1:08:32 market share impacts utilization um and this chart helps us to
1:08:38 kind of dive into what the distribution of
1:08:42 uh utilizations are for schools um in brevard across the county
1:08:47 um to just explain this um there’s a lot of
1:08:50 information here on this slide on the x-axis is the utilization
1:08:54 rate um from you know 40 percent to 100
1:08:57 percent utilized and the y-axis shows the number of schools um
1:09:01 with a given utilization rate um and so again here
1:09:05 we see that 20 47 excuse me um brevard public schools have utilizations
1:09:10 that are below 80 percent um but
1:09:14 really kind of um especially of note are the 14 schools that
1:09:18 have utilizations below 60 percent um and then
1:09:22 likewise on the other end of the spectrum um 10 schools have
1:09:26 utilizations above above 95 percent
1:09:33 looking um system wide um at the district overall um the current
1:09:38 enrollment in brevard traditional schools
1:09:42 is equal to 78 percent of the total available permanent capacity
1:09:47 in the district um this varies by school
1:09:50 level with the most excess capacity at the middle school level
1:09:55 where 64 of that available capacity is filled with the
1:09:59 the current middle school enrollment in traditional bps middle
1:10:03 schools
1:10:03 so looking starting to look at this um geographically um this is
1:10:11 a map that shows all of the traditional bps
1:10:14 schools um in the county um there are two circles for each
1:10:19 school the inner circle um the color of it represents
1:10:24 the utilization um the utilization level of that school based on
1:10:27 its permanent capacity
1:10:29 and the exterior circle represents the utilization taking into
1:10:34 account um relocatable capacity relocatable classrooms
1:10:37 we have appendices that include these for each school level um
1:10:41 for reference but uh this visualization helps us to
1:10:45 understand um where in this in the county um there are
1:10:49 enrollment pressures and where we see um under utilization
1:10:54 um as well um it highlights um that in some schools relocatable
1:10:59 classrooms are providing very needed relief
1:11:02 for utilization challenges um while in other well utilized
1:11:06 schools there may be an excess of capacity with these
1:11:09 relocatable classrooms um looking at utilization for
1:11:13 specifically bps boundary schools um here we’re looking at
1:11:18 elementary schools in the district um and the utilization levels
1:11:24 by those elementary school boundaries
1:11:26 um there are eight elementary schools oh i’m so sorry oh i think
1:11:31 okay um pardon the interruption um from this map
1:11:38 we can see that there are eight elementary schools um with utilizations
1:11:42 above 95 percent um and in six of these
1:11:45 cases um these are schools that share a boundary with an underutilized
1:11:50 school not just a school in the kind of 80 to 95
1:11:52 range but a school with below 80 percent um utilization to help
1:11:58 contextualize some of these measures related
1:12:02 to utilization as we get into thinking about options development
1:12:06 another kind of key indicator is thinking
1:12:08 about capture rates or what proportion of the students who are zoned
1:12:12 to attend a school attend that school
1:12:14 that will help us to understand if there were a boundary change
1:12:17 what impact that would have in terms of
1:12:20 how many students impacted by the change might attend the new
1:12:25 school that they’re zoned to go to
1:12:27 for bps elementary schools capture rates overall are at 63
1:12:32 percent across the district um however this
1:12:35 varies by school zone and with some schools having capture rates
1:12:39 as low as 42 percent um capture rates
1:12:42 for bps boundary elementary schools um tend to be lower in
1:12:46 portions of the county that have a greater number
1:12:49 of choice and charter options not surprisingly and there are
1:12:52 more options for where folks will go to school
1:12:55 and students may be less likely to attend their zoned elementary
1:12:59 school moving in to facilities
1:13:03 again we have mentioned the fci as a sort of point in time
1:13:08 measure that is a helpful indicator of a kind of
1:13:11 general and relative condition of facilities across the district
1:13:15 they’re really used as a way to measure
1:13:22 the kind of relative condition of facilities taking into account
1:13:25 that many facilities in the district are
1:13:27 older and therefore have generally higher fcis and one of the
1:13:31 ways that they this can be a kind of helpful
1:13:34 measure for us um is in combination with other factors such as
1:13:38 utilization so this is a scatter plot that
1:13:40 shows um utilization on the x-axis and the five-year fci score
1:13:45 on the y-axis um we colored them into kind of
1:13:48 different zones um where the kind of optimal zone for schools in
1:13:53 brevard would theoretically be well utilized
1:13:56 um looking at these factors together can help us um to generate
1:14:08 targeted um facilities strategies
1:14:15 in terms of programs um here we have looked at florida’s school
1:14:21 accountability reports school grades in
1:14:24 relation to utilizations while we do see a graded schools across
1:14:29 each of these three larger utilization
1:14:31 categories we will see somewhat potentially not surprisingly
1:14:36 given the role of choice in the district
1:14:39 that higher utilized schools there are more higher utilized
1:14:42 schools that are have a grades
1:14:44 in the district then moving in to cte offerings and there are 16
1:14:51 types of career and technical education
1:14:55 programs in the county across 14 boundary junior senior high
1:14:59 school and high schools really rich wonderful
1:15:04 program offerings that vary for each of those different schools
1:15:09 this chart shows each of the high schools
1:15:13 is a bar that’s on the y-axis the colors indicate categories of
1:15:19 cte program offerings and the size of the bar
1:15:23 indicates the number of programs of that category at that high
1:15:27 school so there’s one arts av and
1:15:30 technology and communications program at satellite high school
1:15:33 for example is the top corner green bar here
1:15:36 so really rich offerings for which students have choice options
1:15:40 in the district for schools that are not
1:15:43 already over utilized one of the things that is important to
1:15:49 note here that the facilities team is also
1:15:53 already aware of is that the number of offerings doesn’t seem to
1:15:57 be a direct driver of utilization and of
1:15:59 enrollment in schools so something to to contend with this again
1:16:05 shows the same information
1:16:08 and um geographically um in terms of the number of programs by
1:16:12 high school across the county
1:16:15 um additionally brevard has really rich ese program offerings um
1:16:21 and ese feeder patterns offering varying
1:16:25 exceptionalities classrooms programs um not necessarily always
1:16:29 at the school for which a student is zoned to attend
1:16:32 um but at nearby schools um and this map visualizes um those
1:16:36 offerings um for selection of those um ve uh
1:16:40 classroom instruction um instruction programs um and then
1:16:45 finally um in relation to programs
1:16:48 uh voluntary pre-kindergarten programs are offered at 29 out of
1:16:53 the 29 title one elementary schools in the
1:16:56 district as well as at eight non-title one elementary schools
1:17:00 and four high schools across the county
1:17:03 um so thinking towards the future what does the future hold for
1:17:08 brevard’s school facilities we want
1:17:11 to ensure that the strategic facilities plan is forward thinking
1:17:14 and anticipating of those changes
1:17:16 these changes so um two kind of major takeaways um here are that
1:17:22 enrollment growth um is anticipated but
1:17:24 will not be evenly distributed across the county um again likely
1:17:29 uh not surprising to you all um with
1:17:32 residential development driving kind of pockets of growth in key
1:17:36 sections of the county um there will be
1:17:38 intense growth in some areas that’s not matched evenly across
1:17:42 the county really communicating a need for
1:17:45 for strategic thinking about um our use of facilities as well um
1:17:49 the largest increases in role in
1:17:52 enrollment are expected um in the southern portion of brevard
1:17:57 county and so looking at that spatially
1:18:00 sunrise elementary southwest middle and bayside high school are
1:18:05 the school boundaries that the current
1:18:08 school boundaries that would see the largest impacts from
1:18:11 current estimates of new development um with
1:18:16 um potentially up to 550 students um from binding development
1:18:21 contracts um within the sunrise elementary school
1:18:24 boundary um however despite this anticipated overall enrollment
1:18:28 growth across the county and growth in some areas in the county
1:18:34 in particular
1:18:35 um based on uh the district’s enrollment projections um the
1:18:40 district will continue to have some challenges
1:18:43 related to underutilized um schools um even with uh these this
1:18:49 growth in enrollment um given current school boundaries
1:18:53 um so we’ll switch gears there to talk about some of the key
1:18:57 challenges um that this analysis kind of leads us
1:19:01 to all right thank you dear so as we move forward and moving
1:19:06 forward we will have lots of conversation with
1:19:10 stakeholders as well as the board you know we’ll be looking at
1:19:14 these challenges that have hopefully been represented well in
1:19:19 some
1:19:19 some graphic uh portrayal of the data and what kinds of
1:19:24 opportunities there are to address them uh with
1:19:29 enrollment we’re hearing a lot about underutilized facilities
1:19:32 right and that’s an efficiency uh issue
1:19:36 for us the use of resources new housing development the pressure
1:19:42 placed on our schools as a result of
1:19:45 new housing and enrollment at the same time how our
1:19:49 neighborhoods age right over the life of a school
1:19:54 when we think of the life of the school being 50 60 70 years uh
1:19:58 the life of a neighborhood changes quite
1:20:01 a bit during that period of time and it may not always have a
1:20:06 lot of school-aged children so how our
1:20:08 neighborhoods are changing how our communities are changing uh
1:20:13 and how they’re generating we’re not
1:20:15 generating our school-aged children is also something that’s
1:20:19 impacting uh enrollment and utilization and
1:20:22 that you know is really the shifting locations of demand and our
1:20:27 choice environment obviously uh facilities i just
1:20:32 have to point out for all of those who might be looking at those
1:20:37 fantastic portrayals of uh schools uh on
1:20:42 brevard county it’s a really long county and it’s a skinny
1:20:47 county and almost all not all maybe
1:20:53 maybe 85 percent of your schools not only are they older they’re
1:20:58 east of i-95 so you’re a coastal community
1:21:03 with older schools and the impact of our salt air and our high
1:21:08 winds is tremendous on the issue of facility
1:21:14 life cycles facility upkeep so um i i actually i actually got to
1:21:20 hand it to sue because obviously for me
1:21:24 i’m thinking about a very similar district in which i have a lot
1:21:28 of experience volusia and i’m realizing
1:21:31 i was i i didn’t know i was fortunate but my county was fat and
1:21:36 i think your widest point is maybe 26 miles
1:21:41 and it’s relatively isolated and being i can remember that being
1:21:45 east of the interstate
1:21:47 i could see the difference in the life cycle of hvac in
1:21:51 particular and it’s a result of being a coastal county
1:21:55 so uh all of that being said uh is our key challenges right and
1:22:05 uh the types of facilities that we have
1:22:10 how those facilities need to evolve over time we’ve talked about
1:22:14 security uh new systems uh all so many
1:22:19 of our systems are now dependent on technology and again the
1:22:23 life cycle of systems and every time we put in
1:22:27 new door hardware new gating new locks all of that is a um is a
1:22:36 a use of resources so
1:22:39 energy efficiency uh notwithstanding and i think it’s been great
1:22:43 that you guys have been able to invest
1:22:46 so significantly in your systems and then lastly um the
1:22:50 challenges associated with keeping our programs
1:22:54 current uh continuing to respond particularly with career and
1:22:59 technical education to the needs of our
1:23:01 economy i’m wanting to provide opportunities for our students as
1:23:05 well as trying to keep our students here
1:23:08 to be our future labor force right and uh the unique needs of
1:23:13 our other programs um because again going
1:23:18 back to our vision this is a strategic facilities plan that is
1:23:22 intended to address the needs of all
1:23:24 students and access to programs and facilities for all of our
1:23:28 students so
1:23:29 great and kind of building off of those key challenges as we
1:23:34 pivot into the options development phase some of
1:23:37 the potential strategies that we’ll be exploring and want to be
1:23:40 exploring in conversation with you all
1:23:42 related to each of these three pillars in terms of enrollment as
1:23:47 we mentioned boundary changes and rezonings are one
1:23:51 one mechanism one potential tool that the district has at your
1:23:55 disposal to address utilization challenges both
1:23:59 in terms of under and over utilized schools similarly updates to
1:24:03 feeder patterns as well thinking about
1:24:06 grade configuration changes the junior senior high school model
1:24:10 which is used seems very successfully in a
1:24:14 a number of schools here in the county i’m thinking about
1:24:17 advantages of that model of school versus k8s where
1:24:21 can grade configurations allow for certain kinds of program
1:24:25 offerings as well as address utilization
1:24:28 challenges i’m thinking about the potential for school consolidations
1:24:33 school transportation policies
1:24:35 as well as mechanisms to strengthen market share through
1:24:40 proactive enrollment strategies for bps traditional schools
1:24:43 related to facilities and some of the types of strategies that
1:24:48 we may consider and want to consider in conversation are
1:24:52 kind of functional design recommendations so related to
1:24:56 different types of cte or program offerings changes in
1:24:59 forms of pedagogy and program offerings for the kind of 21st
1:25:04 century
1:25:05 learning goals thinking about school renovations school replacements
1:25:10 as well as new schools and school
1:25:13 expansions along with policies for relocatable classrooms kind
1:25:18 of what are the goals that the
1:25:20 district would have for this as a way to deal with enrollment
1:25:23 pressure and then finally in terms of programs
1:25:26 potential strategies may include thinking about the co-location
1:25:31 of new programs and expansion of existing
1:25:34 programs within the district um cte programming um and related
1:25:39 facilities strategies some of the
1:25:41 really amazing um cte offerings that the district um offers
1:25:45 obviously have very direct um facilities
1:25:47 requirements um thinking about pre-k offerings um and how um
1:25:52 expansions to those or
1:25:54 or changes in the locations of them um may have facilities uh
1:25:58 sort of related considerations
1:26:01 and then finally um tools such as educational suitability
1:26:05 assessments um which is a different type
1:26:08 of study that looks at um kind of if the fci um is a measure and
1:26:13 an assessment that looks at just the condition of
1:26:17 um school facilities as buildings you know as walls and roofs
1:26:21 and floors an educational suitability assessment is a
1:26:24 um tool that school planners um sometimes use to think about how
1:26:30 well does a given school facility
1:26:33 support the programmatic and um sort of educational mission of
1:26:38 that school um how well are the classrooms
1:26:40 serving um students given the kind of specific programs of a
1:26:44 school so exploring whether um uh you know
1:26:48 conducting educational suitability assessments um may be a
1:26:51 helpful tool in brevard um in terms of next steps
1:26:55 um uh and in terms of this planning process um i’ll bring us
1:27:00 back to our timeline just briefly um to to
1:27:05 emphasize that we are here just in this baseline analysis
1:27:08 looking forward to conversation with you
1:27:10 all and your reactions to our work so far um the public survey
1:27:14 um link went live this morning so it’s open
1:27:17 to folks um the bps will be sharing it out um and and hope um
1:27:21 that you all can help to circulate it widely
1:27:24 um as well we’ll be holding small group stakeholder
1:27:27 conversations um in early january um to solicit
1:27:31 uh input from key groups um community groups who are active in
1:27:35 the district um and with that i’ll i’ll
1:27:39 pause and leave space for questions and discussion um with you
1:27:42 all well thank you so much a world of
1:27:48 knowledge there and information that it’s going to take quite
1:27:51 some time to digest i know this is just the
1:27:53 beginning i’m sure we have some questions um where i want to
1:27:57 make sure that where we go with our
1:27:59 questions is if we just need some more understanding of this i i’m
1:28:03 if i’m not speaking on a turn here this
1:28:06 isn’t anything to do with any strategies or answers here so um
1:28:11 we have some of those questions i’ll start
1:28:14 down here with you mr susan um yeah thank you so i had a bunch
1:28:20 of stuff here and i usually like everybody
1:28:23 else go and then wait to wait till the end so if i steal if i
1:28:27 steal yeah yeah yeah if i steal some of
1:28:29 the stuff i apologize um do you have the school capture rates
1:28:33 for our schools based on percentages i
1:28:35 saw you did the graph and that was very nice but you have them
1:28:39 by school and so just so i can understand
1:28:41 that’s all the kids that are inside of there how many go to bps
1:28:44 and then how many are homeschooled
1:28:46 private schooled and all of that is that what that number is so
1:28:49 it’s basically a graphical representation
1:28:51 of our from to chart that is in the student accommodation plan
1:28:54 and karen is actually working
1:28:55 on updating that information for the october counts and it shows
1:29:00 in a boundary this is how many students are in
1:29:02 the boundary is how many attend the zone school how many attend
1:29:06 other schools and it’s specific as to
1:29:09 which school in the bps network as well as how many attend each
1:29:13 of the charter schools and then there’s
1:29:15 a component that we don’t don’t or can’t track that is is
1:29:18 private school or home school or something like
1:29:21 that so the the data from doe is a little sketchy on that but
1:29:25 our from two charts show charters and bps
1:29:28 facilities we have there would be additional students that are
1:29:32 not reflected in that capture rate because
1:29:36 we just don’t have access to their residency we do we have all
1:29:41 of the home school registered students in
1:29:43 our school district we have their addresses we could cross it to
1:29:48 that okay so just what i was in in
1:29:50 i’ll be honest with you this has been a big deal for me for a
1:29:53 long time um when i first came on the board
1:29:56 there was a series of boundary changes in 2000 i think it was
1:30:00 around 12 13 that really shook up the
1:30:02 longleaf slash sherwood area and sent a lot of people to charter
1:30:07 schools and everything else what
1:30:09 they did was they said well we don’t have enough children in
1:30:12 this school so let’s rezone all of
1:30:14 these children to this school and only 25 of them actually
1:30:18 stayed we lost 75 to the charters and everything
1:30:21 else and now the charters are not even the largest you know
1:30:26 group that’s taking our people it’s it’s
1:30:28 the home school co-ops and stuff like that so not having them as
1:30:31 part of the data set i do know we
1:30:33 have those those addresses and everything like that that might
1:30:37 be able to help us when we’re doing the
1:30:39 cross-functional you know what i mean analysis and stuff like
1:30:42 that
1:30:44 um when i when i was i would love to see a chart because i’ve
1:30:49 seen those ones you’re talking about
1:30:51 sue um miss hand where it has like how many kids go to this
1:30:54 elementary school how many kids go here
1:30:56 it’s great i mean that that is very good and you and lindemann
1:30:59 and you may have other people doing it
1:31:00 now but lindemann used to do it all the time so i gave them all
1:31:03 the credit in the world that was really
1:31:04 good but what i would love to see is a chart that just says the
1:31:07 age of the school um the school
1:31:11 capture rate the grade of the school because i think that you’ll
1:31:15 start to see um trends inside of
1:31:19 there because i’m not so much sure if the age of the school
1:31:23 determines on how many people would go
1:31:25 there as much as the grade of the school would determine along
1:31:28 with some of those boundary changes
1:31:30 and stuff like that i found some of my schools through my old galley
1:31:33 corridor that are a school
1:31:35 districts that are just as a schools that are just as old as
1:31:37 others that have high you know what i
1:31:39 mean and stuff like that so i would love to see one that says
1:31:42 the age of the school the grade of the
1:31:44 school the school capture rate but i’d love to see that school
1:31:48 capture rate have inside of it um
1:31:50 homeschool numbers too because i think we there’s some of those
1:31:54 schools i looked at that i know have
1:31:56 huge homeschool populations that are not reflective inside of
1:32:00 that so if we’re really talking about
1:32:02 attracting some of those people through this we’re missing
1:32:05 because there’s almost just as many kids in
1:32:08 homeschool now as there are in charter schools so we’re looking
1:32:11 at a pretty good significant number
1:32:13 that we may not be targeting um in the in regards to the survey
1:32:16 and i’m sorry this is a big deal for me
1:32:18 in regards to the survey are you guys um is that i’m a homeschool
1:32:23 person click and then i answer the
1:32:25 questions and it’s by that or is it just the survey you sent out
1:32:28 can you go a little bit more into
1:32:30 depth on that yeah absolutely there aren’t divergent paths for
1:32:34 different members of um the provide
1:32:36 school community but there are questions that are geared towards
1:32:40 having families share why they chose
1:32:42 to send their student to the type of school that they attended
1:32:47 it really has two sections and the goal of
1:32:50 the survey um is twofold one to gain an understanding from the
1:32:55 broad um district community of what folks
1:32:58 see as the kind of most pressing facilities related challenges
1:33:02 in the school communities to which they
1:33:04 belong um and then the second um is to take an initial pass and
1:33:09 pulse at the brevard district community
1:33:12 in terms of what folks see as um real priorities um for where
1:33:16 they’d like to see investments in facilities
1:33:19 um and just as a uh you know those two goals are um grounded in
1:33:24 the fact that this is a survey
1:33:27 kind of within the baseline analysis um stage of this process it’s
1:33:31 really just the first moment that
1:33:32 we’re going out into the public um and then the community
1:33:35 engagement through the three uh virtual public
1:33:38 meetings um once we’re presenting um facilities options will be
1:33:42 geared towards getting folks to weigh in on
1:33:45 what their opinions are around the types of options that are on
1:33:49 the table and may impact their communities
1:33:51 okay all right um i was i did a bunch of meetings with homeschool
1:33:58 families back in october last year and i
1:34:02 would say it was some astonishing things reasons that i was
1:34:05 taken in and did not know would be part of the
1:34:09 conversation i think sometimes maybe um that’s a whole separate
1:34:13 issue you guys are working on a different
1:34:16 one um so what i wanted to let some of my board members know is
1:34:20 that throughout this process we’ve come
1:34:23 light years um when i first came on one of the things that we
1:34:26 noticed was that many people would move
1:34:30 um and your your data had shown it they would move to the model
1:34:34 they wanted to go to a k8 model because
1:34:36 they didn’t want to lose that time period between elementary and
1:34:39 middle school so a lot of the
1:34:40 charters moved to the k8 model to be more competitive the
1:34:43 statistics on achievement are astonishingly
1:34:46 between 20 and 30 percent higher based on those k8 models going
1:34:50 back to 1975 i think was when they
1:34:52 started really implementing them but achievement numbers are
1:34:56 extremely higher in those regards they also went to
1:34:58 the junior senior models because of it and um the other thing
1:35:03 that i noticed was is that a good example
1:35:06 i’ll just tell you right now um and it doesn’t have anything to
1:35:09 do with the past person but like i was
1:35:11 at sherwood elementary the other day and she is phenomenal that
1:35:15 principal is incredible um she ran that
1:35:18 school tight the people that were attending there were like this
1:35:20 is amazing and sometimes that leadership
1:35:22 also has something to do with it um just my fear is is that when
1:35:26 we go to do these facilities surveys and
1:35:29 we start looking at some of these we don’t get down the track of
1:35:32 it’s an old building so we need to
1:35:34 replace it and because we do so the people are going to come you
1:35:36 know what i mean because i do feel that
1:35:37 the fact the pieces as far as what the school grade are what the
1:35:40 leadership is inside the room what the
1:35:42 size is we have to philosophically as a board decide what we
1:35:46 want as a size because i know for a fact in my vieira
1:35:49 families they literally will go to the charter school because in
1:35:53 some cases our manatee and others are
1:35:56 so large that they scare the parents you know what i mean and i
1:35:58 think that size has something to do with
1:36:00 it so i think philosophically as we start going through this and
1:36:04 thank you uh mr trent for kind of
1:36:06 pointing it out we have a situation where we need to come up
1:36:09 with a thought process of this is where
1:36:11 our minds are at do we want to create junior seniors do we want
1:36:14 to do k through eights do we want to
1:36:16 move people into buildings i do know that when we closed the
1:36:19 schools in the past because i was part
1:36:21 of the school board that was cleaning that up we tried to close
1:36:25 clear lake and we did and it cost
1:36:28 more money to open it than the money we saved over the time
1:36:30 periods that it was closed the amount of
1:36:33 mold on the walls the air conditioner i mean everything was just
1:36:36 so much more so the theory that we just
1:36:38 close the school and keep it there and somehow we’re saving
1:36:41 money maybe but our capital investment ends up
1:36:44 getting hit along with operating in the future if we were ever
1:36:47 want to try to go out so one of the
1:36:48 things the school board members we need to think about is if we
1:36:52 don’t if we’re talking about closing
1:36:54 schools which i’m not a proponent of i would fight against it
1:36:57 but we we need to take a look at what
1:37:00 the actual cost and savings are of those and it’s usually just
1:37:02 the manpower inside the building and stuff
1:37:04 like that i just kind of rambled around a lot um i had a lot of
1:37:08 other stuff but i’ll leave it alone but i did want to
1:37:10 ask those couple of quick questions on um some of those surveys
1:37:15 and stuff so thank you that’s it mr
1:37:17 i think we know now okay first of all thank you your um
1:37:29 presentation was super comprehensive and
1:37:31 for a newbie on the board it was very much needed and very much
1:37:35 appreciated just a quick question um as you
1:37:38 um as you collected collected your data or how you’re collecting
1:37:50 your data are is there any has there
1:37:53 been any thought or are you guys talking to the economic
1:37:55 development commission city planners of
1:37:57 year company to get insight not just in what the trends are now
1:38:00 but we’re company site selectors and
1:38:02 companies are looking at the future are we doing that as a part
1:38:06 of this evaluation so one of our focus
1:38:09 groups is the city planner group and we will probably be
1:38:13 reaching out to some of the other like edc and
1:38:17 home builders folks and chambers and those folks as we want to
1:38:20 get a little bit farther along with the
1:38:22 options development so they have something to really chew on
1:38:26 with respect to the growth potential i think the
1:38:28 city planners is where we’re going to touch on that that’ll
1:38:31 happen first part of like very early in
1:38:33 january okay and just to expand on what mr susan said it was
1:38:36 especially if we’re talking about
1:38:39 utilization and potentially closing a school or even considering
1:38:42 you know considering it um i’d hate to
1:38:46 move forward and not know that there you know that a particular
1:38:49 area of the county is being looked at
1:38:50 by site selectors and you know five years from now we’re going
1:38:54 to be trying to open up a school that we
1:38:56 closed as mr susan said so mr mr thomas i want to tell you that
1:38:59 when we were doing this in 16
1:39:02 i told sue’s team you’re wrong on all these capacities you’re
1:39:06 not going to be right like
1:39:08 they we met with the city planners and they said no mr susan we
1:39:11 have this and i i had to be quiet and
1:39:14 for about two years i’m not kidding you and i give lindemann
1:39:17 again credit because maybe he wasn’t doing but
1:39:19 he was in charge he was within a point or two on almost all of
1:39:23 our schools and it was stuff that i
1:39:25 wouldn’t even believe like and they did meet with all of like viera
1:39:28 company very closely we did all
1:39:30 of that um economic development council and stuff but it was
1:39:33 more about the city planners and that
1:39:35 meeting that we had but they were phenomenal so when you see it
1:39:38 you’re gonna you’re gonna look at it
1:39:39 and say there’s no way like there’s no way that this is not
1:39:43 going to explode or the count and they’re
1:39:45 right they’ve been right and i about to you but they have and i
1:39:47 just wanted to tell you that frustration of
1:39:50 me going through it was eased at what they do so i just wanted
1:39:53 to let you know they’ve done a good job
1:39:54 thank you so just question about the utilization rate did i hear
1:40:07 you correctly that that at our
1:40:09 schools that have say vpk or blast programs that are outside of
1:40:12 the k-12 range that utilization rate
1:40:15 does not include the numbers of or is it just that in those
1:40:20 classes it’ll be smaller and so the
1:40:23 percentage will look lower but maybe we’re using just as many
1:40:25 classrooms as we would in another school
1:40:27 so it’s that one well uh sue sue will correct me if i answer
1:40:32 this wrong so doe it depends what kind of
1:40:36 pre-k program we’re providing at that particular school okay
1:40:40 because doe will only allow us as school
1:40:44 districts to count like an ese right pre-k program whereas at
1:40:49 some of our schools we’re offering a vpk
1:40:54 program right so you’re allowed like one classroom for the
1:41:00 purposes of this type of pre-k and that would
1:41:04 be reflected in that particular school’s utilization but at this
1:41:08 other school we have a different kind
1:41:11 of pre-k and that’s not recognized by doe right so like high
1:41:15 school is one of our least utilized high
1:41:18 schools they have a they have a pre-k on site um are those that’s
1:41:24 that’s not very many kids but are
1:41:26 those kids counted in the utilization rate for those kinds of
1:41:30 programs off the top of my head i don’t
1:41:32 know but i my suspicion is no okay um those are things that we
1:41:36 take in consideration because it’s that’s
1:41:39 that’s just one number but it doesn’t necessarily include all
1:41:41 the factors that’s right and so i think
1:41:43 in response to your question you know sarah lee gave you the
1:41:45 technical answer that i believe is
1:41:47 correct but we really have to look at each school as we drill
1:41:51 down to what our options might be
1:41:53 because they’re used differently so for example dual enrollment
1:41:56 has a big impact like the number might
1:41:58 look crazy high but if your students are dual enrolled and they’re
1:42:03 not on campus they’re not on campus right
1:42:05 so there there’s lots of subtleties to this so this is kind of a
1:42:10 high level like okay these are the areas
1:42:12 we should be looking to make some decisions versus these are
1:42:16 decisions we’re going to make right so
1:42:18 being overcapacitated high school is not as problematic as being
1:42:21 overcapacitated elementary school because at
1:42:23 high school you’re always going to have a certain percentage of
1:42:25 students off campus and that was why
1:42:28 when we said well there’s a there’s a target range right we said
1:42:32 like 80 to 95 percent we think but
1:42:36 but you have to drill down further and see well what programs
1:42:42 really are offered at that school
1:42:44 because they may or may not be reflected in the capacity so
1:42:48 right right and we have students besides
1:42:50 dual enrolled we have students who are doing the work uh
1:42:52 programs where they only go to school for the
1:42:54 first couple classes and then they’re off campus with jobs and
1:42:58 things internships um what was our fci
1:43:01 district-wide oh i don’t know there was a chart with with
1:43:07 several of them i didn’t know if you knew off the top of
1:43:09 your head i mean are we talking about like 0.4 for the district
1:43:13 are we talking about it’s probably you
1:43:16 know 0.25 0.3 but i i literally don’t know off the top of my
1:43:20 head okay i have to look okay and then my other
1:43:25 question because we were instructed to keep it to questions
1:43:29 um is we have we have a model in brevard that we have just one
1:43:36 of that i didn’t hear you discuss
1:43:39 i didn’t know if that would be part of the conversation that is
1:43:41 the primary intermediate model
1:43:42 we only have one of them the meadow lanes um and that’s a unique
1:43:47 situation because you do have them
1:43:48 like all on the same street and that was planned ahead of time
1:43:51 that you could have
1:43:52 three campuses you know size lots of communities lots of planned
1:43:56 communities actually do schools like
1:43:57 that where they have elementary and then middle and a high and
1:43:59 they’re all in the same row makes it easy
1:44:01 for families right makes it a little bit tricky for drop-offs
1:44:05 but um so is that something that we would
1:44:07 consider when we’re looking in the future if we have a location
1:44:11 that could support it doing a primary
1:44:14 intermediate model like we already have yes okay and i think
1:44:18 that there are some permutations of that
1:44:21 that we’re actually going to look at in south brevard okay
1:44:24 because i think there’s some opportunities
1:44:27 to do something like that that’s a little bit out of the out of
1:44:30 the norms right and it would take the
1:44:32 special location because we’d have to already have the property
1:44:35 adjacent or a property big enough
1:44:37 to add another building but since we do already have that model
1:44:40 um it’s it would be easier to
1:44:42 replicate than something new okay um yeah i just i did just one
1:44:47 uh piece of commentary not strategy but
1:44:50 commentary is i just i appreciate that we have you guys i always
1:44:54 appreciate soon the work that you
1:44:55 and your facilities team do do such an amazing job and all that
1:44:58 data from two charts i’ve told you guys before
1:45:00 some of my favorite things to look at because it’s fascinating
1:45:03 to look at um when you get you know
1:45:05 how many people from this school go to this school and that you
1:45:07 know and just where those migration
1:45:09 patterns are but i think board as we go forward we really are
1:45:12 going to have to rely um because we’re
1:45:15 certainly certain some of us have expertise in different areas
1:45:17 but this is something we’re gonna have to
1:45:18 rely on our experts not to make the decisions for us but to help
1:45:22 guide us because they’ve worked all over
1:45:24 the state and can see the trends across the country to help see
1:45:27 what’s going to be successful and i think
1:45:30 it will be good for us to have that input when we start making
1:45:32 the big decisions and certainly
1:45:34 it’ll be really important the work that you guys are going to do
1:45:37 to help us gather the community input
1:45:39 because i can go have a conversation with 10 of my friends but
1:45:43 that’s not the same as getting the
1:45:45 right kind of data we need from the community that will be
1:45:48 utilizing these schools in the future even
1:45:50 when we’re off the board so um i appreciate that we’re we’re
1:45:53 going this route and dr rendell and you know
1:45:56 under y’all’s leadership that uh we’re going to be able to walk
1:45:59 this through in a organized fashion
1:46:02 something that you guys have done before uh so appreciate that
1:46:05 that help as we go through this
1:46:06 process when you’re talking about the location of your schools
1:46:11 that you guys are going to do your um
1:46:14 your pieces that do you have any idea of where that might be at
1:46:17 already
1:46:17 in in terms of the community meetings in the second phase those
1:46:22 are are currently scoped to be virtual
1:46:25 meetings kind of lowering barriers to entry for folks to
1:46:28 participate in them so they’ll be online
1:46:30 on zoom okay yeah all right all right and since our significant
1:46:35 populations that are at needs and
1:46:37 stuff like that may not have that opportunity to go online and
1:46:40 stuff like that is there an
1:46:42 opportunity to do an in-person at all are we only taking the so
1:46:45 if i can get online that’s it but if
1:46:48 there’s any other input the only other way to do is the other
1:46:51 piece there’s no in person type meetings or anything like that
1:46:54 so i’m i’m sure we can
1:46:57 make that happen but we do want to make sure that we’re reaching
1:47:00 abroad the broadest number of people
1:47:01 possible so that was the idea behind the virtual participation i
1:47:06 also think that like i will be
1:47:08 briefing like the parent leadership team and the bipoc and some
1:47:11 of our community groups our capital outlay
1:47:13 committee and i think we we staff will be out in the community
1:47:18 also talking about this so in addition to
1:47:21 what they are doing i would anticipate that we will be doing
1:47:24 some of that community engagement work
1:47:27 so it may be something where me or karen or dave we are out in
1:47:32 the community somewhere to reach a group
1:47:35 of people that are interested in this topic that doesn’t
1:47:38 necessarily have the consultant involved so
1:47:40 it could be any of those options but yes we would support that
1:47:45 okay thank you dr adele to finish up
1:47:48 i just want to remind the audience and the board members that
1:47:53 this is the beginning of the process you
1:47:55 know kind of set a baseline and now we’ll look to develop some
1:47:59 possible strategies options solutions
1:48:01 moving forward so no decisions at this point just information
1:48:06 great does any board member have anything
1:48:10 further to discuss you guys thank you so much for all this i
1:48:14 think this is just the tip of the iceberg
1:48:16 we understand we get it and we’re going to have a wonderful
1:48:20 working relationship together thank you so much
1:48:23 but anything else that you guys want to bring up discuss um just
1:48:27 really quickly i just wanted to get
1:48:29 a time frame for when we we are going to discuss it and maybe dr
1:48:32 randella already knows this but um
1:48:34 we it wasn’t on the agenda tonight and that so i didn’t know if
1:48:38 we have opportunities since we’ve
1:48:39 got a little bit few more minutes before um the greater florida
1:48:44 consortium of school boards the
1:48:46 legislative platform that i talked to you guys last night i don’t
1:48:48 know if anybody had a chance to
1:48:49 talk about that or did we have a plan of when we were going to
1:48:52 discuss that we didn’t have it on an
1:48:54 agenda we can put it on the january 21st workshop for sure i i
1:48:58 think they’re going to need it before
1:49:00 then just because if there’s something that our board decides we
1:49:03 don’t want um we need to let them know
1:49:06 so they can pull it off yeah the latest uh version of their
1:49:10 legislative platform that i saw last thursday at fsba fads
1:49:15 did not have the one item that we discussed before that we might
1:49:19 not want on there okay so we might
1:49:21 be pretty pretty good okay okay i didn’t know if any board
1:49:24 member other board member had it that was
1:49:26 that was the one that i had to do with private schools and
1:49:29 things like that okay um if anybody
1:49:32 had any other items but if we i i didn’t want to bring it up
1:49:35 tonight because i’m trying to get to a
1:49:37 band concert if we get out in time um but uh yeah that that was
1:49:42 the only other thing um because i do
1:49:45 we’re not the only district that was waiting till today this
1:49:48 week’s board meeting because i know
1:49:49 charlotte was looking at it this week too um but we have one
1:49:52 more me next week if it’s an issue but
1:49:54 if nobody had a problem with anything else on the agenda then
1:49:56 the platform then i guess we’re good to
1:49:58 go okay uh mr gibbs you have uh the floor all right good
1:50:03 afternoon board members on behalf of attorney
1:50:06 howard marks i’m notifying you that advice is needed regarding
1:50:09 the pending litigation styled moms for
1:50:11 liberty at al versus the school board of brevard county florida
1:50:15 et al case number six colon 21 dash cv dash
1:50:18 01849 11 circuit case number 23 dash 10656 pursuant to 286.011
1:50:25 florida statute known as the government
1:50:27 the sunshine act i am requesting an attorney client session with
1:50:30 the board for the purpose of
1:50:31 discussing strategy regarding litigation i will ask the board’s
1:50:34 clerk to cause a reasonable public notice
1:50:37 of the time and date of this attorney client session and the
1:50:39 names of the persons attending to be
1:50:41 published if the board approves i will work with the board clerk
1:50:44 to coordinate dates for the attorney
1:50:45 client session coordinating are working with our council’s
1:50:48 availability and providing notice of
1:50:50 the meeting inclusive of scheduling a court reporter as required
1:50:54 by this statute only the following
1:50:56 individuals may be present school board members katie campbell
1:50:59 matt susan john thomas jean trent
1:51:02 megan wright superintendent dr mark rendell paul gibbs general
1:51:06 counsel howard marks burr foreman jennifer
1:51:08 bridges burr foreman as required by statute i will ask a court
1:51:12 reporter to record the session their
1:51:13 notes will be fully transcribed and filed with the clerk of the
1:51:16 school board upon the conclusion of any
1:51:18 litigation and or settlement of all claims arising out of this
1:51:21 case the transcript will be made public
1:51:23 record i recommend the board hold an attorney client session
1:51:28 pursuant to section 286-011 florida
1:51:31 statutes to discuss strategy of pending litigation if there’s no
1:51:35 objections i’ll instruct our attorney to
1:51:37 work with the board clerk and schedule as soon as the matter as
1:51:41 the matter may be heard
1:51:43 yep all right board members on behalf of attorneys randy mora
1:51:53 and jay danio
1:51:54 i am notifying you that advice is needed regarding the pending
1:51:58 litigation style jennifer jenkins versus
1:52:00 brevard county school board and matthew susan case number 05-2023-ca-018437
1:52:08 pursuant to 286.011 florida
1:52:11 statute known as the government the sunshine act i am requesting
1:52:14 an attorney client session with the
1:52:16 board for the purposes of discussing strategy regarding
1:52:19 litigation i will ask the board’s clerk to cause
1:52:21 reasonable public notice of the time and date of this attorney
1:52:24 client session and the names of the
1:52:25 persons attending to be published if the board approves i will
1:52:29 work with the board clerk to coordinate dates
1:52:31 for the attorney client session working with our council’s
1:52:34 availability and provide notice of the
1:52:35 meeting inclusive of scheduling a court reporter as required by
1:52:39 the statute only the following
1:52:40 individuals may be present school board members katie campbell
1:52:44 matt susan john thomas jean trent megan
1:52:46 wright superintendent dr mark rendell paul gibbs general counsel
1:52:50 randy mora trask danio jay danio trask danio
1:52:55 as required by statute i will ask a court reporter to record the
1:52:57 session
1:52:58 their notes will be fully transcribed and filed with the clerk
1:53:02 of the school board upon the
1:53:03 conclusion of any litigation and or settlement of all claims
1:53:06 arising out of this case the transcript
1:53:08 will be made public record i remember i recommend the board hold
1:53:11 an attorney client session pursuant to
1:53:13 section 286-011 florida statutes discuss strategy of pending
1:53:18 litigation if there are no objections i’ll
1:53:21 instruct our attorney to work with the board clerk and schedule
1:53:24 as soon as the matter may be heard
1:53:27 okay okay as there’s no further business this meeting is adjourned
1:53:40 so