2025-08-26 - School Board Work Session

9:47 Sam. Good afternoon. The August 26, 2025 board action is now in order. Call Roll call, please.

10:31 Mr. Trent. Here. Mr. Season.

10:33 Here. Ms. Campbell. Here.

10:35 Ms. Wright. Here. Mr. Thomas.

10:37 Here. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flyer of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

10:58 Shimming over there. Sorry about that. Dr. Andell, can you speak to the board about the items on the agenda for today? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

11:05 We have a lot on the agenda today. We start with some a review of some proposed policy revisions, most of them driven by NEOLA changes or changes in legislative action. Then we have several presentations.

11:18 First is an update on the current technical education. Rachel Rutledge will be presenting that. And then we’re going to go into a rather lengthy presentation on our student achievement data from last school year.

11:30 We have a lot to celebrate and we really haven’t taken the time to go through the data with you and the public, so we’re going to do that today. And then also tonight. Their presentation on student achievement data today will be rather lengthy.

11:44 The one tonight will be shorter. But we did want to make sure that we celebrate all the great achievements that we’ve made over the last couple years. Then we’re going to talk a little bit about the wireless communication device policy that was just passed by the board last two weeks ago.

12:00 There’s been some discussion about making some alterations or changes to it. So we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to get a presentation on the budget.

12:09 Ms. Luzinski and her team have been working really hard to finalize some numbers and everything. So she’s going to present you, you know, some data on the budget, some slides and that kind of thing. And then if we have time, we’re going to talk a little bit about legislative agenda.

12:25 You know, we do have committee weeks coming up pretty soon in the state legislature. So Mrs. Campbell has asked that if we have any items that we talk about them today so we can generate our legislative agenda. And then the last item there is Mr. Thomas has asked for us to bring back that invocation policy on the Topics.

12:42 It says Policy 0165, which is the meeting policy for the board. And the change proposed change would be to have the invocation before the meeting. So if we get to that, we will do that today as well.

12:55 All right, well, the first order of business is board review of proposed policy revisions. Paul, anything you want to bring up on that? Yeah, no, we can take it by like asking for comments or if you just want to go straight down and ask about each individual one, that’s fine. However you want to do it.

13:17 So the board has a summary sheet. And so if you want to just work your way down the summary sheet. Chair, perhaps you could ask if any board member wants to discuss any.

13:25 As we go through or. Yeah, do we want to. When we’ve done this before we’ve even done page by page.

13:31 But. Okay. All right on that.

13:39 0131. Okay. Yeah, just go with that.

13:48 It doesn’t have a number yet. Okay. I just had a couple of questions since this is a brand new policy.

13:54 And I’m assuming we. We wrote this, right? Yep. Okay.

13:57 Or you wrote this, Mr. Dufresne. Huh? Mr. Dufresne. Mr. Dufresne.

14:01 All right. Mr. Dufresne. So I had a question about the charter school distributions.

14:09 And under number four, letter A, it says it’s going to be allocated under. And it has some of the Florida statutes, but then it says in letter C, adhere to the same spending categories, compensation programs and technology. And I’m trying to think of what the state law says.

14:24 Do we. Can we put that limit on them or does it. When I was trying to remember the language and I couldn’t find it, the language of the millage proposal, like it just says.

14:34 And the charter schools get their share. Right. The language that has to go in the ballot is just the proportionate share.

14:40 Can you hold them to it? I don’t know if we can actually hold them too. I’d have to look at that. Okay.

14:46 But I mean, it’s general fund. They can use it for general fund, which to, to my knowledge, means they could use it. I mean, obviously the millage would be for compensation services.

14:53 So. Okay, we restrict ours more than I think they would have to because they don’t have unions. So for the most part, I don’t think any of ours have unions.

15:03 Right. I mean, I can’t. I can’t really think of.

15:05 I’m trying to think, if I thought hard enough, I think of something that didn’t fall under one of those three categories, compensation programs or technology. But if they wanted to use it to. They couldn’t do capital with it.

15:14 So they can’t do any capital with it. I don’t believe they can do under the rules of the millage. So.

15:19 Okay. Okay. Because statute lays out if you have a millage for operational purposes, it has to be used for that.

15:25 If you have like the surtax, it’s for capital. So they get a little bit more leeway on their capital expenditures than we do. Because we’ve said we’re going to use it for A, B, C, D.

15:34 Right. They can use it for more than that. Well, that’s why I was wondering, should it mirror the language we have in our sales or tax policy that gives them flexibility? Because I feel like they do, by law, have more flexibility.

15:47 Yeah, I’d have to double check if we. And the policy doesn’t say we’re holding them to the same percentages. Obviously they’re not beholden to that.

15:54 But that. That was the question that I had. If you guys wouldn’t mind taking a look at that.

15:58 I mean, I know this is our just our first talk about IT policy, but I just want to make sure we’re not putting something in there that is not a restriction that they actually would have. Yeah, I believe all the statute is about their share. Right.

16:11 There’s really no statutory language about us holding them to the same spending categories that we do. So would it then just be beneficial to strike letter C altogether, just so we’re not getting in trouble? Because that’s what it says, adhere to the same spending categories. I’d have to look at it just to say whether we can legally do it.

16:30 If we can’t legally do it, we would strike it, but. Okay. All right.

16:34 That was all I had on that. While we’re on that policy, can. Can you just clarify the purpose behind the policy, since we’ve obviously already had a millage and place.

16:41 Right. And so this was from the RSM recommendation that we provide some oversight to the millage dollars and we have the surtax policy that kind of does the same thing. This is hr, when HR took over the policy they came up with.

16:54 This is how we’re going to oversee this. Okay, thank you. All good on that one, then? Yep.

17:04 Okay. Policy title. The technical corrections.

17:08 Next one. Anybody have anything on that? No. Okay.

17:12 How about then, 22:15 on that is the. The language of which grades, like grades four through six on autism spectrum disorder and grades seven through nine about hearing impairments, Is that all prescribed in statute? Is that a Tara Harris question or a. The.

17:35 There’s language in the policy about program of instruction. If there’s languages about the disability history and awareness instruction. And it literally goes this grade band is going to learn about these things.

17:47 That’s the new statute. Okay, so that is prescribed by grade level also. Yes.

17:51 If you do it, then you have to do it according to the grade band. Okay, that’s good. Okay, thank you.

17:58 That was all. Thanks, tara. All right.

18:00 2260. 2280. I can scroll fast.

18:06 This one actually recently came up to me as a question. So this is actually going to give students that are in band credit for hope. And let me just say, as someone who watches those kids out there practicing, that is physical, physical, physical.

18:19 So I’m excited that this will give them that venue for the physical education because they’re absolutely meeting it within banned. So I’m glad we’re moving forward with this one. Yes, it already is.

18:30 So that’s. They can sign. Right.

18:31 FHSAA already counts it as sport. The legislature just didn’t until this year. So good job.

18:39 Color guard is considered part of marching band, so they should get it also. Yes, very nice. And that’s really important for them because they don’t have to be in a class.

18:49 So this helps them take care of that credit. Just like athletics. Very nice.

18:54 About 2417, which. What’s the. That’s the Comprehensive health.

19:01 Oh, that’s a good one. 2431. The policy.

19:10 I just want to be clear on it. So this is when we’re talking about the EKG that’s required for sports. Parents have always had the option to opt out of it with a form, but this almost sounds as though we’re going to make them send in a religious exemption form.

19:25 Or are we as a district going to allow that same form that they would fill the EKG out on to be signed off on if the parent chooses not to do so? Yeah, I believe it’s the same form. If not, it’s very similar except for the states. So the legislature actually passed a law that preempts the.

19:43 The way we already had it. Right. So I’m not actually sure it’s different.

19:49 I’m not sure if we. Because before we could, a parent just said, I don’t want my kid to do it. I think there was still a form, right? Already there was a form, but I think that option is going to be removed.

19:59 Sorry. So the option will be removed. So a parent would need to then initiate that.

20:02 Is that what you’re. That’s why I was just confused about that. If a parent chooses that they don’t want to have this screening done for their child, how would someone go about saying, yeah, it’s an opt out form, Very similar.

20:13 So they would just request that from their school. Okay. For clarification purposes.

20:17 Thank you. All right. The 243101 participation by transfer students, it seems like it is Nothing more than 2450.

20:36 5121-5330-0154-1001. Oh, wait, hang on. You’re going too fast.

20:43 I can’t scroll that fast. Just a second. I don’t think I had any more, but I feel like there was one other one that I questioned.

20:51 54, 60. What was. What’s the name of that? Graduation requirements.

20:59 No, I’m good. 5,500 student conduct. It’s too small.

21:06 Okay, about 5514-5780-8452-8462. And then lastly 9800. Oh, I did have a question about.

21:30 Sorry to back up. You’re reading faster. I can scroll.

21:34 The one that had to do with the Narcan. It doesn’t list it. But 50 section that was stricken about.

21:51 Emergency. Section H. The old section H, emergency opioid antagonist use and supply.

21:58 Basically saying that we’ll have, you know, naloxone. And that was stricken. So I don’t know, did the law change or did we ever.

22:09 It was optional, and they originally had it in there. Asked if they wanted to have it in there. It’s not a requirement.

22:16 So we didn’t have it in our policy. This is. It was.

22:18 Neola added it as an option and they put it in there. And I asked if we wanted to require it because that’s how it was being read. And our SROs already have it in their vehicle, so there’s no point in our buying it.

22:29 It’s expensive and it expires pretty quick, so it’s a constant recurring cost. Yeah, I just. Having been at the county’s, you know, launch of the opioid awareness event.

22:41 I mean, the county across the street, they’re. They’re, by the way, they’re having grants, and we could participate in that if we wanted to get a supply in addition to what the SROs have. But, you know, it’s.

22:52 It’s a. In our county in particular, it’s an area of need, so I just didn’t know. So this is not something that we had in our policy.

22:58 No, it just looks stricken because it. They had put it in there to be proposed as proposal to the board and this time during the review process, not requiring us to have. It’s optional for us to purchase if we want to.

23:08 And I would say my opinion would be that I still wouldn’t want a policy because then it’s. If we ever, like, were not to have it or Ours was expired. We’d get in trouble.

23:15 But I still think it would be good for us to have a stash, considering what’s going on in the community. So thank you. Sorry.

23:23 Get you to walk. I’m gonna get you guys all to have your steps today. So.

23:32 It’s in the spring. Yeah, whatever. All right, Anybody else on those? All right, I think we’re ready for the first presentation, Dr. Rendell.

23:43 All right, so we’re going to get an update on our career and technical education programs. There are some news, you know, some news items to. And then kind of an outlook about where we’re going down the road.

23:53 So I’m going to turn it over to Rachel Rutledge, Director of Career and Technical Education. She’s going to walk us through her presentation. Good afternoon.

24:08 Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

24:12 We have lots to celebrate with cte. We’re going to. Lena, are you able to pull up this.

24:19 Thank you. Oh, thank you, Ms. Harris. Well, you all know that we have some amazing new programs that are opening this month.

24:30 Astronautics and Flight Exploration at Merritt Island. We had a beautiful ribbon cutting last week. Great partners.

24:37 The kids are loving it. The teacher’s doing an amazing job, and my team just really pulled that through from. From Paper to creation.

24:45 It was really neat to see. Dr. Rendell said, you must feel like a proud momma. And I did.

24:50 I did. It was wonderful to see that come to fruition. We also have a fabulous new diesel program open at Eau Gallie.

24:58 We’ll be having that ribbon cutting sometime in October at the latest, early November. And electricity at Heritage High is tomorrow. We’ll have a great showing of that new program as well.

25:10 That program is very full for its first year in existence. We have close to 80 students for the first time in that program, which is exciting. There were so many large.

25:30 It was very impressive. So can you give an overview of that? Sure. Absolutely.

25:34 So the diesel program, the way the teacher explains it, is it’s night and day working between the automotive maintenance and the diesel. Everything from the brakes to the systems are all work very differently. So we have some very high quality trainers that are part of that program that we were able to purchase with the workforce capitalization grant.

25:51 And the kids are just learning a completely different skill set that’s going to be able to work on tractors and semis and buses and other diesel vehicles. And it’s also a skill that’s important to our space industry as well. So the skills that they’re learning there will transfer into that as well when we Were talking when we were visiting there on Monday with Congressman Herodopoulos, I asked the teacher, like, so do you need people to bring in diesel engines to work on? And he said yes.

26:22 So if we’ve got people just like people bring in their cars, the teachers don’t have diesel engines, you know, that they can bring in from the parking lot. But if people want to come as he develops the program, that’s a need that. That we’ll need to.

26:32 Yeah. And I. And I think. And this was.

26:34 And the reason I kind of knew what that was, and I was kind of cuing it up for you. And thank you, Ms. Campbell, because you are 100% right. And thank you for asking about that and engaging with them on it.

26:45 It’s such a needed thing because at the port, all of the ships run off massive diesel engines. All of the lifts are massive diesel engines. And we have.

26:54 Our kids are coming out. And there was no answer for that. On top of that, all of the agricultural applications, between tractors and stuff like that, all diesel.

27:03 So I wanted to give you and Dr. Riddell a big thank you because I know that that was an initiative that came out, I think, a year ago, and you guys flipped it and put it in this year. And that teacher is so excited to go. So to the tail end of you and what you said, Ms. Campbell, if there are, it’s not only just bringing in your truck, but those kids should be getting internships.

27:24 And your team’s been phenomenal on gaining all of those internships. I think that getting those kids into the port, getting those kids into the agricultural components would be great. Caterpillar, the boats.

27:35 I mean, I never realized how much diesel’s out there. I grew up around it, working on it, stuff like that, but I never knew the other applications, which is phenomenal. So thank you.

27:43 Absolutely. They’re going to have a skill set that’s much needed. And along with adult education, bringing that program in, I mean, we’ve got just a way to serve all students through Brevard Public Schools schools.

27:54 We also have the technical design program that’s opened at Viera this year. It is working hand in hand with our carpentry program. So the students that are getting the hands on skill will also be getting cad, Revit and Inventor as a part of the program.

28:08 So those teachers are working really closely together. We’re very excited about that. What are they designing, Ms. Rutledge? They design all kinds of things in that program.

28:15 They can design homes, they can design interiors. So. So if you have some females or some males that want to look at the interior of a home, they can design that piece.

28:25 They could design rockets, they could design boats. Could they design anything that they could do in cad? They have the opportunity to design as a part of that program. So they could design a shed, a box, anything like that? Absolutely.

28:38 And then the team could put it together once we run it by risk. Yes, absolutely. I don’t think there’s anything.

28:45 Well, we want to make sure we’re building a sound structure. Right. So we want to make sure we’re covering all those bases.

28:49 But, yes, they can design all kinds of beautiful things. Maybe we can give Viera company a call and see if they’ll actually see something that our kids can design and implement. That would be cool.

28:57 Yeah. And then have our teams go by there. Okay.

29:00 Yeah. Before we leave this slide, I do want to go back to the diesel program in Eau Gallie. One of the.

29:07 Well, really, one of the only reasons we’re able to offer that program at Eau Gallie is that the instructor is certified in regular automotive maintenance and technology. But also diesel, like, he holds that certification. He actually holds certification in electronic vehicles, so EVs.

29:22 So, you know, we’re really, really, really fortunate to have an instructor that has all those different certifications, himself or herself, so that we can offer these programs, a lot of these unique programs that are generating students or generating graduates with skills that are going to go right into the workforce. They’re only able. We’re only able to have them because of the instructors, you know, like Bill McGinnis at the Aviation program.

29:48 It’s only because we have Bill McGinnis, you know, that we can do that. So, you know, this diesel program, you know, it’s a fantastic thing. It’s great.

29:57 It’s amazing. We wouldn’t be able to do it without the instructor. So sometimes people say, why don’t you have this at all your schools? Or, you know, first of all, a lot of them do cost money to.

30:05 Cost a lot of money to put in place. But also, we don’t have access to the instructors to do this at every school and that kind of thing. So very fortunate to have that instructor at o’ Galley High that can do that same thing with electricity at Heritage.

30:19 You know, this is a skilled tradesman that could be probably making more money doing the trade right now out in the workforce and instead is teaching. And so we need to value those instructors while, you know, while we have them, because they’re key ingredient into having the program. Same thing with the Astronautics and flight exploration at Merritt island, you know, at someone with a unique skill set.

30:43 So, you know, Rachel and her team deserve a lot of credit for designing and implementing these programs, but they wouldn’t exist without the instructors. Just want to make sure before we move on. I don’t know if you guys know, but he used to be the Grave Digger crew chief, which is, like, unheard of to have.

31:02 If you guys have ever, like, they look really funny, like, oh, yeah, it’s a monster truck. But if you look at the dynamic of what goes into that, each one of the tires has, like, nine shocks and the torque and everything on those things is incredible. So to have that mind working for our students.

31:17 And he’s very quiet about it. He probably didn’t even mention it to you guys, but it’s phenomenal. So thank you.

31:23 Absolutely. And I work hand in hand with our principals as well to find the candidates because most of these people are not coming onto Beacon to look for the job. So we have to go out and look for these qualified candidates.

31:35 So we work really closely together through the process. All right, here’s a few pieces of the workforce development progress that we’ve made recently. We are adding the Certified Nursing Assistant pre apprenticeship standards to our state to tie to Help Firsts apprenticeship program in RN as well as licensed practical nurse.

31:58 We’re very excited about that. We have so many cool things that are happening with Health first right now with that partnership. Where is.

32:04 Where is those? Are those at each one of our healths or just the specific ones? The partnership for a Healthcare Academy is at Melbourne. Okay. But students that are in the certified nursing program can also go into the apprenticeship program with Health first at any of our schools.

32:20 So they have. Okay. For many of our schools.

32:22 Yes. We’ve also just submitted the standards for electricity program at Heritage to tie to the registered apprenticeship with Boys Electric. Yeah.

32:30 So that’s going to be another direct pathway for students when they graduate to get advanced training in their field. We will be having a welding advisory board this fall as well as a construction advisory board. So those are new to us.

32:44 We do want some feedback to be sure. We are teaching the right. Teaching the right curriculum, offering the right skill, and giving the correct certifications as part of our programs.

32:54 Can I ask who’s going to be on that advisory board? What will that look like? That’s going to. I don’t have a firm list yet. If you have a suggestion of someone that you believe I should loop in, please let me know.

33:03 We’re going to be Calling on our business partners that have been. That have been actively. Yes.

33:08 As well as our post secondary. If there is a post secondary alignment in our community, like Eastern Florida has a welding program. So we will pull in their instructor.

33:16 Maybe their dean of CTE is a part, but mainly it’s gonna be consistent of our workforce partners. Cause that’s the voice that we need at the table to be sure we’re giving the skills the right training. Does Eastern Florida State have a diesel mechanics program? No, I love it.

33:30 They don’t have auto. Ms. Rutledge, for the Construction Advisory Board, do you have criteria set up for what you’re looking for for the members typically with the advisory boards, we want to hear from them on curriculum. What are the needed skills that are needed, what credentials are you looking for, what type of equipment’s needed to provide.

33:48 So any of our partners that are able to speak to that would be welcome at these or could speak to internships with our conversation earlier. How can we get kids into this field and make sure that our partners are aware of the ability of our kids to work under the age of 18? I know we work on that. We created that.

34:07 I think in 2018, we brought the home builders and contractors in and they were part of. Part of that advisory group that worked with our school district to on standards and stuff like that. And that’s where the future home builders and all those clubs came out of.

34:20 And they were driving the memberships for that. We drove those kids over to be competitive over in the southwest part of the state and everything else. So, John, there’s a great opportunity for our teams to be involved.

34:33 I think also if you’ll move on the hbca, I’ll go grab the ABC and we’ll bring them together. Because I think that that will help you tremendously both with resources, supplies and everything else. And then they should be required to run our competition that you have coming up in February, right? Correct.

34:49 I don’t know if you guys know that, but we’re having an official construction competition in February. Please do tell. What is the official construction.

34:55 No, this is. This is. I would love to know more about.

34:57 It’s called Design and Conquer. We’re going to be. And there’s going to be a school board component.

35:02 So our school board team, our school board can actually build along next to the kids and compete with them. I think that’d be a great. He’s a contractor, so I’m not a builder.

35:10 So you don’t want that. Is that something we’re working in No, I didn’t know about this, but thank you. I think they would.

35:17 I think, yeah, we’d love to have your help with HBCA and ABC Partners. Absolutely. I know I’ve spoken with both groups before.

35:27 So just picking the right people from those groups to serve on this board will be. I think having a board is a great idea. Help pull them all together.

35:35 Excuse me, in one place. So versus just trying to me reach out to him one at a time or Mr. Susan or whoever. Reach out.

35:41 Onesie Twosie. Having to be on an extra advisory board would be. Is a good move we had when we did that years ago.

35:48 The Palm Bay construction teacher was literally building footers in the dirt and then covering them. This was pre your time because he was told by Risk Management that that was a. Something that they should not be doing, which a footer on a house is part of or, you know, a building is part of the base.

36:07 And so, like, there’s. I applaud like what you said, John, because they not only will help with that, but then they’ll also work with all of the standards and stuff like that. Like our construction guys that are inside there, once they start teaching, nine times out of 10, they’re no longer in the industry and they slowly start falling behind with standards and everything else.

36:28 And we build to a certain standard inside the school district. But there might be new codes and stuff like that that they need. That’s where that board comes in.

36:35 So thank you so much for putting that together. Absolutely. All right, let’s move on.

36:40 Items to brag about. I had to make a few of these. If you go back, there’s an electrical one in Heritage right there.

36:46 Thank you for that. I know. But the thing is, is that Boys Electric has been asking for that for eight years.

36:53 And so that I know of. So thank you for that. Sure.

36:57 Just wanted to say that. All right, so some of the items we have to brag about from last year, we were able to bring all of our comprehensive high schools to our Skilled Trades and Space Day at Kennedy Space Center. That was very exciting.

37:10 And we have a couple of strategic visits this fall with specific programs to go behind the gates. So we’re still working out a few of those details, but really excited about that partnership. We also did CTE tours at our schools last year.

37:25 We have a couple. Couple other schools we’ve got to get to, Mr. Trent, but we will be visiting all of your schools again this year. We’re just going to spread it out a little bit over the school year, which will be good.

37:35 So we’ll be hitting all of those over the course of the year. Can I just make one ask that when you nail down the date that you’re going to look at doing that in different schools? If you’ll give us as much notice as possible. And we’ll help fill that bus with some business partners and some of our elected officials that want to see the programs, because I think we’re seeing that now with even, like Congressman Harridopoulos touring.

37:52 Everyone is blown away. When they walk in, they’re going, oh, my gosh. This is not a traditional school setting.

37:57 So we want to make sure we get people in there so they can see when they’re. Especially when they’re advocating in Tallahassee or even in D.C.

38:03 for us on behalf of, you know, funds. This is where it’s going. I think that makes it a little more tangible and real for them, so.

38:08 Absolutely. I work with Lena on dates. Thank you.

38:11 Certainly. We also increased the number of industry credentials and digital tools. We have our initial data from last year.

38:19 We saw a 6% increase in industry credentials over the course of the year. We’re at over 40. Excuse me, 5,200 for the school year.

38:28 We also saw an 18% increase in our digital tools. Those are the readiness certifications that kids take that lead them into high school programs and test their digital literacy. Now, I do expect us to see a decline next year because the new legislation has taken it out of middle schools, but we did see a big increase in those this past year.

38:49 We were able to bring in almost $6 million in workforce capitalization funds, which is a win that has served programs ranging from manufacturing to agriculture. We’ve been able to do so much in CTE and Brevard because of these state dollars that have been here to support us. We started a welding cohort for Cocoa High students to attend Eastern Florida at no cost to them.

39:13 So they’re getting their entire certification as a part of that program, which was such a win for our kids at Cocoa. I’m gonna go ahead and chime in on this one real fast because I want to make sure sustainability. I’ve been very vocal about this one.

39:25 So we had a business partner, Mr. Holtby, from Knights Armament. Thank you so much for all the work you did there. But want to make sure that this program continues on and there’s funding sources for it.

39:34 So I know our foundation also helped, so I appreciate that. But just making sure that is ironclad moving forward because there’s been. There’s a Lot of success with that, right? Absolutely.

39:43 And we’re working with the foundation again, Dr. Rendell and I, to try to move that forward, to make it. I would love to send Art an email to let him know whenever it is secured. So if you would let me know that information, that way I can relay it to him.

39:55 I think he will be relieved to hear that. Thank you, Dr. Rendell. On the tail end of that, that whole process that we went through at with Art and Ms. Rutledge, can you explain, basically that we had an industry partner who decided to create a program and went out and got 35 to 40 kids to be a part of it.

40:18 And then all of a sudden the funding for what normally Eastern Florida takes care of, they decided not to fund it. And then we had to come in and fund it. Is that.

40:29 Is that kind of what I remember? It’s. Be honest here because. Because the conversation needs to be out in the open.

40:35 Yeah. It’s not an exact account. I think Rachel can.

40:39 Yeah, I can speak to that just a little bit. So our district pays the dual enrollment fee and typically Eastern Florida pays for the supplies and such for the program. We, this program is heavy supplies.

40:52 It’s like $2,700 per per student for the course of their program. And that’s way more than they are used to paying. They being eastern Eastern Florida is used to paying for our dual enrollment students.

41:04 And so it was going to result in a negative ROI for them. And so the money kept coming up and Art Hokey just took it and ran with it. He’s such a strong partner for us.

41:17 And he just said, we’re making this happen. And we just kept. We just kept pushing through it.

41:21 He went to different partners and was able to secure the funds for this first cohort so that including our career source partners, they contributed to it as well to make this a possibility. So in our high demand clock hour programs, which welding is one of those, the fees are often a lot higher than they are in some of our other dual enrollment programs. And so he was trying to offset that to be sure that these students could participate.

41:46 So he came to me and he said, you know what I mean, we need to have the funding for this. And he wasn’t sure who was supposed to be the person that actually paid it. Just for point of clarification, Eastern Florida State, do they pay for all of the fees for our supplies for all of our other career and technical programs? We do not have a bill for those.

42:09 So I believe that they are paying that. And in all fairness to them. Just to be clear though, there aren’t any other that are as high of a fee as this specific course.

42:18 So this one was very unique in that nature, which is why we were trying to figure out last minute, how are we going to pull this all together? Because it was so much more. I just, and I’ll be completely honest with everybody here, I have watched Eastern Florida State for the last 20 years in some cases, and many of those guys over there in the CTE are my friends. But I’ve watched them cancel off programs, do different stuff that we then have to create and build on our side because they no longer were providing it.

42:47 And when it came to me and Art was asking me, he said, can you guys fund it? I said, no, that’s not our job. We did not do that. And then Dr. Rendell stepped up so that those kids would not be left out to fund part of it.

42:59 And thank you, Ms. Wright, for all getting involved and getting that taken care of. But I’m sorry, like, I don’t think, and I appreciate that the foundation wants to come in, but I think Eastern Florida State, regardless of if it’s an ROI or not, needs to pay their portion. And the main reason that I say that is because they have ROIs on other things that they’re making a pretty good penny on.

43:19 And then the other side of, you know what I mean, the other cost. I truly believe that Art was right in driving this and I think that we can go ahead and raise money and stuff like that. But Eastern Florida State has a lot of programs and some are going to be good roi, some are going to be negative.

43:35 But their job as a post secondary school is to fund our welders so that we can get to work out in the space center and in Cape Canaveral. That is their job as the post secondary school. And for them to turn around and say, you know what, we’re not going to fund it because it’s not a good roi.

43:52 Well, I think that needs to be looked at and I’ll just say it publicly. I know I’ll get some phone calls after this. But the bottom line is, is that Eastern Florida State needs to pay that fee and we should be able to raise our money for other stuff.

44:02 That’s all. Thank you. So I’d like to make some comments about that just to make sure we can close the loop.

44:09 This was a project that we had, we hadn’t done before. Like, you know, this is a clock hour program that requires a lot of supply fees and we do a lot of great dual enrollment with Eastern Florida. Not just academic dual enrollment, but some as degree dual enrollment.

44:28 They actually host some students from Space Coast Junior Senior in the machine shop there at the Cocoa campus of efsc. You know, a partnership I wasn’t even aware of until this year. They’ve been doing it for a couple years, doesn’t have the steep shop fee, so that’s why they’ve been able to do it.

44:44 So working through this with Eastern Florida to make sure these kids had this opportunity, I mean, that’s the unique thing about this program is CO High school is literally down the street from the Cocoa campus of UFSC where the welding lab is. So these kids can walk down the street to this welding shop and put in their hours and take these courses. The transportation is not an issue and there was a need, there was a way to get it done.

45:11 We worked with Eastern Florida eventually to get it all done. You know, Art raised some money, the foundation pitched in some money, other people pitched in money to cover the cost, the materials cost of this first cohort. Since solving this with Eastern Florida State College, this program, there’s definitely been a shift with them to say, how can we do this again? How can we do this with more programs? So I don’t think we’re going to see the roadblocks that we’ve seen in the past, especially when we’re trying to launch this program.

45:42 I think Art’s been trying to get this going for two years and it’s an incredible program for these kids. They’re going to graduate high school with their welding certificate, their AS degree welding certificate, ready to go and step right into a high paying job right out of high school if that’s what they want to do. And so we’ve had several meetings with Eastern Florida officials since we got this off the ground about other ways we can partner and other ways we can overcome the roadblock.

46:12 So I do want to close the loop and make sure everybody out there understands it. We’ve got a new partnership going with them. Dr. Richie and I have talked quite a bit, you know, so I think, I think we’re good to go moving forward with a lot of this stuff.

46:27 Good. Thank you. Another celebration.

46:31 We had our first graduating cohort of firefighting students from Palm Bay Magnet. We had eight of them that passed their live burns on the Eastern Florida campus, which is really exciting. And then they can go on to pursue their official firefighter certificate at Eastern Florida.

46:47 So really proud of that and look forward to bringing that onto Our Cocoa campus in the near future. We also increased our career and technical student organizations. Remember, these are the organizations that tie to a specific program like HOSA is Health Occupation Student Association.

47:04 And we had some students that went to international competition and won this summer, which is exciting. And also tsa Technology Student association, really strong chapter at Palm Bay and loops in some of the Melbourne students. And they, they wanted national competition as well.

47:20 So we saw a 14% increase from one year to the next. Have been able to support them through Perkins funding with an enhanced, enhanced supplement to help. Also our school based enterprises, those are student businesses.

47:33 I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the buttons that have been coming around. I know Dr. Rittendale’s had to got, got to make one with some of our middle school kiddos. They have been doing embroidery, they’ve been designing and making shirts.

47:46 There’s more that we can do with this, especially in our trades program. So I’m excited to see where we go, where we go with that. But the school based Enterprises are up 300% from year over year.

47:56 I mean we started with two and now I didn’t write down my actual number so I’m not going to try to do the math right now. But it’s up 300% from where we started last year. That’s exciting.

48:05 Exciting. So the kids are getting to apply what they’re learning and they’re loving coming to school and participating in the programs. Mrs. Frelich, can you explain.

48:11 Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Thomas. You’re talking fast.

48:14 I just want to jump in real quick on the first certifications. The certifications for firefighting, do they, when they go onto the fire academy afterwards, if they go onto the fire academy, does any of the certifications they received take away from training? They have to take. Yes.

48:28 So it counts for something towards. It does, yes. They’re now official volunteer firefighters because they passed their Firefighter 1 certificate certification.

48:35 Now they have to go get their Firefighter 2 with Eastern Florida in order to work at a, to work at a facility. And we should also note that the firefighter, I think it was the rookie of the year. Was that correct for you? Several of you that were there with Brevard county came directly from one of our schools.

48:52 So that was recognized as being the most outstanding rookie of the year. And I thought that’s amazing. What a great testimony.

48:57 I love it. Absolutely. And that may have moved Mr. Thomas.

49:01 Recompleted. Did you, anybody else have anything. Okay, so increased career and technical student organ Student interest in internship.

49:09 Where was the. You’re talking about school based. School based enterprises? There it is.

49:14 Yes. These are the school businesses. And so it started.

49:17 There’s so many different things that our schools are doing right now. I think back to Hoover. They did a whole holiday event where the students made 100% of the items that were sold.

49:26 And they had community partners come in, parents, and they were buying all the things that the kids. Kids made as holiday gifts. That was exciting.

49:34 Our students are designing using Photoshop, Illustrator InDesign. They’re making shirt designs and then printing them and then selling them. This has become something that is feeding some of our school’s athletic programs because they’re designing for them.

49:48 And so there’s some money being put back into the program and the schools are benefiting as well. So there’s more ways that we can do this though, with our skilled trades programs. There are opportunities there for students to design.

50:02 I think back to my time in South Carolina. Our welding students made these little doorstops, these little pineapple door stops. I have one in my office.

50:09 That’s something that could be done. I had another masonry program that was selling tombstones. I mean, but this is.

50:17 Right, but, but these are things that can. These are things that can be done in our trades programs. And so we’ve got more that we can, that we can dream up together to help these programs bring in more and engage more with the community.

50:31 So there’s a reason I’m getting into this and I think, you know, where it is, is at what point? So we have our career and technical programs in the high schools, right? We have boating, we have marine mechanics, we have automotive. At what point are we going to allow those kids to change oils and stuff like that during the days, whether at school and you know what I mean, Like I know that embroidery is one risk, know what I mean? And there’s some other ones. But having Viera High School’s framing carpentry program, building Adiron Adirondack chairs for profit and then bringing it back, that kind of stuff.

51:05 Where are we at with that? Here’s what I have to say. We have some things to figure out from the legal perspective, from the risk perspective to make sure that the items that we’re selling are going to hold up in our community. And so I still have some things that I’ve got to figure out with other departments here to make that happen.

51:24 But it’s happened in other states, it’s happened in other counties, so I know it’s possible. We’ve Just got to get there. So I’m going to keep walking that out.

51:34 And for full transparency. I know I’m asking you to take a leap of faith into an area that risk management’s telling you no. And I know that that’s your nice way of saying that you’ve tried some of these things and you’ve said no.

51:44 But I think that’s an area that we can help with under the certain guidelines and stuff like that because I think it’s a great program. The reason I was asking is that we were talking about designing and framing and building a shed over here at Viera. We have a lot of our schools that had sheds in the past that are being taken away because they aren’t hurricane compliant and stuff like that.

52:06 There’s other things than communities and stuff like that that they can take. So I think those are great opportunities. Absolutely.

52:12 And we can design a shed and we can sell it. There’s a specific plan that we can, that we can design and sell. So that has been worked out.

52:22 But there’s other things. Like again, I’ve seen carpentry students build a home and auction it off and the funding goes back to the program. I mean there’s there and.

52:34 But that was also a different time. It was security measures and all of that as well. So again, there’s a lot to figure out.

52:40 But I do think that it’s possible that we’ll continue to move the needle. Thank you so much for thinking outside the box. Just to add one more thing, you know, we just kicked off our Partners in Education event that took place here at the district.

52:51 And afterwards everyone enjoyed a meal together that was supplied by, you know, our wonderful food nutrition staff. And the question got brought up as we were sitting there eating lunch like, well, can we hire you guys for catering? And I’m like, well, some of our students you can. And so just again, reminder to our partners that are people that are in charge of pie at the school, please, please, please market the programs that you guys have out there.

53:12 Because I don’t know that a lot of businesses know that. And if you didn’t know, then you’re going to miss out on an amazing meal cooked by our students. Yeah, absolutely.

53:19 And my work based learning team was here to interact with them. So we’re working on that piece as well. Okay, thank you.

53:28 And there’s the other thing is that the teachers are already teaching and doing that stuff that they. That’s extra. And sometimes they’re just worn out, you know what I mean? And we don’t want to push something on them that they don’t.

53:36 That they can’t get to. Cool. Sorry.

53:39 We’re never going to get through this. No, it’s okay. We are.

53:41 This is my area, man. This is my area. I love it.

53:43 I think it’s all our area. So we also, just recently, I’ve been working with Chris Alt on Mr. Cheatham’s team with Lenovo to establish an internship program. So we’ve got some students that are working with Lenovo now, and it’s our cloud computing program from Merritt Island High School.

54:03 So that’s really exciting because we talked about this a while ago with Mr. Cheatham’s group and we just didn’t move it at that time. But now we’re setting up an area where students can repair the technology on their campus. The goal is that we’re able to start meeting a workforce need in our tech as well to support some of the.

54:23 Just some of the computer challenges that we have on our campuses. So I’m excited to see where that goes. This is the first year and it’s just started.

54:30 We just have a couple of students. All right. A couple of other things.

54:35 We have increased the amount of time that our CTE teachers have to renew their In District certification. It now mirrors what the state does. They have five years to complete their courses instead of three.

54:46 So that’s definitely something to brag about. And for clarification, the state says it has to be done in five years. Our district can’t do something separate.

54:53 That’s above and beyond that, Correct? Correct. It was three years with an opportunity for extenuating circumstances. Now it’s five, period.

55:00 Okay. They have five years. Mark that down on your legislative platform.

55:03 Okay. We also have developed a plan, thanks to Dr. Rendell’s guidance here, to bring experts into the classroom. I know that’s been a topic of conversation for a while.

55:14 We have an idea of how to make that happen. I was actually talking with Lockheed Martin on Friday about that, and he thinks that our structure will work. We’ll just have to figure it out according to their the business’s employees schedules, how they can make it happen, where the partners could get paid for their time to come in and teach a specific skill like cable harnessing.

55:35 They might come in every Monday for six weeks and train our students and then go back to their normal jobs. And CTE enrichment programs we had this summer, we had a lot of wonderful ones. Two of them were driven by our partners, Health first led a Health First Healthcare camp and nawic national association of Women in Construction held a beautiful program over here at Viera High School.

55:58 So that was exciting. All right, specific data. Growth, Growth, growth is what I’d like to say.

56:03 I don’t necessarily need to go through all these numbers, but we have seen a major increase in industry certifications. That 2223 school year was around, around 4100. So that’s a big growth over two years.

56:18 Digital tools, I mean we’ve really increased in those. But again, next year we’re probably going to fall off a little bit because of the middle school. That is something we believe in as CTE is having the students have that readiness to go to high school.

56:32 So I just want to put that in your ear so you’re aware internships in ojt, you see the amount of ramp up we’ve had there. I just got our preliminary numbers. As of Today we have 178 students students that are placed now in internships in OJT and there will be even more as the school year continues.

56:50 As we continue to fund placements and ready to work credential, this has gone up to 307 to earn. We think all students should have that opportunity to apply soft skills employability training. So we’re going to continue to push that as well.

57:09 We have also seen an uptick in our pre apprenticeship. Our pre apprenticeship covers construction trades, manufacturing trades and now health care and electricity. So I expect that my team’s going to continue to grow that opportunity for students as well.

57:26 All right, why the beautiful space slide? Space Florida has spoken a lot about our growing Cape space ecosystem. You know that we are a space Academy Space Florida district and our programs that tie into the space industry are part of this, such as technesign, construction, manufacturing. I won’t list them all.

57:49 With an increased focus on space, we’re trying to respond with new programming, new credentials. We’re submitting some with Eastern Florida and the EDC to make sure that we’re aligning to our space industry with credentials for the master credential list. And we also want to see more partner engagement and in our space industry because we are preparing their future workforce.

58:11 We need them to further engage. So any opportunities you have to make those connections are welcome. We’ve got to continue to break down some of the, some of the barriers to getting the students working, working at the Cape because as our, our state’s goal is to be number one in workforce by 2030.

58:31 So I feel like with the things that we’ve been doing here in Brevard, we’re paving the way and we’re pushing, pushing the envelope a little bit. So I want to continue to do that. All right, here’s what we have planned for this year.

58:43 As I mentioned, we’ll do the KSC days. We’re looking specifically at welding and space mechatronics. We want to perfect the process.

58:49 Small groups of kids less than 25 behind the gates where they actually get to get off and go into NASA and do a hands on activity there. So that’s really exciting. We are also continuing our new CTE teacher training.

59:02 We’re pulling them in and helping them understand how CTE is different. There’s so much that they need to know outside of a traditional classroom and we want to be sure they’re equipped. It’s very different to sit in a classroom, work in small groups and get instruction.

59:18 But it’s a whole other piece to manage a lab and the classroom. So we’re working closely with them. We will also be doing school tours all year.

59:28 We will be doing some celebration of Manufacturing Month and Construction Month this year, both of those in October to be determined exactly what that’s going to look like. But I’ll let you know. We have the ribbon cuttings.

59:28 We will be hosting the assistant principals on a tour. In the past couple of years we’ve been to Knights Armament, we’ve taken all of them there and they’ve gotten a behind the scenes tour. We also took them to the port last year so they understand that their CTE programs are preparing students for careers in our local community.

1:00:00 We’re between a couple right now as to which one we’re going to have in November. Lockheed Martin and Health first are both working out logistics. If we don’t do one this year, we’ll do the other next year.

1:00:10 So we try to make this an annual occurrence for our partners, for our curriculum leads to know what’s happening in our community. Could we not do two? If they both could work it out, could we space them out and do two? We may need to be mindful about pulling them out too often this year it’s only two days but, but I. We will continue to do this as an annual event because it they pick up so much from it that they wouldn’t get otherwise. We’re also taking the counselors, secondary counselors around a tour of all the different CTE programs at Palm Bay because they have such a variety.

1:00:45 So we want them to understand what offerings look like in our schools because some of our school based, school based staff don’t even know what’s on their campus. Right. And so we want them to see what a CTE program would look like and then be sure they’re aware of what’s happening on their campus.

1:01:02 So that’s the point of that. We’re also working with Ms. Vega and her team and our schools on curriculum nights that are leading up to the choice window. That’s December 1st through January 16th.

1:01:16 Melinda. Dr. Mayer. Okay.

1:01:18 So working with her as well. And we’re planning for our new programs. Here we go.

1:01:22 Here we go. We’ve got Vystar at Mel Hy, Technical AG Operations at Astronaut Aviation at Space coast and Natural Resources very heavily focused on drones at Eau Gallie. So been very busy with that.

1:01:35 We’re also converting our nursing program at Milhi to the Help First Academy. So they have brought this beautiful calendar of opportunities how they’re going to engage with our students at Mil hi over the entire four year program that they’re in. So be looking for some information on that rollout.

1:01:53 It’ll be available for the choice window as well. And we’re going to be engaging with our AG partners to be sure we’re getting all the right equipment for our new programs that are opening in August. All right.

1:02:07 In the spring we’ll continue our new teacher training. We have that construction competition that we will be doing in February. We’re working with Wellbro, the Viera Company, Viera Builders, Donella Companies, Boys Electrical and Wharton Smith so far.

1:02:20 If you have other partners that would like to support, please just make an introduction by email and we’ll loop them in. They’re going to help support some of the funding of it, but also judging of the event and also planning the event and what that’s going to look like. We’ll continue the school tours in the spring.

1:02:40 Like I said, we’re going to spread these out this year, make sure we do them all really well. We’ll have summer enrichment programs, our FIT partnership with the Merritt island program. We will fine tune those dual enrollment opportunities that tie to the Astronautics program there and get our students set up for success in that pathway.

1:03:03 So many things related to work based learning, parent and student nights, recruitment events, bringing our partners in. I put partner engagement up here because I think that’s really critical as we continue to move forward and elevate our CTE programs is that we have that. So any opportunity you see to, to bring them in and connect them would love.

1:03:21 Would love your help with that. And educators in industry is where students, excuse me, where teachers go work in the field. And we had a couple this year, one of them in technical design and one in TV production.

1:03:33 And we’d like to continue to enhance that. Perhaps send one of our manufacturing teachers to work in, in the field to continue. Just don’t poach our teachers.

1:03:41 Give me a name of the companies that actually take our teachers. There’s always a moment of. I know I have that conversation.

1:03:49 And I’m also working with the EDC in eastern Florida on a CPT certified production technician class for our non CTE students in the spring. So Dr. Andell and I have been connecting about that to try to give them an opportunity if they haven’t figured out what their career pathway looks like and looking to collaborate with the Florida Semiconductor Institute on some planning events there. All right, so what’s next? What’s next for us? Well, we’re planning for those programs.

1:04:20 We’ve already talked about that. There’s a lot that goes in to again putting pen to paper, to getting, getting the students in the classroom. So we’re going to continue with that.

1:04:30 The only concerns that I have for implementation are related to funding. One is the receipt of the new 2526 workforce capitalization grant. We did submit that and we have planned to fund our new programs over the next couple of years with that.

1:04:48 So I’m hopeful that they’re going to come back and provide Brevard some additional funds to help support we align to high skill, high wage programs. And if we, if we’re able to obtain that, we should, we should be able to move forward. Ms. Brett lynch, who is the deciding entity for.

1:05:08 Is that state or is that federal? It’s state. It’s state, yes. And we work with the Florida Department of Education on that.

1:05:16 But this is a line item in the governor’s budget, the Workforce Capitalization Grant. In the past two years there’s been 100 million and this year there was 40. So you know, big cut.

1:05:28 But we weren’t necessarily expecting that there was going to be a line item. And so I am hopeful that we’re going to be able to put some of those funds in. And I apologize because you may not know yet, but who in the Department of Education is in charge of approving that? Do they have a subcommittee that proves it or is it literally the board? They do the lead in that is Dr. Campagnola is her name.

1:05:51 She’s like the lead of the cap grant piece. And so I work really closely with her and her team on the, on the submission process and any questions that come up. She directly reports to Stasi the Education or is under him.

1:06:07 I believe she reports to Tara Goodman, who’s our Vice Chancellor. Okay. So that would be, you know, that’s who we’ve been.

1:06:14 But it’s all in, in that, that House career check. Okay. Yes.

1:06:17 Okay. Yes. Another would be just a decrease in CAPE funding.

1:06:22 Again, as, as the funding has been cut, it impacts our ability to do more and to continue to grow. So at some point, as funding comes together, we may have to make some different decisions. It’s just depending on if all these things line up.

1:06:37 And also the hangar at Space coast. We’re very hopeful and excited that we’re going to be able to make that happen with Congressman Herodopoulos. But it’s just going to be.

1:06:50 There’s always those concerns about where the budget’s going to fall and we have to be fiscally responsible, as if some of them come up short. So what kind of questions do you have for me? Can you go through and give credit to the people who are under you as far as like. Because I think that they deserve some of the credit.

1:07:10 Right. Like you have your internship guy. Could you just talk a little bit about.

1:07:14 Cause what you just put up there is phenomenal. Absolutely. I think the increase is all the way across and I think.

1:07:18 I know that part of your presentation, it’s hard to put people’s names and stuff like that, but I wanted to give you a second to kind of go through each one of them and just say this is what they do and stuff like that, because I think, I think they deserve it. That, that’s phenomenal. That slide you put up there.

1:07:32 Yeah, they, they do. And I, I won’t take too, too long, but my team is phenomenal. They really are.

1:07:37 I have Farah Shakurian and Peter Phillips that are work based learning specialists and they manage all of the pre apprenticeship internship OJT partnerships that I’m not able to get to. All of everything that’s related to work based learning falls with them. And they are both very conscientious there.

1:07:54 I have four content specialists. I have Kathy Bramlett, Jenny King, Robert Dietz and Philip Younger who support our programs directly with the teachers. They also assist with grants and managing all.

1:08:09 There’s so many pieces and parts to CTE that none of this work could be done without them. I have two program specialists which are 12 months. I have Dr. Nicole Combs and I have Raymond Hill who are not only supporting the, not only supporting the curriculum and the teachers at the school level, but they’re also helping with a lot of the administrative type roles that happen during the summer, being sure pre planning comes to fruition and all the other professional development that’s happening.

1:08:36 I have Valerie, who Valerie Johnston, who is our data management specialist. That’s a new person. So we’re going to have more readily accessible data for our schools this year, which I’m very excited about since we have such a.

1:08:48 Such a major focus on continuing to move forward and elevate our students. And then my other support team, Claudia Moret, she’s my accounting specialist, and Fina Del Vecchio is my admin secretary. And they keep us straight and they keep us in line.

1:09:03 They manage that money so well. And again, yeah, I had to get a new admin secretary because my second admin secretary has now gone to teach career tech ed, which is. I mean, I can’t fault them for that.

1:09:19 I’m really excited. No, I’m really excited for them. And I want.

1:09:23 I want good things for my people. And so our team is phenomenal. And none of this work could be done without a collaborative effort.

1:09:31 So. Absolutely. Yeah.

1:09:37 Thank you for that and thank you for getting every one of them. I mean, like, I’m sorry to put you on spot therapy. Just be a couple people.

1:09:47 Then you went all the way down. So good job. Considering we’re starting to gear up to do our legislative ask.

1:10:00 Besides the workforce capitalization grant, the funding side, is there any piece of policy that makes CTE’s life harder? Senate Bill 2510. Okay. Oh, wow.

1:10:09 All right. That is the one that rolled out differently than we’d seen it march out throughout the year. That took our digital tools out of middle school.

1:10:14 Okay. That was a big part of it. But they left them in elementary school.

1:10:25 I thought that was. They did, they did. But we had to completely redo the plan because we were offering them to our sixth grade students, and sixth grade is considered middle at the state level.

1:10:35 And so we had to make a complete shift down to fourth grade because we didn’t want to over test our fifth graders as well. So that’s a piece of it. So revision of that.

1:10:47 This was a. This might get too much in the weeds, Ms. Campbell, but they’ve also changed the structure of the CAPE funding list. That’s federal, correct? The state.

1:10:49 State dollars. Okay. Okay.

1:11:03 Yep. So there it’s. The dollars are prorated and it is combined with other accelerated program options that presents a bit of a concern for us.

1:11:29 The state is also defining grade levels that industry certifications can be earned and I am grateful they have provided us an ear. When I say us, I’m talking about the CTE directors in the state to provide our suggestions to incorporate into what’s actually going to happen. That’s effective July 1, but we’re not going to know what they are until November at the state board meeting.

1:11:41 Even though the kids are already taking the classes right now. So you’re saying if they pick a different. If a child between now and then passes certificate or this school year passes certification but they’re in the wrong grade level.

1:11:47 Doesn’t count. It won’t count towards funding. Won’t count towards funding credit.

1:11:56 I mean it’s basically the. So like the add on funding they get or the, or the funding they get for passing the test. They won’t get it if they’re in the wrong grade level.

1:12:02 Correct. Wow. It’s been an interesting cycle here.

1:12:18 So we have asked. I’m a part of the legislative committee for my of CTE directors and we will be putting together, putting together ask of what that looks like and then I’d love to be able to share it with you. Absolutely.

1:12:30 To, to help because there were some major changes this year that hurt cte. I don’t know how long our conversation will go today, but if, if you, if there’s anything that you can. Because we can submit individual FSBA members can submit ideas.

1:12:54 And if you can shoot that to me between now and like September 4th, because the 5th is our deadline to get our proposals in there, I’d love to with like a little explanation because where they ask us, you know, what’s your idea and what’s your explanation of how it impacts you and if there’s you know, know, please, please send that on to me and I’ll be happy to, to pass along. Thank you board. Just quick question.

1:13:13 How often have our. I know we have a new couple new state representatives, but how engaged has our delegation been in the past as far as knowing what’s going on in our schools with our CTE programs? I think that might be more of a GCR question. Dr. Rendell.

1:13:21 They’ve been certain one of the ones of them have been very well. I mean like Altman was on both sides. He was good when he was in Senate, he was good in the House.

1:13:31 He was one of our, he, he led a lot of our initiatives. I know that Senator Wright is always like, like he tells them clear my calendar for the schools. He’s an animal.

1:13:40 Mayfield has led a lot of initiatives and Soroy has been a part. Yeah I think. I think when you’re asking overall over the last, like, eight years, because that’s just.

1:13:53 The cycle just ended, right? And a lot of us had those relationships. I think that the new ones are just kind of feeling it out. I know that Ms. Campbell had Ms. Monique Miller, representative Miller, down there, because I was talking to her before she went with her.

1:14:10 I know Mr. Hodgers. I’ve reached out to him and said, hey, anytime you’re coming in next week to do a couple schools with me, I sent you an invitation for CTE specifically for schools, but I asked the principals to definitely highlight those programs that. Especially as they’re related to state funding, things that they can help us out with.

1:14:14 So anyways, they. They’re moving to try to do stuff. You know what I mean? And so it’s.

1:14:16 It’s interesting. So that’s great. My comment.

1:14:32 We’ve been very engaged over the last several years. Senator Wright, for sure, 100%. Senator Mayfield secured funding as a representative to add another plane to the aviation program program at Eau Galley.

1:14:47 Representative Roy had funding in the budget this year for the aviation replication at Space Coast Junior Senior. They’ve all been very supportive. Have they all been boots on the ground as far as visiting? I mean, I know the support of the.

1:14:53 I think. I think. Have they seen every program we have? No, I’m not sure I’ve seen every program that we have.

1:14:57 So. But, yeah, they’re engaged. They’ve definitely seen Hike.

1:15:06 And my only other comment was just on the. You talking about redoing the CTE tours or. I think I did that long ago, just as a member of the hpca.

1:15:17 And I know there were city officials and things, just being able to help spread the word. I think that was like three or four years, four years ago that we. I did that, but I thought that was super beneficial as far as just, you know, building a.

1:15:28 Showing the community what we’re doing. Wonderful. Anything else? Now, I just want to thank you again, repeat what we’ve heard up here.

1:15:36 The amount of work behind the scenes. I’m glad you were able to give credit to the entire staff. We appreciate you and what you do, and the future is bright.

1:15:45 You can see it. So thank you so much. Dr. Rendell, you want to add anything? No, we’re going to move on to the presentation on academic successes.

1:16:01 Rachel and her team have done a fantastic job. You saw a lot of it in that presentation. But you also have been out to see the programs and seeing, you know, the kids in action, and that’s that’s really, that’s the proof right there, especially if you’re ever with Mr. McGinnis.

1:16:16 And he talks about his 100% placement, you know, board and has some of the graduates there to speak. You know, many of us were there yesterday and, you know, there’s young people, they’re not students now, they’re adults. Right.

1:16:35 That have these really impressive jobs building spacecraft. And, you know, one of the gentlemen is the lead technician on the lunar rover for Blue Origin, and he graduated from Eau Gallie high school in 22, so only a couple years ago. And he’s doing some big work.

1:16:43 Yeah. All right. So Ms. Harrison and a team, it looks like, are going to be presenting.

1:17:04 You know, we’ve talked a little bit over the summer. I remember you go back to June, we talked about some data and we were cautiously optimistic and things looked pretty good, but we didn’t want to celebrate too much. And then scores came out and then grades came out and we celebrated a little bit, you know, but we always see, you know, areas for improvement.

1:17:19 So I don’t know if we celebrated enough. And so I have tasked Mrs. Harris with coming and celebrating a lot and sharing a lot, because there is a lot to celebrate. She’ll, I’m sure, hit some highlights of some areas that we could improve on.

1:17:27 But we have a lot to celebrate. And so she’s going to go through an in depth presentation. Yes.

1:17:50 So you see that Mr. Ramer is joining me today because what we want to display for you and for all of our stakeholders is that you have, we have shared commitment as we move into this 25, 26 school year. So as we reflect on the data, today is actually the first day of PM1 assessment in our schools. So that will run through September 26th and then we’ll be here to share that data.

1:18:15 But we didn’t want to move into that without formally at a board workshop, really going over what our Data says about 24, 25, also discussing our next steps of how we’re responding to that data. So we’re going to today talk about a lot of things. I know Dr. Rendell mentioned that this would be a deep dive compared to our board meeting this evening, which will be a high level overview.

1:18:57 But we want to really highlight not only our district grade school grade, but looking at that other side of the house where we speak to our SS subgroups and how we’re performing with those levels of subject support, going in by grade level into both ELA and math, then looking at our science going into Our civics, US History, talking a lot about our acceleration pathways, college and career readiness and graduation rate, but most impactful of what we are doing in the 25, 26 school year in response to all of these data points. So here’s some huge celebration areas. Dr. Rendell was right.

1:19:16 We were, I think, the two of us and our team looking every time another student tested, we were looking at that data as it was dropping. Because one of the benefits we have with FAST is we get immediate results. And so there is no waiting for the data, you know, a couple weeks or a month later, we’re able to see it live.

1:19:41 And so we were very optimistic, but cautiously optimistic. Optimistic. And once all of this dropped, I think that it is a huge celebration to say that when you look at all of the areas in which we increase or maintain, our teachers, our students, our school staff, our school leaders really showed up for the 24, 25 school year in a big way.

1:20:01 So this is our breakdown when we look at over time, our number of schools earning grades A, B and C and grades of D. This slide includes both our traditional BPS schools as well as our charter sites. So that you can see where we’re falling.

1:20:35 And so you see that we keep increasing and moving towards that strategic plan goal of all schools earning a school grade of A or B. I know when we wrote that strategy strategic plan and in our strategic plan workshops, we’ve really talked a lot about making some aggressive goals, but I think we are set to attain them. I think that our data will show that we are moving in the right direction and that those goals that we felt were very aggressive are very much attainable over the five years.

1:20:51 So here’s some huge celebrations here. So when you look at this, these are the schools that increase their letter grade. So to have 13 schools increase their letter grades, you will see schools up there that have worked really, really hard over time.

1:21:12 And to see them actually move to that next school grade, I think we have so much to celebrate. You will also see a large percentage of our schools on this slide are our Title 1 schools. And so to see the work that they are putting in that is paying off for students, I think is an exceptional tribute to the work going on in our buildings.

1:21:41 So now we’re going to move our focus to our traditional BPS settings. And so you’ll see here 41 of our schools increase in total points. What you may or may not notice is there is a particular feeder chain, the Astronaut high school feeder chain, that is our only true feeder chain where all of the schools improved, and that is inclusive of Mims Elementary, Pinewood Elementary, Oak Park, Madison Middle and Astronaut.

1:21:51 And that is our only feeder chain where we have seen this. But it’s also, if you’ve been tracking bar data, that could not be a bigger celebration for the north area. Way to go, District 1.

1:22:05 Way to make me proud. This spide makes the me exceptionally proud. And I am disappointed that Mr. Flora is at his very first Bureau of School Improvement meeting up in Tallahassee.

1:22:16 So he is missing this shot out. But these are schools that improved in every area of the school grade component. So huge celebrations for these three campuses.

1:22:26 Yes. So everyone is usually familiar with our school grading, so system so they know what you know. An A school means a B school.

1:22:42 But I want to just do a quick review because there’s two sides of the house when we talk about accountability. There’s the school grade side, which we are very familiar with. But the other side of the house is status around the performance of the subgroups of our campuses.

1:23:14 This is the state’s way of saying, are we serving all students? So if we look at these three categories, I want us to be aware that, yes, they become more significant as you move to the right, but they’re not progressive. So if you have one underperforming subgroup and then you add two or more, you can stay in that ATSI status. And that is status saying you have at least one subgroup that is underperforming for the next category.

1:23:29 That’s the table Targeted Support and Improvement. And that speaks to you have a subgroup that is below 32% and then the far right. There are several ways that a school can be identified as csi.

1:23:52 We are most familiar in Brevard with that being a school grade of a D or an F. But now in looking at this subgroup data, this speaks to do you have a subgroup that is been underperforming for six or more years? So I wanted to do that little preview because we have some celebrations coming. When you look, we are reducing the number of schools.

1:24:07 So if you look, this is since school year 2021. But if you look, Brevard is reducing the number of schools that have any identification at all. And what this means is that we have fewer sites with underperforming subgroups.

1:24:26 And this to me is a something that we don’t always hear the celebrations like we do a district, a school. But you need to know that the leadership collectively that here at BPS is working hard to ensure that every student is meeting their full potential. This is I’m going to do.

1:24:45 She’s sitting back there. Ms. Stampier’s team is very much part of this because one of our underperforming subgroups that has been historically underperforming in some of our sites is the students with disabilities and our ELL population. And we saw some huge decreases.

1:25:02 So these are our schools that exited. And I’m going to do a special shout out for Astronaut High, Eau Gallie High, Palm Bay elementary, west side elementary. These are schools that had four, five years of data of underperforming subgroup.

1:25:20 We were predicting them to move into that CSI status with the six year. And they put in supports, were supported by student services collectively looking around, Tier one instruction moved off that list. So it’s a celebration to have that many schools come off that list.

1:25:26 Before you go too much farther. We do have so much to celebrate. But I just couldn’t help on the slide previously.

1:25:36 We have this jump of the 25 going into CSI this school year. I mean, overall we have fewer schools than the last, you know, four years. But is there.

1:25:41 Can we. Is it. Does it have to do with the number of years we are into the program? Exactly what it is.

1:25:54 So we knew this would flip. We were predicting it because when this came in and we started talking about this, we’ve been tracking schools saying, okay, you’re at year two, you’re at year three. Okay, you’re at year four.

1:26:07 So we knew. And that’s why on this previous slide we talk about tsi, but we saw schools move from ATSI to CSI just because of the number of years that that subgroup was underperforming. Okay.

1:26:18 So they bypassed that whole tsi. So because this is year six or year six for them, if you look at the overall number of schools as a whole, we’re decreasing. Right? Right.

1:26:28 Yes. And I’m glad that you highlighted that because at first glance, if you’re used to it looks like we went from ATSI to csi, something significant happened. Right.

1:26:48 But we’re tracking those subgroups and it may be that for that particular school, the subgroup went into year six. And we track what are the subgroups at each of our schools that are underperforming and that is reflected in their school improvement plans. They write goals around those subgroup.

1:26:52 Specifically. Specifically. Awesome.

1:27:18 So the. So hopefully next year that number also starts to shrink. Correct.

1:27:40 Okay, thank you. So now we’re going to go into our grade level content area data and what you will see on the right side, these are schools that we want to highlight for their growth Again, I could not be prouder. Many of those schools on the right side are schools that have just been working systemically for years, just trending up and trending up, really putting in some work in this area.

1:27:54 Something else as we move through each of these slides, and you’ve heard this from me before, is another element we’re tracking is what is Brevard growth look like compared to the state growth. So in some cases you will see we’re exceeding the state in proficiency. But we also want to make sure if the state’s moving at a certain percentile that we’re exceeding that.

1:28:11 So that is something when we get to our next steps that we’re looking at as we design those next steps. Again, moving into fourth grade. So you will see we have, you know, quite a bit of double digit growth in the area of fourth grade.

1:28:27 ELA going up percent overall for the district when we move into fifth grade. I love it when we have to go to a smaller font because there’s so many schools, schools doing well in that grade level. So a lot to celebrate.

1:28:46 And again, really looking at what is Brevard growth over time over the year compared to the state. And I see we have a lot to celebrate. So for sixth grade, this is one of those areas that we’re always, you know, looking at.

1:29:04 How do our sixth graders perform? Because it is a different setting here in Brevard compared to many districts. But I think that when you see our sixth grade data, you will see that they continue to soar and even outperform districts that have it in the middle school. Now we’re moving on to our secondary.

1:29:28 So we’ll start with our grade seven ela. Again, we’re celebrating those schools with growth, Looking at our eighth grade in ela. So here is where we looked.

1:29:49 Grade 9 for ELA stayed the same. And whereas the state was there under us, but they were moving, they increased. And so really looking at those next steps of why, Looking at a lot of progress here with our ELA grade 10 and again celebrating those schools that had exceptional growth.

1:30:05 Any questions on the ELA before we move to the math? Oh, yes, sorry. I should look at my slides and not you guys. So this is just a snapshot so that you can see remembering last year, last year in grades three through 10, Ela went up in all areas.

1:30:29 And so we have some focus points. But conversely, when we look at, when we, as we move into math, last year only our elementaries went up in math, our secondaries did not. And so you will see we Put in some work and sometimes you focus here and it flips.

1:30:43 So that’s just an overall picture of where we are as a district for ELA growth. Now we’re going to move into math. And so you will see here we’ll start with third grade again celebrating our double digit growth, Moving to fourth grade.

1:31:05 And I don’t want to get to the next steps yet. But here is where when we’re looking at that, we’re not having the movement that the state may have had in an area. We’re really looking at instructional practices, curriculum, learning environment.

1:31:29 Those are the three categories we look at as we’re problem solving. Then looking at our fifth grade with some increases there on the right several schools you will see they keep popping up on the right side. And this is where I am going to shout out on the rafters.

1:31:51 This is something that we’ve talked to teachers to, you know, why do you see this? Because not only are we high performing compared to the state, but even our district ranking in sixth grade math. I know Dr. Smith has done a lot of work with the math cadres and really saying like a lot of districts want to say well you have them in sixth grade in the elementary. And my counter is well you should do the same.

1:32:22 If you think that’s all it is, why don’t you do the same? Because I believe that it is the curriculum resources very tight, the instructional planning. We also do a lot of departmentalization in success grade and so it’s focused instruction and I think it’s definitely paying off for students in Brevard. Now we move into grade seven.

1:32:39 One thing that I want to tell you is when you do compare us to the state in some of these areas when we move into secondary math, it is sometimes the choice that districts make in which students take which assessment. And so like RMJ seventh grade advanced grade course, they’ve been taking that seventh, seventh grade exam, moving into 25, 26, they’ll be taking that eighth grade. The standards are assessed pretty evenly in both of those assessments.

1:32:57 But we just have been collecting a lot of data and we’ve made that choice for this school year. And parents have been informed so that they know their students will be taking an eighth grade test because they’re taking an advanced coursed. And this is where I see.

1:33:06 This is where you see is just where we’re putting students in scheduling versus where some others in the state are. That’s why you see sometimes some gaps in the secondary landscape because of the number of eighth graders. We’re putting in algebra one, this is correct.

1:33:25 Okay. And also, as Mr. Harris was saying, in other districts, if you’re in seventh grade advanced, you take the eighth grade test. Okay.

1:33:35 So that’s why the eighth grade scores are higher in those other districts, because the seventh grade advanced students are taking the eighth grade test, whereas on the slide prior, our seventh grade numbers are so much higher because we’re keeping all the seventh graders and taking the seventh grade test. So. And we’re prepared for that as we reflect on the data moving forward.

1:33:54 We want to keep you informed that. Because that matters. Because what our team here does is we look by grade level, by subject, our rank and state across the board.

1:34:20 And that’s an area where it’s always a little fuzzy, just based on where students are placed and where they’re taking assessments. So we will see a drop in the seventh grade as we stack up to the others, but we’ll see an increase in the eighth grade as we stack. So this area I just want to.

1:34:47 To highlight because we did a lot of deep diving last year around algebra one. And I’m gonna give a shout out to Ms. Vega and Ms. Cross in secondary programs because we were without a content specialist beginning in January last year, and they really stepped up with doing some deep diving. Sometimes when we have vacancies, we’re trying to, like, kind of band aid some things, but they really did deep diving into.

1:35:12 Why is our data. What does instruction look like? What do our resources look like? And we found that in some cases, we were utilizing some district resources as we thought was intended, but we are finding out that we were utilizing them inappropriately in some cases. And so even though it was well into second semester, Ms. Vega and her team brought our school principals in.

1:35:32 We did a lot of training about appropriate use of this resource to get the best bang for students. And I just want to commend them because we could have said, well, we’ll do that next year, but they brought our leaders in because we don’t have a minute to waste. Then we’re looking here at our geometry, and again, we can celebrate some great growth on the right side.

1:35:40 And this is that same graphic to show what this looks like for change in percentage from grade three all the way through geometry. Any questions in math? I don’t have a question, but it’s some phenomenal gains. We’re very, very proud of our students and teachers.

1:36:03 Right. I was looking forward to saying yay on the math this year, so that’s a great job. Oops.

1:36:16 I don’t want to leave behind our fifth grade science. So this year we had some exciting opportunities on our elementary school schools because we integrated our elementary STEM and just by nature of the curriculum that our elementary programs team did in creating what that would look like, it was going to bolster up those fifth grade science scores. We are very excited.

1:36:38 We’ve done some reflections too. We expect to see even greater success as we move forward. But if you look on that right side, you see schools that have really, really knocked the ball out of the park.

1:36:59 Amazing. Then when we look for our eighth grade again, it makes me very excited when I see some of those schools on the right because they just have work to really overcome some barriers and figure out what’s working for their students to see some of this growth. Now we’re moving on to our biology.

1:37:17 So you will see again, we are tracking that growth between BPs as well as at the state level and seeing how we can leverage and move forward. This year is the first year of our implementation of new instructional materials. So we’re diving into that to see the impact on student learning.

1:37:21 And this is the slide that represents the growth over time. Any questions on science before we move forward? All right, now we’re diving in. So you see a lot of success here in Brevard to celebrate.

1:37:45 So we’re moving into civics. We’ll move with our U.S.

1:38:02 history. And you see that in this slide. Ms. Jolly and her team have really looked into why is the state moving faster? What can we do to support this area? So a lot of deep diving reflecting on this data and then again the slide that shows the growth.

1:38:24 So now we’re going to go into some of the other areas. This first one, and I know we talked about this at a strategic plan with middle school acceleration. We were really looking at there’s different pathways in which a student can count towards middle school acceleration.

1:38:42 And what we were finding out of good intent from our team. Sometimes we were placing students in a course that their prerequisite learning or data around that student that that wasn’t a perfect match. And I’ll give you an example of when we’re putting them into some of our CTE courses in the middle school that’s an accelerated course.

1:39:26 And so we want to make sure that student is strong in literacy to make sure that that course is a best fit because it’s a high school course, just as we would if we were putting a student in any other type of acceleration course. So I am very. And we’re going to talk later when we talk through next steps.

1:39:45 But I’m very confident that this number will continue to increase with some strategic planning to really look student by student at what is the best fit for that acceleration. Again, on the college and career readiness, I don’t want to steal Mr. Ramer’s thunder, because there’s just been a lot of work on how can we move those numbers, and I think that we’ll see the payoff of that work. Any questions on acceleration? So I know Ms. Rutledge spoke to this, but something I want to highlight around the digital tools is she spoke to that being a tool for readiness for CTE placement, But something that it also does is it generates funding for our schools.

1:40:04 So when we speak to adding it last year for the sixth grade students through our STEM programs, for every student that passed those digital tools, that was funding back to the school that could be then repurposed to provide support for that STEM classroom. So it’s moving it to fourth grade. We feel.

1:40:26 We know that we’re going to see some changes in data, but we wanted to make sure it was appropriate for students first. But also, our schools are really working hard with that curriculum to embed it naturally into our STEM courses. But that is a funding generator that we want to capture.

1:40:53 We were visiting one of our CTE programs at Bayside, and the. The teacher was talking about how she often has students who don’t understand some basic computer skills, like creating a new folder and things like that, and she’s having to teach. And I’m thinking, this is a good reason for us to get these digital tools at the elementary level, because then they’re just building on their skills as they go into more complicated things.

1:41:01 Sometimes we realize, oh, they’ve been touchscreen babies, you know, their whole lives, and some of the basic computer shortcuts and just working around, you know, the different software programs is that’s something that they’re not necessarily automatically knowing coming into the building. So I think it’s very useful even for further programming, besides the funding and the experience that it brings to them in that grade level. And we saw some great highlights, too, in the elementary setting.

1:41:14 Some people were concerned, like, you know, what if, you know, this is optional, like, students can test or not. It was not mandated. It’s not required.

1:41:33 Required to test. But we found, like, Audubon elementary just, you know, comes out as a highlight of their pass rate, was just awesome. And she’s like, it’s one of those cases where sometimes we say, okay, elementary.

1:41:59 They’re not ready yet, you know, but we forget what our students are capable of and we want to make sure that we’re always providing them access to things that will leverage them in the middle school setting, in the high school setting. So I think we’ll see great success. So this slide is updated because we just got some new data yesterday that we were able to add.

1:42:24 So I didn’t want to not have it in here. So before we were looking at our fall and spring data, but in including Ms. Vega included our summer data as soon as it dropped. And we are very excited to see that increases in students, increases in the number of courses, but also sometimes when you make that denominator larger, you don’t see even or increases.

1:42:44 And so we’re very, very proud of our dual enrollment success. Again, you’ll see this exact same trend as we look through our Advanced Placement results. And I know last year there was a lot of conversation around, you know, know how students do with Advanced Placement, but I think this shows that in Brevard we’re doing very well.

1:42:59 Yes. Then we would look at our International Baccalaureates or IB students. And it just, I think it as we see the trend up of more access, we don’t see a decline really in performance.

1:43:12 And this is brand new as of yesterday. So these are our Cambridge results. And this is just, you know, I know this is taking a long time, but I felt like these are data points we don’t always share at board workshop.

1:43:35 And I feel like it’s a highlight to the work that our students and teachers are doing. And you’re aware of this because this is that lag data. But again, we’re doing some strategic work.

1:43:52 When we move into the next steps, you’re going to hear about some actions planning that’s going around graduation rate. All right, so we’re going to go through this is our response to this data. So when you’re looking around our early childhood focus, you know, last year we did mighty moves vpk through grade 3.

1:44:19 This drive for 5 is right aligned with that Mighty Move. So it’s exact same content with a book study for participating teachers that Ms. McDonough and her team are leading. This is going right into our VBK classrooms and ensuring small group instruction.

1:44:31 What has been powerful about this initiative is it’s shown our kindergarten and first grade teachers. Wow. If we can do small group instruction with the teacher with a couple students while other students, students are working in stations in pre K to really hone in on those foundational skills, we definitely can do that in K1 and 2 and so it’s been a nice foundation, but also to prove that point of stronger.

1:44:52 The intervention that we can do in pre K and kindergarten will have long, long term impacts. And so I’m very proud of this. Some of this has led to legislation.

1:45:07 So there is now legislation when we’re talking about required Tier 3 instruction that now includes BPK. And so the early childhood team made decision trees that help teachers to know when do I need to intervene and what do I need to intervene on. So we’ve revised those documents and then continued implementation of Mighty Moves.

1:45:17 But now it’s Mighty Moves and beyond because it’s going up into those inner. So last year we had a focus in those early grades, but we’re moving these practices right through all of our elementary grades then. Brand new.

1:45:26 Super, super excited. This has been a lot of work for the team back there on training these interventionists. But we were able to put in with the support of millage.

1:45:44 28 schools received third grade interventionists. So we did that based on data. It’s how we determine which schools got those third grade interventionists.

1:46:00 What I want you to be clear on is we understand the commitment our stakeholders are making through Millage and we want to provide a great return on investment. So it won’t be just a position we’re putting into schools to utilize as you see fit. It’s very prescriptive.

1:46:13 We have a commitment form that schools had to sign and commit to regarding the use of what this position will do and what this position won’t do. Ms. McDonough’s team also did some pretty intense training on. Here are the resources that will be used because we don’t really have room for error.

1:46:35 This is not a long term position. It is a fix to support those third grade students. The 12 schools that receive second grade interventionists, those are based on that CSI data we reviewed earlier.

1:46:46 So if we have a school in CSI status, they received either a part time or a full time second grade interventionist based on school size. Any questions on early childhood? I just comment once again and say that’s phenomenal. And I know you have Ms. McDonough leading the charge and you guys have done awesome and I think this is huge.

1:47:09 This is one of my particular passions. I think it really sets the course for a child’s future and I’m just glad that you’re all over it and you guys are doing what you’re doing. I think you’re doing a great job.

1:47:23 Just a quick question to make sure I understand how we’re assigning these different things. So when we’re talking about the schools that receive the third grade or second grade interventionist, is that based on last year’s third graders and the success, or is it based on the class that’s coming in? So did we look at the year we just completed? We look at that second grade class at that school and say those second graders really struggled. So let’s make sure we put the third grade.

1:47:34 So those kids in the third grade, or is it based on how last year’s third graders did so? That’s a great question. And we work on par in school supports. It was before we even took that third grade PM just because we’re having to make sure that these positions could be filled.

1:47:45 And we were worried if we gave them too late after all the data trickled in. So we actually, for third grade, we did that. If you were not an A school, because our goal is for all schools to be.

1:47:58 Be A or B. So if you are not an A, we looked, you know, obviously at your third grade data. But here is where it becomes tricky is we just know that’s the game changer.

1:48:19 Not only, you know, for students with their proficiency. So we were like, okay, your third grade might not have been the 28th lowest in the district. However, collectively, that is an area that can really support you.

1:48:24 Because if we can continue to beef up and bolster that third grade, your fourth, your fifth, and your sixth, which will ultimately fill all the cells, I mean, from a student lens, first, prepare them for, you know, future success, but also from a school grade standpoint of where was our biggest bang? Gotcha. That makes sense. Thank you.

1:48:52 Did you have a question? I was just going to ask you to comment on. Dr. Windell. You had shared this information with me, and I’m hoping it’s okay to share.

1:49:07 But as far as our VP enrollment this year, that number’s gone up, has it not? Listen, I wasn’t coming off this slide without sharing, okay? Because we have some stakeholders out there that have really partnered with us on VPK enrollment. And I am pleased to say, when Ms. McDonough and I were looking even before the first day of vpk because we track those numbers to see, like, do we need to add courses, you know, or sections. And this is our highest BPK enrollment.

1:49:18 So we started off the year with more students in our VPK seats and much celebration, not only to our BPS early childhood team, but to our community stakeholders. And I’ve shared this with everyone that I know. Yes, yes.

1:49:31 Well, you got the fact you guys made this such a concerted effort to go out and do that. I mean, that’s a direct result of that. And the numbers I guess we talked about yesterday, I was mistaken, but awesome.

1:49:50 And I know you guys really worked hard to get these numbers up. So I mean, thank you for everything you guys have done. I think it’s just a great success because we had put in some additional units into some areas so they had more options for VPK and they just weren’t filling.

1:49:59 And so it was hard from a, you know, stakeholder and looking at taxpayer funding of making sure we’re utilizing them the best we can. And to now have them full is super exciting. It’s probably worth noting that Mr. Bryant attempts to come here and talk to us about enrolling in BPK and the importance of that, but they have not fallen on deaf ears.

1:50:23 So we appreciate you making sure that we are definitely increasing the enrollment. And I have also shared this data with him as well. Okay, good.

1:50:52 So now we’re going to move into our elementary team under Dr. Smith. And this is where we’ve talked about kind of that. And beyond looking at that four through six, this is also where some deep dive had to happen this summer with our curriculum teams because in some cases we were finding that some of our instructional pacing and resources may have been a barrier to maximizing student learning.

1:51:13 And so we finally got to a place of where teachers were using the adopted materials. So we were able to say where are those weak points that we need to revise and look at how we can bolster up that content. Dr. Smith’s team also has been last year they did some pilots around some early release Friday virtual and live opportunities where teachers could just log on, ask questions, have like a 20 minute chunk of learning, but then have some collaborative time.

1:51:41 And her team is expanding that this year for both ELA and math because sometimes it’s hard if a teacher can’t get here in the evening for training, we want to still provide them some on the spot, quick snippets where they can log on, do some learning. And that is happening now for this year in ELA and math. I am super, super excited to share this.

1:52:10 As you know, PM2 math data for elementary, we really had to do some reflections and the team got Busy making some PowerPoints that teachers didn’t have to work on. These were just to support that learning. And we saw a huge catch up from where we were at PM2 last year to PM3, but kind of along the lines of reviewing that curriculum and Finding where were there some hot spots that we had to address? There were quite a few in our adopted math curriculum.

1:52:30 And so Dr. Smith and her team of district math coaches and content specialists or program specialists really got busy to create some planning professional learning. So we trained about 300 teachers this summer that came in over the summer, but we also trained our school based administrators and even assistant principals that were on, you know, summer break were coming in for this training. And I believe it’s all but one or two schools.

1:52:40 I’m looking back because I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but all of our administrators were trained in that math planning. This year for the first quarter, we are going to be providing every school with two days of intense math planning led by a math coach. Last year our math coaches went into our schools that needed more support.

1:52:59 And what we’ve kind of realized in our data is all schools need some support. We have limited capacity. And so we’re going to just go do this plan for every school gets two days.

1:53:22 And we’ve said work with your partner schools because that can give you more days with combining your staff. So very excited. The next item, I know some of you are at the state of schools where we talked about the UF Lastinger Center, a lot of their literacy resources, but they also have some phenomenal math resources.

1:53:38 So we have Brevard gets 30 elementary spaces in that year long, very intense learning, professional learning. We have filled all 30. So we’re very excited because this, the feedback we’ve gotten from teachers as well as our team is that this is just top notch professional learning to really dive into the area of math.

1:54:44 And then we did a redesign. I know we were only one year in on the stem, but we did a redesign after getting teacher feedback on where do we need to bolster that up so that we’re more aligned to the standards. So that was work in elementary programs.

1:54:55 For secondary programs, all of our middle schools and high schools, every teacher, every administrator has been trained in teacher clarity based on school feedback. This year our school principal said on professional learning day, could we keep our schools on our site? And so we trained all of our principals and administrators, school based administrators, to lead that professional learning. And so the teacher class just in a quick snapshot is are the teachers clear on what the benchmark is that they’re teaching and have we communicated in a way to students so that they understand what success looks like with that learning and how will they know if they’ve mastered it? And I think that’s sometimes the Missing piece is teachers are up there teaching their hearts out, but students are not making a connection to what am I really supposed to be learning and how will this apply to me and why is it important? So I am again thrilled to say we have trained all of our school based personnel, but this was also a partnership with student Services, School leadership, Professional learning and Development.

1:55:16 Our peer mentor teachers came to our training so that we’re all speaking the same language. I think it’s important that, you know, we’re out supporting teachers. It doesn’t feel like support when one department saying something, another department saying something.

1:55:26 So we’re all saying the same language. We also for this year, this is a partnership with Mr. Ramer and myself really listening through his chief of school’s advisory council hearing from our middle school principals that they need some support in a variety of ways. So he was able to get the information.

1:55:32 I don’t want to speak for you. I was more just find the funding person do you want to speak to. Yes, thank you.

1:55:48 You did find the funding. So we’re super appreciative of that. So this was an initiative when we went through our staffing plan.

1:56:27 So we had brought members from all departments together multiple times last year to walk through our staffing plan and how we can further assist schools. The interventionists were part of that discussion. Some ELL specialists were part of that discussion, but MTSs coaches at the middle school also came out.

1:56:48 So through the conversation with our middle school principals and identifying supports that they may need in order to help students be the best version of themselves and help the school continue to grow academically and have student outcomes changed, we work through this position of MTSS coach and all of our middle schools now have this allocation and we are currently hiring the last few as we go through the process. But this position is there for majority of the time, half the majority, you know, a little over half of the time, they will be interventionists. So we ask the schools to identify which subject, core subject matter, the students needed most support in.

1:57:12 And then when you go to hire this person, that that should be their background or expertise. So they’re going to be an interventionist for a majority of the time. And then when they’re not in the classroom as an interventionist, they can support the other side of the house with students in regards to mentoring, helping students guide them through problem solving, conflict resolution, help with some discipline issues.

1:57:37 But we do want them majority of the time in the classroom, supporting a core content area as an interventionist, but then also supporting students well Being and helping them make better decisions on campus so that they can focus academically. So we’re really excited about this position. We also have a return on investment document that the schools complete for us so that we can identify did this position provide us with the outcomes that we are looking for.

1:57:55 So all schools had to declare at the beginning of the year who their person was, what content area they were going to focus on and other variables that they were going to have them do other tasks on campus. We have them do a mid year reflection and then we’ll have them do an end of the year report for us on any progress that has been made or what they have seen. A reduction in maybe it’s discipline referrals, an increase in let’s say science achievement because that was the intervention area, et cetera.

1:58:11 So we are tracking this to make sure that it is a good use of an allocation just for clarifying purposes. Seniors getting this as so if they’re in a junior senior setting, are they getting this? They are not. Can we make that happen for them? Because they have a lot of the same struggles and sometimes even more.

1:58:32 I’m sure Dr. Rendell can attest to that with being a junior senior. They do. When we were looking at funding, junior seniors also have some other supports that a junior high wouldn’t have like a college career specialist, somebody outside of the classroom that maybe can assist with some of those items.

1:58:37 Title one, if they’re title one, you know, combo school, having the ability to have, you know, a grad coach, other items. So when we targeted this, we went right with the traditional middle schools was our goal as we identify them as needing, you know, some of the most supports, you know, at that level. So we can consider it.

1:58:55 No doubt about that. But it’s not what wasn’t the direction that we started. I would just ask for consideration with it.

1:59:08 I think a lot of times they get forgotten about when that middle school world because they’re joined to a high school. And sometimes those challenges exist every bit as much, sometimes even more because you’re mixing those kids together. And for your awareness also we are using federal funding for that.

1:59:24 So it was not fund 100 or millage that we used federal funding for those positions. So I’ve kind of already highlighted the work that Ms. Vegas team did around algebra. But this a lot of times you’ll hear about Alex.

1:59:47 And that was the tool in particular that we maybe had a misunderstanding of the appropriate use and best use for return on that. So we’ve really done a lot of Work in that. And just like I mentioned, for the elementary, we have 30 elementary teachers participating.

2:00:11 Brevard received 17 spots for the math matrix for secondary and every one of those have been filled for the first time ever. So we’re very excited to participate in that. Any questions on secondary? Now this slide I’m super, super excited about.

2:00:43 I am very passionate about school improvement and I know what our schools can and will be. And I couldn’t be prouder of our school leaders right now under Mr. Flores leadership. But this is where the school leadership team and the curriculum instruction team are very much having shared commitments into how we will support schools as we look to improve.

2:00:58 This started out with at Ascend, we introduced a popular demand that we’re going to have quarterly school improvement goals. And the example I gave to school leaders that day was if my doctor says you have to lose 20 pounds over the next 12 months before your physical, I might not change what I eat tonight or this weekend and I might live it up because I’ve got a year. If my doctor says in two months I’m going to see you again and you need to lose £20 by then, I’m going to make different decisions today.

2:01:16 And that’s how I look at school improvement. When we write a school improvement plan and we’re waiting till the end of the year to see did we put in those new action steps. School can get in the way and a lot of things happen and we lose sight on some of those performance metrics.

2:01:43 When we put quarterly goals, we’re saying here’s what I’m going to do in the first quarter and then we’re measuring that. So our school leadership team is working with principals in setting those goals, but then also in monitoring are those happen. So we’re not waiting till PM3 to say, oh yeah, I never got to that or yes, I did it and it was really wasn’t working.

2:02:20 If we need to make tweaks, we’re going to have timely information to do that. The next bullet, we are having some elementary and secondary walkthrough tools that are supporting our school walks. And so both directors from curriculum and instruction and school leadership met this summer and really collaborated on what do we need to be measuring when we walk classrooms to know if more support is needed.

2:02:40 And we needed a clear message not only for our teams, but for school leaders and for teachers. Teachers ultimately need to know what is the desired outcome look like? What do high quality practices look like? Because our teachers come each day and they’re doing the best that they can and they may not realize, oh, some small tweaks can really align that instruction better to the benchmark. So we also, in creating these tweaks tools, we created what is the professional learning for our literacy coaches, for assistant principals, for principals and then teachers so that everyone is clear on these are the expectations of Tier 1 instruction.

2:02:53 And then we’ve shared this with our student Services team, both Dr. Bias team and Dr. Fontan’s team. I’ve met with them so that again, when we’re out supporting schools, we’re all talking common language, language, the instructional walks. This is tiered frequency and this is what I think.

2:03:18 We’re very, very excited. We sit here on day 12 of the school year and we have already done this process in seven of our schools. So we’re not waiting till mid year for PM2 data to say, oh, we need to do something different.

2:03:33 We are supporting these schools through a pretty intense three to five hour process where we’re walking classrooms, we’re action planning, we’re looking at next steps. We’ll be back in 30 days. How can we support you within those 30 days as we continue this process? A unique opportunity that we have this school year is we’re partnering with the Bureau of School Improvement at the Florida Department of Education.

2:03:49 This is a team that all they have done, they’re experts in moving student achievement. They take typically have worked in our most fragile school settings. And so we can bring them into all school types because good instructional practices are good for all schools.

2:04:07 So they are directly supporting with our director teams, 10 of our sites with very strategic monthly walks. Now, we talked earlier about schools within CSI status. We are required to do monthly district walks.

2:04:19 So some of those schools, schools are csi, some of them are not. And the ones that are CSI but are not part of this state support, they are getting that from our teams. So we’re doing those monthly walks just to look at data, monitor instruction and then help support that school in action planning.

2:04:51 So I don’t know if you want to add any more about our school improvement walks, but they have been building capacity in all of us. We’re all better through this process. It’s just been fantastic.

2:05:10 Ms. Harris said we’ve already done seven and we did it this morning. So on day 11 and a half, we had done seven of the walks and they’re a really robust process led by a director in both school leadership and CNI that we have partnered up to lead the charge at the schools. But our biggest takeaway is we get in the classrooms all the evident, not evident, we walk through tools, but it’s really the next step and leave the building with the school having next steps, but also district departments having next steps to support the school.

2:05:32 And then as we go back on that campus a month later, starting with how are we doing with those next steps and where are we at to move forward. So it’s been a really smooth and successful process thus far and really excited about what we’re going to see when we get on campuses in a month from now. And then we talked a lot last year about our data comps.

2:05:47 So last year was our first year having the data comm meetings. And so we’ve refined that process just again with cross collaboration with student services, school leadership and curriculum and instruction that our teams are meeting to really dive deep into the data even before we have those meetings. So we’re being strategic on how are we sharing practices, how are we identifying any areas for improvement.

2:06:12 And then the last thing is, you know, we have leadership team team meetings monthly, but we are reserving two of those both in October and February. That will be day long focus areas around curriculum and instruction. So it’s really a deep dive.

2:06:32 Those are time periods where principals will have newly released data, either PM1 or PM2 to kind of look at the data action plan with the supports all around them of what are some next steps, but also to collaborate with those school leaders that, you know, they may not always have an opportunity to talk to. And that is another powerful move of the data comm. I may not have the chance to call that principal or life gets busy and I don’t reach out to them.

2:07:07 But when I’m sitting in the room and hearing, oh, they had a similar barrier that I was facing and they found a solution, let me, you know, touch base with them to improve my practice. Any questions on this process? All right, so I’ll take the next step with acceleration. So this is for middle school acceleration and college and career readiness.

2:07:30 So this is a, a passion of mine along with the school improvement, but making sure that students have opportunities for post secondary success. So we’re working and developing a best practices guide for school for the implementation to make sure that schools have a strong understanding of, of what are we looking to attain with middle school acceleration and college and career readiness. So Ms. Bowman is heading this up in school leadership and she has had a chance to visit every school to walk through strategic plan metrics to make sure they understand where we want to go as a district.

2:08:20 What are the state acceleration criteria. So we found that there was some misunderstanding there with schools of students counting, not counting, etc. What puts them in the numerator, what puts them in the denominator to make sure that we have an accurate, you know, account for where students are and what our scores with acceleration would look like for both middle school and then college career readiness and then purposeful scheduling.

2:08:44 How are we getting students in the right classes at the right time to have the right results? So making sure that we understand all of those options that we have to meet middle school acceleration, college career readiness, and that we have the students in the right classes. This year, I will be meeting with Ms. Bowman once a month and be inviting in Ms. Harris or members of her team just to look at school data to make sure that we’re moving in the right direction and where is the progress at. So with middle school acceleration, obviously with some CTE stuff, which is leg data, but then moving forward and then college career readiness, we will know, you know, sometimes in October if a student passed a CTE assessment at semester, if they picked up a dual enrollment credit right, if, if they have that check in the box so that we will be able to see that percentage hopefully shifting towards our strategic plan goal of the 85% as we go throughout the year.

2:09:30 So while it won’t change every month, it will give us an opportunity to revisit our students scheduled appropriately. Can we get a student a second semester class? Can we do something here to make the biggest opportunity for the student acceleration collaboration at each of the LTM? So we started this last year where I asked Ms. Bowman and then Ms. Wybell for graduation rate. Every time we have in front of principals, we’re going to talk about this.

2:09:35 We’re talking about middle school acceleration, we’re talking about college career readiness, and we’re going to continue to put our best practices out there and not talk about it in August or in summer scheduling and then at the end of the year, say, oh, what happened? Or yes, we did well, we’re going to talk about it every month and then we’re going to have some interventions in place based on school based date. So if we need to intervene, as Ms. Bowman is going out and talking with principals, if there seems to be another support that needs to be in place, where there seems to be something that we need to provide from the district department, or we just need to have a different type of discussion, then we will be able to do that throughout the school year to once again make sure that students are in the right classes, having the right opportunities so that we get the right results. So really excited about the strategic steps that we have in the place for acceleration.

2:09:50 As you saw with middle school acceleration, we stayed stagnant. 70 is 70. Right.

2:10:20 And then with college career readiness, we actually saw a slight decline. But these are numbers that we are looking to rectify and move in the right direction. And we feel good about the college career readiness number that we’re starting to see coming out of schools for last year’s graduates.

2:10:35 And then obviously middle school acceleration is current year. But we did handle the or discuss, I should say not handle the cte, concern about having the right students in that because that becomes the leg data that either starts us off on the right foot or puts us behind the eight ball a little bit for the school year and what that’s going to look like with our end outcome for school grade. So for graduation rate, we’re doing a lot of the similar processes, but this will be headed up by Ms. Wybelt as opposed to Ms. Bowman.

2:10:53 So. So Ms. Wybelt in school leadership is heading this up and she has created a best practices guide that has been out and distributed to schools. We did this at a CC meeting over the summer just to help them understand what are we looking for with our graduation rate.

2:11:08 One of the things I’ve challenged our principals with doing, so I challenge you to do when you’re on their campus, is I told them that if ever we are on your campus, we ask you, if you graduated tomorrow, what would your graduation rate be? You should have an answer. You should know the data enough to have an answer of where you’re going to be if we walk the stage tomorrow. So I challenge you to do that.

2:11:40 And the best practices guide helps them understand the right process in order to get that done. So in order to help them make sure that we have the right data, we created a data document that they’re filling out monthly. And this is going to help us understand what students are moving towards graduation.

2:11:46 For example, is the student credit deficient at the beginning of the year? But as we work through the month, they picked up credit retrieval and then they moved over to the other side. We’re not deficient anymore. What students are below a 2.

2:12:09 0? Which students are testing concerns? Are we getting them in the SAT ACT or we’re making sure that they have opportunities for the concordance. So we’re completing a monthly data document identifying the progress that students are making towards graduation once again at the LTMS while Ms. Bowman is doing middle school acceleration, Ms. Wybell will also and college readiness. Ms. Wybo will be doing a graduation discussion.

2:12:29 So I’d say we never leave that room without these, the schools that have a graduation rate. Talking about graduation rate. Right.

2:13:17 We don’t ever want to do that and we don’t want to just talk about it in grad rate corrections in November, December, and then we talk about it again the following November and December. We want to talk about it all the time so they know what our expectations are. Once again, with Ms. Bowman meeting once a month, Ms. Wybelt and I will also be sitting down once a month and bringing in members of CNI or whichever department we may deem needs to support.

2:13:28 So it could be student services because we’re having some ESC discrepancies or something we need to work on in regards to students graduation and making sure that we have the right supports in place. So we’ll be meeting every month to review that data document that they’re completing for us. So that’s really what the meeting is going to do and walk through and make sure that we’re moving in the right direction and then provide any interventions that maybe need to to take place.

2:13:49 Like why are we seeing what we’re seeing? What can we do to assist in a student working towards graduation? How do we get the student to walk across that stage? Because there’s a lot of options now with concordance with graduation, a different graduation credit options that we have. So are we exhausting every opportunity for that student to be a graduate of a BPS school? Now this is a slide that we normally don’t present, but Dr. Mayer has really reworked our support system for charter schools. And I think if you are out speaking to our charter school principals, they should note the support it’s through her leadership team meetings, but also direct support, attending their board meetings and something that she is replicating.

2:14:04 We talked about the school improvement process that we are doing through our school walks. She is actually facilitating those in our charter settings as well. Because we all play a role to serve students in Brevard.

2:14:39 But also when we’re thinking around our district grade and what our achieved outcomes want, what we want them to be, we need our charter schools and all of us to be leveling up for students. So you will see here that she’s having data chats with them. She is leading, really meeting with them on their school improvement plans, on their underperforming subgroup groups and how we can support them.

2:14:43 So basically replicating what we are doing for our traditional BPS sites at each of our charter sites as well. And then here is a reflection. We have a lot of success to celebrate as well.

2:14:53 When you’re thinking around imajule, some of these are sites that you are very well aware of and really seeing some progress in these sites as well. Any questions around our charter school support? I know this Dr. Rendell did a little commercial that this was going to be a very deep dive, and I know it was a very deep dive and very detailed, but I think that it was important. Our schools are working so hard to best serve our students, and we just really wanted to celebrate all that is going right out there.

2:15:06 Mr. Chairman. Sure. I just want to say the.

2:15:29 I mean, thank you for your presentation and being a newer guy. Nothing, you know, not a total rookie anymore. But being a newer guy, understanding all that you guys have done is huge.

2:15:42 And I would just say that, you know, every great sign of every great leader or a good leader is to have the team assemble a good team. And Dr. Rendell, you’ve done a phenomenal job with your academic team. You guys are awesome.

2:15:47 And the way you all cooperate amongst not just you two, but the whole team with each other to make the academics better for our students is tremendous, from what I’ve seen. And the one thing that really impressed me is how you are not only looking at the data and not only asking for input, but you’re acting on it. And we’re not sitting.

2:15:54 We’re supposed to be celebrating the fact that we’ve made these improvements over the last few years, which are awesome. But nobody’s, you know, nobody’s sitting on their hands or patting themselves on the back about it. You guys want to get better and better and better, and I think that’s huge.

2:15:57 Just to see everything you’re doing. I just want you to know, you know, I appreciate everything you’re doing. I think it’s phenomenal.

2:16:06 Thank you. That’s right. I’ll go next.

2:16:17 Yeah. Thank you. There’s so much information when it comes to school improvement.

2:16:23 And there’s all the things, all the data that we have here. And I try to track this because luckily for me, I got. I am academic excellence in the strategic plan, so I’m focusing on that.

2:16:36 And when I’m visiting my schools, we’re just talking about the different things and areas and ways to improve full transparency. I wanted to come to the datacom meetings. I was trying to get in there, but there was a feeling that that might actually hinder it.

2:16:48 So I said, okay, fair. I will set it out. If you Think it’s not going to help it, but I want to hear what the plan is on how we’re going to improve things.

2:16:56 Because, you know, A is the standard, right? That’s we want to be an A district, but we want to be a top 10 a district. And so if we can get to top 10, then a is just obviously a benefit that we’ll receive from that. So I think purposeful scheduling.

2:17:02 What a great word that was that you used. That is so important when it comes to our secondary students. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat with families where they’re like, my kid just got put into this class and they don’t want this class.

2:17:28 They’re not interested in this class. And I’m like, well, then why are we in there? And so. So whatever we can do to help that move along, that would be tremendous.

2:17:42 Counselors. We have some phenomenal counselors. We have some not phenomenal counselors within our district, too.

2:17:45 And so whatever we can do to train them and get them all on the same page, because we don’t want them to be a hindrance to a student achieving a goal or of whatever career path they want to go along the lines of. So there seems to be, like, some miscommunication that happens there. I’m not sure what we’re doing from a district standpoint to make sure everyone’s rowing in the same direction, but I think it would be worth just making sure that they’re all together at some point and we’re talking about what we’re trying to achieve here and making sure that they are all on the same page when it comes to students.

2:17:53 But, no, I look forward to this. I actually emailed Lena while we’re sitting here asking for our PM1 schedule meeting to take place after, would you say, September 26? I think that data will come out, so I’m looking forward to that. And then once we get that information board, I will relay it to you as well.

2:18:00 So I’m. I’ll communicate out what the things that you share with me are. So.

2:18:05 But I appreciate all the work that your team is doing, everyone is doing, because we’re making some major, major gains. I’m looking forward to being top 10. Can’t wait for that celebration.

2:18:17 So thank you, Ms. Harris. Appreciate all the conversations. I was talking to you the other day on the phone.

2:18:51 I appreciate everything that you guys are doing. That’s it. Yeah, same thing.

2:19:01 You guys, that was a deep dive. Lots of reasons to be, you know, happy. You know, I will give you suggestions maybe to collaborate with Ms. Han about.

2:19:11 We didn’t see any minions or, you know, we saw a lot of black and white, white slides, goats, some rockets, you know, going off, but lots of thumbs up. So just, you know, something that caught my ear a little bit is your willingness to listen, you know, after one year and the in the STEM plans and willing to rewrite things. And that just goes to show what type of leaders we have that, you know, we’re not putting ego out in front and we appreciate that and you might have heard that from here quite a few times that leadership matters and this is a result of it.

2:19:22 So thank you. And of course we look forward to what Ms. Wright says and us getting up into that top 10. I know we’re going to get there sooner than later, but the data doesn’t lie.

2:19:33 So thank you so much. I think we’re good. Dr. Rendell, want to add anything? Just want to add some things that I noticed as we went through the presentation.

2:19:59 We’ve talked a little bit about second year of an A district. We’ve talked about 20 out of 21 tested grades or subjects either maintaining or improving. That’s all the state test data.

2:20:05 They shared a lot of other data that is student performance related. So I wrote down some notes. I want to make sure we understand the number of A schools has increased in two years by 10.

2:20:24 10 more A schools in two years that those schools that qualify for. Unfortunately for CSI, you know, reduction, I believe 27 in two years, reduction by 27 schools, 38% falling in that category of CSI, which is them not having students in certain grades, certain subgroups per perform. That’s a huge improvement.

2:20:46 More industry certifications. We talked about that. More dual enrollment and still more A’s and B’s in the dual enrollment.

2:21:02 Increased access, maintained high performance, more ap, more kids getting high quality curriculum and still maintaining and improving actually our pass rate. More students taking IB and maintaining the pass rate, more students taking Cambridge and increasing the pass rate. And the grad rate has increased a little bit the last couple of years.

2:21:13 This year we expect to see actually a larger increase. So all these indicators are pointing in the right direction, you know, and I think we can take some credit for what we’ve done. But like I said last year, and again, we haven’t delivered a single lesson plan and we didn’t take a single test.

2:21:16 So the students and the teachers deserve the bulk of the credit. The staff has supported and created the conditions, you know, provided the support and the conditions and materials and training and all that kind of thing. But, you know, the success of the last couple years really goes to the students and teachers.

2:21:20 I mean, this is phenomenal academic achievement for us two years in a row. So thank you to all the kids in the classroom and the teachers for all the work they’ve done. So it’s amazing.

2:34:06 Great. Well said. Thanks again.

2:34:11 So, Mr. Chair, I wonder if you want to take a break for a little while before we. While we set up the next one. I do.

2:34:16 I do. I need to go. Three, two.

2:34:34 All right, this brings us to our next presentation. Mr. Trent, if I could. I just wanted to follow up.

2:34:53 Ms. Campbell had a question on the policy regarding the millage. We’ve already answered it. It’s the.

2:34:57 One of the Florida Statutes provides that the millage funds have to be used in a manner consistent with purposes of the levy. All of our enumerated categories cover operational costs, so we think it’s okay. But Mr. Dufresne is good with adding that phrase to the end of 4C there, so that it would cover.

2:35:10 It would allow them some flexibility as long as it’s in line with what the passage of the levy was for. Okay, yeah, we’re going to keep it as it is. And then at the end of that thing, we’re going to say, or in a manner consistent with the levy.

2:35:20 That’s good. All right. So seeing that it’s 3.

2:35:26 25, do we want to have a hard stop? Do we want to talk about having a hard stop at some point? I know we have a lot to cover, Gord. I like when we at least have a breather between me rolling. You know, rolling from the workshop to the.

2:35:31 Roll this up to Mr. Chair. Okay, Mr. Chair, sir, for what it’s worth, I have no problem if we can’t get to the invocation. We can bump it to the next work session.

2:35:36 Okay. If it delays, that’s probably. I think you should shoot for 4:30.

2:35:38 Yeah, I think so. You may have to leave early. You said you have to be some.

2:35:54 Okay. Okay. So we’ll just say, let’s do a hard stop at 4:25.

2:36:26 Let’s go. All right. All right.

2:36:32 So the next presentation is. The board recently passed a new wireless communication device policy. There were some concerns about students not being able to complete coursework without having access to certain wireless communication devices.

2:36:50 So while passing the policy at the board business meeting two weeks ago, the board did give us direction to look at some possible language changes that might allow students access to certain wireless communication devices during the day. So Mrs. Dampier and her team have come up with a couple options for you guys to review. This is not anything that we have to do today, but you know, we’ve all been inundated with messages and things and so it seems like we need to at least consider some changes.

2:37:16 So. Mrs. Stampier, good afternoon. In your packet you have all of the information that we’re going to go over.

2:38:00 You have three different versions of the policy. The first option we have option one, which is the current wireless communication device that was voted on at the school board meeting on 8, 12, 20, 25. We did not make changes to that option.

2:38:16 So if we were going to pursue just going with that option, that’s an option one. Option two is proposed change where students in grades nine through 12th of May not use wireless communication devices except when expressly directed by a teacher solely for educational purposes. So that was added as an option for option two.

2:38:43 So if you were to select that option, option three, a proposed change would be students in grades nine through 12 may not use personal laptops, tablets or electronic readers except when expressly directed by teacher solely for educational purposes. So we have three options for you to discuss and give direction. Okay, who would like to go first? First of all, I want to thank the board for agreeing to come back and have this conversation again.

2:39:08 I think that shows that we were listening at the last board meeting and, and hearing. And if you have been reading through your emails as I have, you see that we’re actually hearing from a group of people that we’ve never. The vast majority of people who are reaching out to us are people we’ve never heard from before.

2:39:31 So this is, you know, obviously it’s really important to a lot of families, their academic, their students, academic achievement. So one of the things I will tell you right now that I’m in favor of option two, there’s a couple of things I want to address. One is after talking to specifically one of my principals had requested to add the phrase which we used to have something similar to it that said with principal approval.

2:39:55 Just because we want to make sure that that’s, you know, for the accountability. I think that’s something that we could add at the end of either, either option just to add that with principal approval. And not that every single time you’re going to do that, but like if a teacher knows, hey, every time we do this lab we need the, you know, or you know, if we’re going to have dual enrollment students being able to use their laptops or whatever, just to give that you know that level of approval.

2:40:06 I think that would be a good idea. The reason why I would go with option two rather than option three is because I think we’ve heard if you’ve read through all the input we’re getting, we’re getting lots of opportunities. If we just did laptops, tablets and E readers, which the option three says we’re going to have these.

2:40:45 Not just one offs, but several people have mentioned the two factor authentication. And like when you go to log in on your college site, you have to do the two factor authentication just like we do have to get into our. When we get into our BPS accounts or if you get into your bank, they’re required to use either Duo, the Duo app or some other kind of two factor which you have to.

2:40:56 It goes to your cell phone. And if we’re saying okay, you can bring your laptops and use it for dual enrollment, but you want to actually be able to get in there. And evidently College Board also has a two factor authentication if you can’t use your cell phone.

2:41:17 And the other reason why I would suggest that we need to go ahead and do option two rather than option three is because I would hate for us to create this scenario where it’s the haves and the have nots because we’ve got the families who can afford laptops, iPads and E readers, they’re going to be able to use their devices to do these things, these legitimate purposes that we’ve seen all of our kids how they need because we do not have the technology to provide for them. The things they need to do, all the subjects that they’re. We don’t yet.

2:41:27 We may one day, but we do not yet. But at the same. But some of the students, almost every single one of our high schoolers has that technology in their back pocket in their backpack.

2:41:40 And so if we say okay, just the kids and the families of the kids who can afford those more expensive devices, then you’ll be able to do that. But the ones who have the technology but you can’t afford these devices, then you’re not going to be able to do it. And I just, I would hate to create that scenario where we’re doing that haves and have nots.

2:41:53 And so I. That those are. That’s where I would go with option two. And then again just adding that with principal approval language.

2:42:25 And there’s one other thing I wanted to bring up, but I’ll. I’ll just before we. Regardless of which option we go with and I’ll bring that up when we’re done talking about this first part.

2:42:32 All right, Ms. Campbell’s in favor of option two. I’ll go next if nobody else wants to jump in there. So obviously we knew when this, I knew when this policy was passed that there was going to be pushback from multiple different angles on this.

2:43:02 And honestly, we talked, I went around before we talked about doing this policy and we, you know, before it was finalized, talked to the principals and I had a lot of hesitancy of, oh my gosh, I’m not sure how we’re going to be able to really implement that. A lot of concern on, you know, what are my admins going to be doing all day long? Is this just going to become a cell phone police station? Basically, and, you know, lots of concern there. But I will tell you, I’ve gone back to them now after the fact to say, tell me, what does it look like, what’s happening in the school? And I have had ones that were the biggest opponents that said, don’t do this, this is going to be a nightmare.

2:43:11 Say you were 100% right. This is the best thing I have seen happen in my school. So I’m like, okay, well then there’s something there.

2:43:26 When this policy was passed, quite frankly, it always said when I misspoke when I said this the other night at the meeting, the policy always said that we had to have approval from the principal to use laptops, tablets, those kind of things, right? Wireless communication devices. We lumped them all into one and then spelled out what exactly a wireless communication device is. But to be quite transparent and honest, none of the principals had been approving bringing laptops and iPads and any of that into the schools.

2:43:37 Which is why I don’t think any of us really thought or realized, hey, wait a minute, everybody’s bringing their own laptop in. We walk into the classroom, I see the technology. We’re out of one to one technology.

2:43:46 We’ve bought all these laptops. There was an assumption made, and I will own that, that these were our laptops. Right? But I also don’t want to hinder someone that’s obviously in classes that require some additional technology.

2:43:57 I understand that there’s two sides of this argument. My main gripe about this was cell phones. It was never really about the iPads and the laptops because I’ve not heard a single thing about that being a problem in the school sites.

2:44:07 Quite frankly, I don’t know that it was even realized that they were being utilized the way that they are being utilized until now. Now we all know. So my biggest gripe about this always has been the cell phones.

2:44:14 I still, I still stand behind Bell to Bell no sell. Like, I really think that that is what we should do for our kids. I’m willing to entertain the idea of looking at a compromise.

2:44:32 If I were going to compromise, mine would be option three. But my statement would be a little different than what is in here. It looks good to me, but I would like to see the approval by the principal.

2:44:49 And then I clearly, wireless cell phones are not allowed from Bell to Bell. Like that is. Just spell that out in a plain sentence.

2:45:05 So there’s no confusion that wireless cell phones are the issue here, because no matter what, they’re still even the best kids. There’s no way that you’re going to get a Snapchat alert or an Instagram alert or a text message or whatever and you’re not going to look at it. So we can say they’re using them for educational purposes all day long, but that’s just not the reality of what’s happening.

2:45:32 That’s where I would land on this. I think that’s a compromise that allows them to still be able to use laptops and tablets should they need them, but still no cell phones. That’s where I fall.

2:46:01 Do you have a particular opinion on those? I know, but just to answer the question on like the two factor authentication and what, what we might be able to do to solve that problem. Well, I have some questions about that because quite frankly. Okay, all right.

2:46:16 Well, so I fall on the side of option three with a couple of changes. Actually, three changes. One depending on what Mr. Susan’s suggestion is regarding the verification or authentication, I would authorize the use of cell phones for that purpose at the direction of the teachers or under the direction of the teachers.

2:46:45 Because if that’s, if that is without that, we may be using laptops and iPads may be a moot point. So doing the authentication through the cell phone I think is reasonable. Second thing I would add is to the language for option three is excluding tests so they can’t use their personal devices for their laptops or tablets for tests.

2:46:52 That was a concern that was just raised today from a principal that I spoke to and I’ve heard that from other people. That just seems reasonable as well. And the last thing was in your language where it says expressly directed by a teacher, I would just add or administrator.

2:47:15 And one reason why I say that, I’ve seen a few emails where kids were using them at lunchtime for research or for Independent study or whatever they were doing. And if they are not in, actually in a classroom setting, they should at least be able to go to an administrator at lunch and say, may I use my, you know, tablet for this purpose and not be prohibited. So that’s where I land on it.

2:47:15 Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Appreciate you coming forward with your opinion.

2:47:27 Dr. Rendell, two step authentication, that’s dealing with the Eastern Florida State and I’m hearing College Board, but is that correct? Yeah. I don’t know exactly what the requirements are with efsc. I just know for a lot of other apps or programs that require two Factor authentication, you can use your email for that.

2:47:55 Right. I don’t know if EFSC is set up that way, but I know for a lot of apps I use, I switched it to my email rather than cell phone. Yeah, I did too.

2:48:15 I don’t know that, though. Our school district does the same thing. There’s a couple of options that you.

2:48:35 That you can do the two step. I think what we dealt with, to be honest with you, Mr. Thomas and Ms. Campbell, is we saw a lot of people who came forward with, hey, this is how I’m using the cell phone technology and why we need it. And I think when I went on this quest because I had some very strong opinion, good friends from Edgewood that brought forward, and I talked to him, I said, yeah, you know what? Like, it’s not a big deal, all these other things.

2:48:44 And then I started talking, just like Ms. Wright said, to my actual principals and my teachers. And I wanted the other side of the story to come out about how amazing what we did has. I never thought that what we did by banning cell phones would produce what I’m seeing and hearing.

2:48:56 We have principals who have said that they’re. All of their lunchrooms are so loud now because kids are actually having communications. We had one school that I said earlier in the last meeting that requested board games, but I spoke to a lot of my close friends that are still teachers.

2:49:08 And I sat at Merritt island and spoke to one and she said, matt, she said, they’re actually filling out the worksheets. They’re actually working in class. They’re actually engaged.

2:49:21 It’s like when you and I talk together. And I was like, you know what? That maves music to my ears. And I think, I think we all agree that we don’t want the usage of the cell phone inside the classroom.

2:49:29 Where I caution and I talk about is, is that if you’re going to open the door in one class for one thing, it opens up the door completely. And Ms. Wright, you said it best. Bell to bell, no cell.

2:49:36 If we don’t, if we can’t hold that line. So what I did was knowing that the screen, the principals and the teachers that I was dealing with were telling me just like they told you. And I will tell you, I interviewed a lot of my principals.

2:49:57 Not one of them said we need to allow the teachers to have that we can work this out. They were completely the other way. And I didn’t get to all of them.

2:50:28 I got to about 80% of my principals. But you know, I was able to get to most of them. And then my teachers said absolutely.

2:50:51 And we did receive some that were in my district that, that sent him. And so what I did was I started thinking, I was like, okay, we have some teachers that are like how are they going to take pictures of their programs or their ceramic, you know, art stuff or these other things? Well, you can have the teacher take a picture or you can have a digital camera that’s part of the classroom. I mean we have revenue for things.

2:51:12 There’s ways to think outside the box on these things to complete those. And I know that There’s a couple, Ms. Campbell, in dealing with musical instruments and stuff like that. But I think when I weighed looking at this and I said, you know what, the difference between us being able to hold that sanctity of kids actually engaging and being around each other and communicating to each other and doing what they’re supposed to be doing in school far outweighs having somebody inconvenienced to purchase another device so that they can do that inside the classroom.

2:51:37 That’s not a cell phone. So the two parts authenticator that I do know about, you can also move towards using not just the cell phone, but you can also do the email. The other thing is, is that we can reach out to Eastern Florida State and say, look, you know what I mean, we know that we didn’t reach out to you and tell you this ahead of time, but if there’s a way that we can work this out and by God it’s for Eastern Florida State.

2:51:56 So it’s not like we allow them to start using cell or using cell phones in our schools because they need access to Eastern Florida State. So I think that there’s an opportunity there that if they don’t already have the two part authenticator to move towards utilizing it with a email address and we can go that route. I did have an in depth conversation with Mr. Cheatham about the Laptops.

2:52:16 There was some concern about us, you know, having broken laptops and not being able to have full sets and stuff like that. And you know, I don’t want him to come up here and give the explanation. But what, what we ended up doing is that he said that last year was like the first year that we truly started replacing a lot of them and now there’s a schedule of replacing, you know what I mean, a certain percentage of them on a five year return rate.

2:52:29 So he said that last year they replaced almost 20,000 computers throughout the district so that our kids could do it. And there are going to be some that are older, but he said in October there’s a whole new list that are coming in and he knows exactly how old every device is that’s on our system. So he’s able to deploy those that are a little bit older.

2:52:49 So in some cases, I mean, I know like if I was still teaching, I would not be utilizing a laptop, I would be still teaching. So in the cases where we have principals that have one to one technology for all their students, some of our principals are not deploying and giving the laptop so the parent kids can take them home. Some kids are allowed to.

2:53:06 There’s just differences based upon the principal at the time, time. But the thing is, is that you can find a way at a school to make sure that the kids that need to have their laptops can get them. And I think that we’re getting to that place.

2:53:32 And I would rather hold the line on the cell phones, no cell bell to bell, because I literally believe that this might be one of the biggest things we’ve ever done. So I would push to option three. Mr. Thomas, I hope I helped out with that two part authentication notification piece, moving to the email and stuff like that.

2:53:42 I just truly believe that if you pull that cell phone out at any time during the day that it’s going to open the door. And like Ms. Wright said, we removed them in the past and we saw them creep back in. So I appreciate you looking into it.

2:53:57 And then Ms. Campbell, I also heard you say about the, you know, some haves and have nots, I totally understand where you’re coming from, but that’s also to deal with cell phones too because not every kid has a cell phone and in some cases cell phones are more expensive than laptops. So maybe a parent would actually start thinking about giving their kid a cell phone, a laptop instead of a cell phone in the future. So I’m for option three and that’s me.

2:54:07 Thank you. Can I ask one question real fast? Mr. Chairman, sorry. I just for clarification purpose, because several students made this comment to us and I, I was a little concerned when I heard it.

2:54:13 When a student is dual enrolled and they’re going to Eastern Florida and let’s say they’re, they don’t have a class at Eastern Florida on Friday, but they’re dual enrolled. And so for their fourth and fifth period, I’m just throwing them, you know, out there. They’re supposed to be at eastern Florida.

2:54:22 My impression, I was under the understanding based on the, on the laws that exist that they are not allowed to be on campus unless they are in a class. Is that accurate? Incorrect. It’s incorrect.

2:54:30 That’s incorrect. What we do is we have them, there’s a designated location for them, like the media center. Okay.

2:54:45 Some schools, if it’s third and fourth period and that’s not a lunch, they might use the cafeteria. Okay. So while they’re on campus, they have a place they are supposed to be.

2:54:54 So I think that that needs to be clarified because there’s some campuses that are doing that and some that are not. And they were under the impression that they were not allowed to be on site. Well, it depends.

2:55:04 If the person, if the student has first and second period option or something like that, then they’re not going to be there. But the ones that like for example, when we bus the kids third and fourth period on Fridays, they’re there at school, they are going to remain at school. We have nowhere to bus them third and fourth period.

2:55:08 So they’re going to be in the media center or the cafeteria or some location FLVS lab or something like that. There’s usually a designated location for those kids. Okay, all right.

2:55:34 Well, I just think clarification needs to be sent out because I’ve got conflicting information from a couple and I only have, I only have three secondary schools. So I’ve gotten different stories from them. So on what’s allowed and what’s not.

2:55:56 So if that could be cleared up, that would be good. Sure. Thank you.

2:56:20 So clarification on those students on Fridays, the designated areas, I think the word is workarounds. You know, the principals that I talked to said this is, you know, a campus decision where they’re going to put those, those dual enrolled students. And what I liked hearing back was they’re not allowing them to just be anywhere with their laptops even.

2:56:38 They were going to be in a designated area to work and to be able to have those laptops out and stuff. That was what they were hoping would happen. So it isn’t as large of number too as a percentage of students bringing their own laptop to campus, we’re one or to any other campuses, we’re a one to one district.

2:57:02 So I’m seeing 10, 15% of the students bringing their, their laptops. And I am too going to be lenient and make accommodations and go to option three as well because. But I do like your suggestion where it’s a principal write off on being able to be used.

2:57:24 And again, I think that’s just, you know, it’s the principal’s campus and they need to be aware of when these devices are used in the classrooms. So I think that’s protection from the student to the teacher to the principal to the parents out there. So I would like to see that.

2:57:48 I mean there has been misinformation out there on the severity of the consequence of being, you know, having violated the policy. And I think that’s unfortunate. I think we’ve addressed that a little bit and we want to make that clear that this isn’t, you know, the whole vaping versus being caught with a cellular device.

2:58:00 It isn’t the same consequences. So I’m make sure that I don’t think we need to rehash that. But that that was out there and we received some emails even on that from some administration that they continue to put that misinformation out there to their parents that, you know, that we somehow thought that consequence needed to be extremely high.

2:58:26 So we understand it though, so. But the word workaround is good. The administrators, multiple administrators, teachers, parents, they understand what we’re trying to do and what we’re really trying to do as a whole, all five of us up here, is to deliver the most undistracted student to that teacher that we can possibly do.

2:58:51 And I think, you know, the pendulum has swung back. At one point it was we’re going to use these devices in classrooms that we needed the technology. And then we saw the consequence of the overuse.

2:59:23 But that also brought in the need for having a laptop and being one to one as a district to use it when we can. But I mean there’s, there’s a, there’s some evidence out there that the more we can swing back the old fashioned way, the better for these students. So whereas yes, I know the need to use laptops and E readers and iPads and all that, but that’s not the end all either.

2:59:54 And the more lessons we can have without that technology, the better as well. So I mean, I know we’re doing this, but there might be more to come where at our younger ages that we’re removing electronics all over the place and we’re getting back to, you know, the personal relationships with these students and hands on and the reading and the writing. So, I mean, I think, Matt, you said it right.

3:00:00 This could be one of the biggest things that we’ve done for the future of these kids. We’re the adults. And, you know, I mean, I went through at least 30 reports where that have been produced over the last three years talking about everything from cell phones creating attention deficit disorder, creating social emotional distress, creating, I mean, like, proven facts of what they do to our children.

3:00:12 And when reading those, you realize there is no single thing that is good for education that comes out of the back end of that. And if it is that it became so useful for some of the things, then we need to readjust, and that should be our duty to readjust what? The materials or the usages that we need to get some of these lessons done. I never knew how bad it really was, and nobody’s really put it all together, but if you just take some time and start going through those reports, it’s disgusting.

3:00:18 And these things need to be reevaluated on when kids get them and everything else. So thank you. I just wanted to kind of plug that.

3:00:30 Just for clarifying purposes. I just want to say this out loud so that the public that’s watching this, because I know there’s going to be a lot of people viewing it. If your child uses their cell phone for a medical device, such as being diabetic, they will still be allowed to have access to that.

3:00:44 Your child will be allowed to store their cell phone in. In their back pocket or in their jacket pocket. It can physically be on their body.

3:00:54 Because there’s been a lot of concern that what happens if an emergency happens at the school site and my child needs to run? They can keep their phone on them. It just needs to be silenced. And again, the overall goal here is not to harm anyone.

3:01:05 It actually truly is to make the learning environment more productive for them and then get them back to the ability to socialize. That’s some of the reports that I hear, is that it’s so great to see these kids engaging with each other. My own child says, mom, we just used to all look at our phones at lunch, and now we get to.

3:01:15 We talk and we’re playing games and we’re hanging out and it’s fun. And I’m so getting to make new friends and the Socialization aspect of things. Kids have lost that.

3:01:30 We see that from walking schools. Look a kid in the eye, talk to them, shake their hand and see how well they’re able to communicate and articulate with you. And that’s a skill that’s been lost because there’s a lot of focus on staring at a screen.

3:01:43 So hopefully we’ll see some positive dividends paid on it. The overall goal here is to make the school system better. And I just wanted to clarify those couple points because those are a lot of the emails and messages that I’m sure we’ll get after.

3:01:52 This is going to be centered around that. Right? And we’re still talking before school, after school, they’re still on campus. They can have their phones before school, after school activities, any kind of activities, any kind of, you know, maybe auditions or research, whatever they need to do at that point.

3:01:59 Maybe we can. I’ve talked to a few administrators to maybe bring back announcements, you know, some sports when practices have been cancelled. They were so used to sending out texts.

3:02:04 I don’t care. As soon as an activity is canceled, it comes across the intercom that that activity is canceled. And we can do that.

3:02:14 Not a problem. I think the front office still has phones that work. You know, I don’t think we took those out and that came.

3:02:32 Could be. I think every classroom does as well. So if I could make a suggestion, just trying to get us back on.

3:02:53 Let’s get this done. I Ms. Wright brought up a good point. If we’re looking at option three, either option two or option three, it kind of had the similar problem.

3:02:59 What we’re saying is students, even though the sentence above said, or a couple sentence, all students may not use number four, wireless communication during the school day. And then we’re saying Students in grades 9 through 12th of may not use these except when. If we could like reverse that, maybe it would be more clear rather than adding about the cell phones because we already have that.

3:03:32 Maybe we could say and even start with accept or with the express direction by a teacher or administrator and the approval of the principal. Students in grades 9 through 12th may use personal laptops, tablets or electronic readers solely for educational purposes. Because then it.

3:03:48 Then it’s, you know, we’re not having to do all the. Not double negatives. But you know what I mean.

3:03:57 I think that we’re doing all the things and it has to have all things if you guys are okay with the principal approval. But I like your idea of administrator, a teacher or administrator giving that approval or giving that direction With a principal approval, then these are the things that you can use and be very specific in addition to times I, I know John, you brought it up, but I don’t know if we’re open to having a laptop wherever you’re at in a school setting. Well, that’s why we’re going to have to have.

3:04:04 That’s why I said the principal approval and not just run up to an administrator at lunch and say I’m doing some research. Correct. If you, we include what you had mentioned about the principal approval, they can set the standard for their, you know, for their, for their campus, their administrators.

3:04:32 I just remember reading a few emails where there were students that’s how they spend their lunchtime was, was researching or doing something. It wasn’t necessary to play games. And I just thought let’s do some socializing.

3:04:51 But yes, but to some kids that’s their valuable time to do. Get homework done. You know, I was never one of those students that would do my homework during lunch.

3:05:03 But some people do. Some people are very disciplined in that regard and I would hate to not allow them to be able to do their research or do their user notes from a class or what have you during lunchtime just because of that rule. And we have a couple of schools that still utilize Power Hour and that is the time that they’re not necessarily under this direct supervision of a teacher because they have that hour to eat lunch and to do makeup tests and to do clubs and to do homework, whatever.

3:05:08 So that’s kind of falls under that. So I again, if you guys are okay with that, that starting with, with the express direction of a teacher or administrator and the approval of the principal. Students in grades 9 through 12th of May use personal laptops, tablets or electronic readers solely for educational purposes, excluding tests.

3:05:16 Or do you want to leave that up to the cause? Don’t we have a. I mean don’t we already do state testing that has to be on our secure devices? Yeah, because it has to be secure. Yeah.

3:05:26 And again, if you’re saying it needs to be with teacher appro. Approval and principal approval, they’re not going to approve it. Right.

3:05:41 They’re not going to approve that for test. Okay. If that language is okay, I wanted to just really quickly pass.

3:05:47 I just wanted to show you and I. This may not go anywhere but I just want to show you all really quick. First of all, Ms. Wright, I just wanted. There is a place in the state statute and if you’ll look on this, this is a part of House Bill 1105.

3:05:59 Look on the second page, teachers do have the authority under this state law. If you look the second page around the middle of that first paragraph where it says underline high school. A high school teacher shall designate an area for wireless communication devices during instructional time.

3:06:08 That means the teachers have the authority. They can say, you can have in your backpack or pocket, but they can also. That should give the, that gives the teacher.

3:06:14 This state law gives the teacher authority to say in my class, you have to put it in these. Some of the teachers have the little places, you know, and they may not want to do it. If we’re doing bell to bell, maybe it’s not a big deal because it’s going to be away.

3:06:26 But if this law gives the teacher the authority to say in my class you have to put it in this box. In my class, you have to put it here. So I just want to make sure that’s clear because we don’t want to, you know.

3:06:38 But the, but the part of the reason why I passed this out and I. Again, this may not go anywhere. We have to try. Look at the next sentence.

3:06:51 It says each district school board shall adopt rules governing the use of a wireless communications device by student while the student is on school property or in attendance at a school function. We’ve done that, including rules. And look at number one.

3:06:59 I just want to make sure we have this opportunity here. Designating locations within school buildings where a student may use his or her wireless communications device with the express permission of a school administrator. I think what we’ve already done is taken care of that.

3:07:16 But if we wanted to say that every minute administrator can have a zone. Let’s say the front office is. When I had this conversation with Dr. Rondell, he suggests the front office.

3:07:35 It’s not places people, students can loiter. It’s not where they’re going to check their Instagram feed. But for some of our scenarios we’ve had, I had, you know, we had a student reach out.

3:07:48 She’s literally calling an Uber for her little sister because of a transportation situation. I did get that student connected with administrator and they’re getting help to that student like legitimate reasons to use it for non academic purposes. We could have like a safe zone where if you, you can come and take care of your, you know, work situations, rise situations.

3:08:01 If you, we’re not going to give you a tardy pass if you’re late, but if you need to, you can come to the front office. Check it really quick. I mean you guys may not be okay with that, but this, this the law gives us the authority and actually tells us to designate locations where a student may use their wireless communication device if they have the permission of a school administrator.

3:08:07 And so my picture of that is a school administrator can say, okay, in our school, it’s a front office. And if you have to come do a check, you know, I don’t know where you guys are with that, but I just wanted to. To show that straight from House Bill 1105.

3:08:20 If I could add to that, I would just say if we’re going to do that, that we make it designate the front office or wherever. So it’s consistent among all schools. That’s a good point, because we don’t want to leave it up.

3:08:48 Because then all of a sudden what will happen is some of the. Some people will say, over here, over there. And then you have, oh, this principal.

3:08:57 You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. I think we can actually either policy or procedure, we can designate the front office as a place where, with administrative permission, students may use a wireless communication device.

3:09:02 So in an example where they need to check with at home if something’s going on, if they’re a caregiver, if they are a caregiver themselves or there’s an ailing parent or something, and they want to be able to check and see, you know, check status or something like that, that they know they can go to the front office, ask an assistant principal or principal, can I check my. Can I take out my cell phone and check this or that? I think we could write that into either policy or procedure and we’d be good just not to. Not to nitpick.

3:09:10 But could you. Could we. Would you be open to saying principal, assistant principal, or their designee? Because it could be the front office person, the administrator, you know, administrative person sitting there.

3:09:17 Yeah. I mean, in language, usually we say principal. It’s going to be principal or designee.

3:09:21 We can add it to the problems. Yeah. And then, Mr. Gibbs, where does that put us with this line in here saying that a high school teacher shall designate an area of wireless communications.

3:09:30 The board can supersede that or no, can. They can designate the area being that it can remain on the child. The board’s designating it not be used.

3:09:37 So, I mean, the teachers have the authority. If they. If a teacher wants to take that.

3:10:12 I think it’s a liability issue for a teacher to say, I’m going to collect all the cell phones. I agree. You’re going to have issues where someone’s going to say, oh, my cell phone’s cracked now.

3:10:21 All of a sudden, somebody threw their phone in there and broke it. I wouldn’t take that on as a teacher. The statute does it.

3:10:46 We can’t override the statute. So if a teacher is adamant that I’m going to have a box up here for everybody to put their cell phone in, they need to understand that that comes with some liability potential. So where this comes in is I had a principal say, we’re actually going to try to get back to where we were a few years ago, where they asked nicely for the students to put their phone not on them, but in their backpack and have the teacher put, you know, to tell the students, put your backpacks in the front of the room.

3:11:03 They did that. And they were in a school, they took it away and they still had the phones off, but on them. You know, that goes back to.

3:11:13 You’re still distracted when you have the phone because the kids probably have an own vibrator there. And they lost their A standings and became a B school, and they really want to get back to getting the phones off their person and put away. The only concern that I have is that when, if there’s an emergency, we do tell the kids that we’re not going to allow them back in the classroom.

3:11:19 They need to get far off campus. And I know that was the concern that I expressed, I think, when I met with, you know, different board members was that the parents were afraid that the kids were not going to have the cell phone in case there was emergency. Well, and if you’re monitoring any of the comments online, Mr. Trump, I’m sure you’re seeing a lot of that.

3:11:24 That’s what most of them are saying, like, no way. I’m not sending my kid to school without having their cell phone on them in case there’s an emergency. In this day and age that we live in, unfortunately, you know, God willing, that never happens here and.

3:11:38 Right. And I don’t think I. And there’s people said to not have one. There’s people out there that are facilitating that miscommunication, too, on purpose.

3:11:46 And yeah, no, it’s the same as everything else. And that wasn’t my plan. I was just saying that was.

3:11:51 One of the administrators could do that. And it’s a sad day when we think our humans and our children cannot walk six feet without an electronic device in their back pocket. But that was just one of the things.

3:11:54 Just to avoid any ambiguity. Do we want to have say something to the effect of that they’re allowed to be on the. On the student’s person.

3:11:59 But they must be powered off. Anything like that or is that. I think it’s getting in the weeds too much.

3:12:05 It’s already covered. Yeah, we kind of already have it covered. Just.

3:12:20 Okay. So anyway, you know, just furthering the count. Turn and vibrate.

3:12:27 Stored out of sight. Out of sight from bell to bell is what the problem powered off would have been. Yeah, yeah.

3:12:55 So the next step would be a course. We would bring this back, of course, review the language, bring it back to the next board meeting. We’d have to amend the code of student conduct as well.

3:13:06 The language, it’ll have to be advertised. I’m not sure we can get it on the next board meeting for public hearing, but. Right.

3:13:24 So what we’re going to do is take the option 3 and add language with the approval of principal and we’ll rewrite it a couple different ways. But for now, what we’ll communicate to the principals and the community is option three. You know, the basic language of option three, students are going to be allowed to use personal laptops, tablets or E readers when directed by a teacher solely for educational purposes with the approval of the principal, something like that.

3:13:33 Okay. So we will communicate that out to the school’s asap, but we’ll have to go through the whole rulemaking process over to get it changed in policy. So that’s going to take some time.

3:13:36 But Paul basically has said with board direction we can go ahead and say do the policy with these exceptions. And so we will operate with option three, basically as soon as we can get the communication out and it’s clear and, and with. If the board is amenable.

3:13:44 I don’t know if we. Everybody weighed in, but to. To do this, number one and to designate the front office with administrator or designee approval to be.

3:13:51 That’ll be another. Just a totally different add in there. Right.

3:13:57 Another line item. Thank you very much, Ford, and I appreciate that also. Yeah, thank you for catching up.

3:14:20 Compromising. All right, so I think we have clear direction on what we’re supposed to do. So, Mr. Chair, we had.

3:14:26 We had one more presentation. It’s a. It’s a budget presentation from Cindy Luscinski.

3:14:47 To be honest, 20 minutes is not long enough to really do this presentation. What I suggest is we put it on the agenda for the next board workshop. However, I would offer Ms. Luzinski to meet with each of you guys individually and go through the presentation because we will be voting on the budget that night.

3:14:53 You know, September 9th is the next board workshop and, and business meeting. And we’ll be voting on the. On the budget that night.

3:15:02 So we can set up times for you to meet with her individually to go through the presentation and answer any questions that you have for the budget. And then if we can put it on the workshop agenda as one of the first items on September 9th, we could do that. Does that meet with the board’s approval? Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.

3:15:05 I would say absolutely. And you have. I mean, you have a paper copy, so you can start going through it.

3:15:14 And then when we set up these meetings with Ms. Luzinski, you can ask your questions and so on. Perfect. Okay.

3:15:18 For the record, we have. We got the fourth count yet. This is true.

3:15:21 And those who know what that means, we haven’t been able to close out our books officially and it’s already time for the fifth or the sixth. Yeah, I know. I just like to go ahead and reflect that we don’t have that yet.

3:15:32 So. So that’s very hard to. When we say we don’t have that, it’s not anything we did or didn’t do.

3:15:46 This is something from the state. Want to make sure everybody understands. Right.

3:15:54 So to clarify, we wrapping it up then? Well, Mr. Thomas already said we can. Yeah, we’ll move that. Legislative thing is the only thing that we needed.

3:15:57 We kind of had a deadline. I don’t know if anybody had any suggestions. I did take Rachel Rich’s suggestions down about CTE funding and also the grade levels, having to take certification tests in certain grade levels.

3:16:09 So I will definitely get those. But was there any other. The CTE instructors being exempt from that General Ed.

3:16:24 They have five years. Right. To get that cert.

3:16:29 So if there’s a way to carve them out, because a lot of them are industry experts, they’re not necessarily teachers. So for them to have to go pass that test, it limits. And a lot of times we’ll see our CTE instructors leave right at that five year mark because they don’t want to go do that test.

3:16:34 So that would be a good one for them to look at, especially since we’re pushing for the career and college readiness. Obviously, I would love to see the statute surrounding the school start date change. That’s my personal one, but that’s.

3:16:55 I understand. If the board doesn’t want to take that initiative up, I can, I can advocate for that as well. So at least have the flexibility.

3:17:04 Yeah, it’s the flexibility of the start date. Right. Which I don’t have the Florida statute with me.

3:17:11 It’s in my other briefcase and so I can send that to you, Ms. Campbell, if you’d like to know which statute it is. Yeah. Does anybody else have any other things they want to see? No.

3:17:16 These are the things you’re taking back to fsba, correct? Right. Fsba. So the end of this week is the consortium, the Greater Florida Consortium, led slave.

3:17:28 And I thought I was going to be able to go, but I had a. We’ve got a Congressman Herodopoulos coming on Thursday, so. But I think.

3:17:42 Yes, Janet Moynihan is telling. So they’ll get there. I was talking to Dr. Rendell about that.

3:17:50 They’ll have their platform. And then when we talk about our Brevard specific platform, they can bring that to and that we can use that as a starting place, plus anything else that the Cabinet would like to put forward. I mean, I, I really.

3:18:01 I just wanted to express to the cabinet. Dr. And like, we. We really want your input because you guys know how these different statutes are tying your hands and making it harder for us to help students succeed or maybe some new things that need to be in place, especially around attendance.

3:18:07 There was. They almost got some attendance legislation across the finish line. What I’ve heard is that means it bodes well, but if there’s specific ask.

3:18:13 We want to have, like, how can we. How can we do attendance better? Because we have this huge initiative we’re doing, but with the state rule where the 90 days roll, you know, it’s not rolling or whatever. We want to, you know, anything that you guys have.

3:18:17 I definitely. We definitely want. We start building our Brevard platform, which we need to build quickly because committee weeks start in October.

3:18:21 Right. And a lot of these legislators are already getting their bills full. So.

3:18:31 Yeah. Any. Anything else, you guys can put it individually.

3:18:53 Don’t we have a local delegation meeting that’s coming up in September, Late September. Yeah. Right.

3:18:59 And so I. Are we going to present? I mean, typically, yeah, we already put in our slot. We’ll be. We’ll get our time slot.

3:19:03 But Jenna Mohan’s going to the Greater Florida Consortiums of School Boards meeting this the end of this week. So we’ll gather a bunch of information and we’ll make our own, you know, legislative asks and be ready for that. Okay, Right.

3:19:09 We have ethics training that morning before. We have ethics training that morning. Oh, we want to do it same day.

3:19:13 That’s the. The same day in the morning. We have ethics training in the afternoon. Is. Is. That’s good. Thank you, guys. I will enter those in. Okay. As there’s no further business this Meeting is adjourned. Thank you, Sam. It.