##VIDEO ID:2Q6ICflXDZ0## presented with the member of the month award for sgaa Cameron was known to be a caring helpful student to staff and fellow students his passion for music leadership and creativity inspired all those around him and his dedication to the MacArthur High School Community will never be forgotten Cameron's light will continue to shine in the hearts of all those who knew him he will be deeply missed but his memory will forever be part of the Mustang spirit I ask that you keep Cameron's family especially his parents and his siblings and the MacArthur High School community in your thoughts and prayers please join me for this moment of silence thank you board member Austin has requested a moment of silence for a student from Charles Flanigan High School Mr Austin good morning thank you mad good morning thank you madam chair it is with deep sorrow that I announced the passing of Valentina Ruiz a cherished member of our past program at Charles W Flanigan High School Valentina graduated in 2024 and had rejoined us this year she passed away unexpectedly on Thursday September 19th 2024 Valentina is survived by her devoted parents Patricia Ruiz and Oscar ortis in this time of loss we extend our deepest condolences to valentina's family and the entire Flanigan High School community may the memories of Valentina be a blessing to all who had the privilege of knowing her please join me in this moment of silence thank you board member Leonardi has requested a moment of silence for a student from Fort Lauderdale High School Mrs leonardy thank you I ask that we recognize a moment of silence for Fort Lauderdale high school student Christopher granados Christopher tragically passed last week I ask that you keep his family friends in the Fort Lauderdale High School community in your prayers thank you as we prepare to begin our special school board meeting we're reminded that our vision is 100% proficiency for all of our students as an a-rated School District our Vital task is to sustain this achievement we will continue educating all of our students to reach their Highest Potential our theme this year is believe Empower achieve one Broward today's special school board meeting will operate in accordance with Schoolboard policy 1020 and the board will review the items as advertised and presented by the superintendent the superintendent released a revised agenda with certain changes for this meeting and published it on the school district's website the chair finds pursuant to section 120525 Florida statute that good cause exists for such changes and accepts the revised agenda may I have a motion and second to close the agenda so move move by Zeman second by Hixon all in favor Mr Alon thank you uh before we close the agenda I know that we're now on day 14 uh where we had a prior meeting where the board had consensus uh on an investigation uh and I wanted to ask both the superintendent and the chief auditor uh where we are uh now that this is day 14 before we close the agenda drer thank you chair um thank you for the question Mr Dawson yes we do have an update so I'll U read it for the record I want to provide an update on the joint investigation conducted with the chief Auditor in accordance to policy 4.9 we're in the process of finalizing the written inves a report and I wanted to share some key findings the investigation focused on determining whether there was any wrongdoing by BCPS staff in r in relation to the decision to send Mr Witherspoon home based on the preponderance of EV evidence it has been determined that there was no just cause for this action however it was also identified that a mistake was made by staff in handling the situation it was an unfortunate mistake we are already implementing changes to our process to ensure such errors do not occur again on behalf of brow County Public Schools I would like to uh extend a sincere apology I think I saw Mr W he's sitting right there in front of me we want to send our sincere apologies to to you Mr Witherspoon for any inconvenience this may have caused you in the past and and um currently and also in the future once the written report is completed it will be shared with the board and you will have the opportunity to determine whether any further actions are necessary thank you madam chair M Charon Fantastic Mr superintendent uh and I appreciate the update um one more question because I know that was also a big question 14 days ago uh regarding the status of the head of the brow teachers union uh did you and the chief auditor look into that um I know that this board I believe back on June 18th uh a part of agenda item H1 all nine of us unanimously approve the head of the teachers union uh I think in that case being a district employee uh I know there's subsequent information that I received that shows something different uh was that also included a part of this uh review uh did someone determine if the head of the teachers union falls under board policy um and board jurisdiction yes indeed she is an employee technically on leave while she's performing her duties as BTU president so has a determination uh been made that she falls under District policies yes yes okay so that is definitive yes it you concur to Mr rhs I do concur based on what we found in the policy all right could I also and thank you thank you s for that uh now I'm going to go to the ma'am uh the other ma'am to the right of Madame chair uh who is my attorney uh as a board member so I want to now go back to our uh School Board attorney general counsel Miss Batista do you concur now uh and I think now we have two yeses uh let's see if we get to three yeses that uh the head of the BR teachers union falls under District policy Miss Batista I concur that the that the sh that the president of the Union is uh an employee on leave from the district let me just make sure I understand your answer yes that she does fall under District policies and she is not exempt from District policies is that correct correct all right and the last question to both the superintendent and the chief auditor because you jointly did this investigation uh my understanding is that um the allegation also stemmed around political harassment and bullying uh was that looked into because we were silent I think on that response or was that not looked into a part of your review for the last 14 days yes we looked into that and we didn't see any evidence that lead us to political harassment or or bullying um by uh Miss FCO all right and my last question Council I requested a public records request 14 days ago I know that the district believes in transparency um and I know that public records typically um are responded to in a timely fashion I have not received those records so I'm curious because I haven't received those records which I think would be helpful to both of you or would have been helpful to you in your review uh so I'm curious how uh one I didn't receive the records and then two how those records have not factored into the review that was on sounds like 99% complete so let me start with council do you know where we are on my public records requests from 14 days ago Dr um Mr s thank you for the opportunity so yes we did ensure that we uh followed on the public record as it relates to reviewing part of the investigation so um for your request during the board meeting there was a public records made for all Communications as it relates to District devices because that's our jurisdiction uh there was no emails texts as it relates to District phones district emails and there was also no calls into the department that handled the mistake in terms of the of the temporary uh reassignment let me make sure I understand if I could Madame chair uh because I'm I'm I think a part of this investigation or review I haven't been contacted and it's been 14 days so I have no idea Mr superintendent Mr Chief auditor how you could do a comprehensive review and I'm actually one of the Sub sub subjects a part of the investigation so uh it sounds like uh what has been done I'm hopeful is 90% done because you haven't talked to me um to the chief uh and I have no idea who's over public records uh I don't know that process um but sounds like you have made a determination that there are no existing calls between any school district landlines and cell phones is that correct correct involving all parties so we checked text me we checked all employees text messages as it relates to District devices all employee emails the day before and the day of and we did not have anything um that was related to this uh topic so if I could Council U and what's this is concerning to me because I think on the record uh it's been explained that a school district employee maybe someone made a call to a school district employee so if a call was made from one person to the other how would that call have been made so if I may no no no I'm I'm not I'm talking to my Council give me one second Mr Sullivan I I just want to understand how would a and I don't want to know the investigation but just stay with me on facts here if on the record we have said that a school district employee made a call to another school district employee right then tell me how that is possible forget my public record I'm going get back to that but tell me how that's possible how do we conduct business as a district on non District phone lines if that's what's being alleged here cuz I just want to understand process first of all I uh as you know the investigation was done by Mr rhs and the superintendent so I am not privy to the intricacies or you know the responses to public records requests or any of the other material that they have reviewed um so I can't really answer answer your question um I don't think that anybody has said from what I've heard here today that the phone calls were made on personal phones um I think it sounds like there were no calls regarding the other matter that you were specifically asking about no that's that's actually not the case so I haven't said that at all so let's be very clear counsel because I I'm going to get back to the public records issue because that is a big glaring issue and I appreciate this being a public meeting um so if an official HR action was made and an official HR call was made from a school district employee I'm assuming that's where it came from to another school district employee which is official Schoolboard action I want to understand how that call and record did not go through an official channel can you help me understand that I don't know that that is the case I'm not asking Mr Sullivan I'm I'm just because I just want to talk about official action so we're doing because I don't you know the investigation sounds like it's 90% complete I have no idea right and the records uh which haven't been responded back to me um I know does not meet what I asked for so this is again we're now on day 14 so I want this to play out publicly and then and now on day 14 I'm learning according to the chief Communications and legislative official that there are no responsive records Council to an official call that would have come from a district employee to another District employee and that was not captured okay I want to understand are we doing official School Board business Through official School Board channels I.E I don't want to know what happened because you guys are still investigating but it sounds like a big question mark right now so if a school district employee reached out to another District employee and I'm only talking about one person I haven't gotten to two three four five six right that is a big problem and I'm hoping you see the same problem that I see so official action um has to be um you know there is no policy in the district that says that two employees of the district must communicate through a telephone that is provided by the school board uh there's nothing that says that and therefore they can communicate in you know in their personal phones as well even if they are conducting business for the district many employees of the district do not have a cell phone provided by the board so they have no alternative but using their own phones so that's the case here I have no idea because as I mentioned before I have I'm not privy to any of the details of this investigation me either and I've been an investigator and this sounds fishy to me so I'm hoping that the last 10% we get to the bottom of it to our two lead investigators um but back to the question councel because this is a very glaring issue before we close the agenda and I appreciate the update from the superintendent and I'm hoping the chief auditor will also say something as well um because it was a joint investigation um and it's just a question if HR makes an official action or a decision and if there's a call from HR to any District employee it's appropriate for that to come from a personal cell phone is it appropriate to come from a personal email I'm actually aware of board policy where if there's official actions that there are some official steps that should and should have been taken so again I haven't looked at the 90% of the investigation that's been completed but this sounds like there is a big issue and a big deal that goes against board policy and I'm hope you I hope that everyone hears what I hear because I'm very familiar with the board policy a I'm very familiar with official actions when HR reaches out to an employee B and this sounds like has not occurred let's get back to C it's been 14 days of a public records request done right here I think I sat in a different seat and I've gotten Zero Records and I know what records exist no one's asked me for mine no one asked me what calls I made counsel because you're my legal I'm I'm still looking at you the attorney no one asked me what calls came to me or what calls I made on this matter no one and the investigation is 90% complete and nine of us are going to trust this work not this member right here it's a sham and I'm not putting my head in the sand counsil others can do it but I won't do it so Madam chair before we close the agenda uh I want I would hope that we can add a discussion Point how many items are on the agenda Let's see we now have 15 items on the agenda is that right Madam chair correct would you be open for good cause to adding item 16 on the agenda for there to be a discussion item on this topic since today is day 14 and there was General consensus by this board 14 days ago for the superintendent and the chief auditor to give an update to where we are I don't want to know details let me speak for one board member um but I think we can add it as a discussion just to discuss we're not going to be voting on anything that is correct right any well because it's official board action the board can vote on anything that it chooses to but yes if you could add it as a discussion item thank you okay so we add it for number 16 to discuss thank you thank you madam chair you're welcome all in favor of closing the agenda let it be known by saying I I those opposed say no the agenda is now closed the first item of business on the agenda is item number 13 may I have a motion and second to move item 13 so move second move by Zan second by Hixon public comment no public comment board member comment non-instructional appointments and leaves seeing none yes yes so I just wanted to see if anybody had comments but um I did want to pull um Miss Gail Williams that is going to be at McNichol Middle School just wanted to announce that today is her 50th birthday and I wanted to say happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday I know come on man just hope that this is the best year yet I just want to wish you happy birthday I know I know Austin started off a little rough but I just wanted to say happy birthday thank you very much CH to lighten the mood a little bit I'm sorry okay thank you any other comments on item number 13 all in favor of item number 13 say I I those opposed say no item 13 passes unanimously Dr heer do you have anybody that would like to speak um no chair no directors are above on this appointment but congratulations to all our appointees welcome to the [Applause] team congratulations so much and we'll take a five minute recess for a photo e e e e e e it's back there what are you talking did Monica take him away welcome back may I have a motion and a second on item number eight to move mooved by Zan second by second poen hly public comment Miss Jackie Lov what item are we on P yeah hello good morning Jackie luskin thanks for um putting this on um there's been good work done and good conversation had in here last year on bringing slp's pay closer to where it should be to be a fairer compe more fair uh and more competitive wage that reflects the skill level but that work needs to continue and you had a significant number of contract slps who left vendor companies and moved to the district employment um and we hear from the ese Department that most positions are filled so that was great a Great Migration and a good Trend that we want to keep encouraging um so Contracting 35 million for contract vendors uh isn't going to be making best financial sense I would respectfully suggest especially at a time when you're looking to save every cent um and I'm sure the community would rather see that you're making legitimate savings rather than cutting Corners with kids um in in any other way so here would be a suggestion um if contract slps have moved to BCPS but not vice versa which I think you'll find is probably the case you've proved that you found the key to the SLP crisis that we had but we have to maintain that so how many slps came this way to BCPS um so if you shift the funds to create to have more in District positions than giving to vendors where that money isn't all going to the SLP it's going to the middleman or middle woman at the agency so you're you're kind of passing on dead money um it was rightly stated in here last year that third party vendors should be the fallback for filling in gaps not for the bulk of the service provision and yet you currently got a roughly 50/50 split between um staff and contract slps um I think Palm Beach has recently raised their SLP salaries I'm not sure where Miami D is at but we have to stay competitive we can't have another crisis where we have over 3,300 kids going without Services where people like me are standing here month after month saying there's a crisis and nothing got moved um at the time um I love the fact that you've now um started making inroads to the salary issue um at tops contract slps get $79.95 an hour under your contract so say if they work 7 hours a day 180 days a year that's just over 100 Grand and that's going partly to the company um so um so that's a salary you could work out of around 81,000 um 900 for a contract SLP by comparison one of your staff District employed slps after all the various supplements uh and what have you get 62 so you could be paying more money to your district slps and still be saving money if you lessen the amount amount of contractors you're using also please start a conversation on audiologists and we would love to see items like this brought to ESC advisory so we can have this kind of conversation there and it didn't thank you thank you any other speakers no ma'am okay for member comment Mr Hixon thank you I just have a quick question does any of the money for this item come through the Ida Dr heurn Miss hollor got get up good afternoon or good morning goodness grief uh Simone Hollings with Chief academic officer I'm gonna let Miss Andrea seti our director over specialized Services come up and answer that good morning I'm Andrea seti the director for specialized instruction and I oversee all of the related services for our district and speech is one of those Services typically no Ida does not fund um speech therapy because it is out of our operating and our general funds all students um you know have a student allocation for that um there is partial um support from Ida that can be had but that is typically for above and beyond Services Miss SE can you explain what that is because we we often find that there's money rolling over from Ida and if there's an issue with this particular service you said we could so what does that can you just explain what you just above and beyond so um two years ago we had two State systemic complaints um where we had students that did not receive Services um adequately And Timely um so that may be a situation where additional Ida dollars may need may have needed to be allocated to provide those services but it is typically um you know allocated in the school's budget for for regular day-to-day speech therapy services just like a teacher or a support facilitator it's on a general allocation like the support facilitation positions are so it cannot come out of Ida or we just don't take it out of Ida we we supplement what's happening not supplant what is happening so if there were were additional needs for speech we could look at the Ida Grant but there's a general allocation for all students to begin with so that's where that has come from okay all right thank you Dr Zan thanks chair I want to talk for a few minutes um about the item that's before us because this is important and I'm going to pick up where Miss lunam left off um because I've been looking at this for the past week and I think that there's a plan B that Miss lunam talked about that is worthy uh of consideration by this board this is a big item it's $35 million the item before is requests approval for an additional spend authority of 35 million ion it says very clearly in this item that we need 200 additional slps so I don't want to really bring up the issue of is it right or wrong that number it's 200 more than the 200 we have uh give or take a few so we need roughly 400 to meet the needs of Broward County schools and all of this uh to my knowledge Miss xon comes out of ffp but it isn't fully funded so this is stuff that we provide but the state does not give us enough money uh to pay for these services and what I'm worried about as Miss lunin pointed out is that we're willing to pay $80 roughly an hour for a contract SLP instead of doing something that's a little bit more creative and figuring out what the market wage is for slps paying that and maybe making some other adjustments in our talent acquisition recruiting business so that we can uh end up with a Workforce that's a little different uh what I Envision in maybe three years or so is 100% of our slps being brard County Schools slps uh this reminds me a lot of what happened with nurses around 5 years ago when hospitals and Hospital chains were running around hiring travel nurses and contract nurses and they found that they were paying two and a half times what they were paying their own nurses within the hospitals over time they developed nurse recruiters and they went and they found nurses over time nursing programs started producing more nurses and all of them moved salaries for nurses significantly higher in some cases 20 and 30% higher so that they didn't have to pay the 150% penalty for having contract uh nurses so I'm just curious about this chair is it possible uh for us to hire 200 more slps over the next three years Dr thank you chair um thank you for the question Dr Zan so um I I just want to also acknowledge the speaker um she knows that often the time we don't agree on everything but I totally agree on with her on this one um we obviously know that contractor Services the people who are performing performing services for us are not getting all the money that we're actually spending on the contract um so um we my team and I will have a discussion um on how we can pivot and start recruiting especially if these slps that we're um providing money to for contracts are actually living in the vicinity if it's in a Tri County Area and see how we can best recruit them um pay them what they're worth um especially with the added benefits that we provide that most likely the contractor services are not providing to those to those um slps that we're utilizing from them terrific given that chair how much money uh in additional spend Authority do we need for one more year of hiring these 200 slps Dr heurn I'll defer to miss hollinworth or Miss Egan for that quick bath again can you hear me there you miss seot can come up and answer that question again approximately 19 million it will take for the year and chair how much spend Authority do they have already um right now the total agreement for 36 months of spending authority of 57,000 not 57,000 57 million so so I think the request is for 57 million but what is the spend Authority they have right now for this school year remaining 22 22 million terrific so there is 22 million already available in spend Authority we've spent um approximately 19.5 I would have to double check that as of today we spend about um a million dollars a month on contracted Services terrific how much I'll try this for the third time I'm sorry maybe I'm not saying it in the right way um there seems to be consensus at least amongst the people who spoken right now that we'd like School Board of Broward County to hire slps they might have to come back with a different item and say uh Mr superintendent that hey the the the 62,000 isn't enough we need 72 or 82 uh anything south of 115 or 100 low hundreds Miss lungs estimated or the staff estimated around 115 if they work eight hours a day for 180 days anything less than that is going to be a benefit to us financially but I also believe it's great to have slps actually in Broward County Schools working for us and realizing the benefit benefits and the team Le uh composition that we get uh for these people within our special needs students um so how much additional spend Authority would you need to continue the current practice for this year while the new process is being developed to start recruiting uh Broward County Schools slps rather than hiring contract employees 19 million so today's request that the 35 would be1 million to get through this school year yes it would have to be adjusted we request it's a three-year agreement so we requested what it would take for the for the remainder of the two years of the current agreement which would be 35 because we do have that good faith that we are bringing contracted vendors back we have hired nine additional slps for the district and terminated one of our vendors that are on the current agreement the current agreement was a three-year agreement we're in the second year of that agreement terrific and I'm I'm having trouble with the math okay which I guess happens now and then but you're here asking for 35 million presumably that will take you through years two and three is that correct correct but for the first year it's not 17 A2 you need 19 in the first year correct because we that is what we have we have 200 slps allocated right now and we're presuming that over building culture doing our recruiting and the efforts that we're doing right now that we would see additional come back our third year it's a slow process but we're making um great gains I believe terrific and are you absolutely sure about the 19 million being the what you need or do you need a little bit of wiggle room in that I think that's wiggle that is with wiggle terrific chair um can I can I um interrupt Dr Z I just want to make sure uh asked that Mr azero to come forward just to make sure are there any negotiations that we need to have to increase their the SLP salaries yes there would be okay so I don't think we'll probably get any push back about increasing salary I don't think there'll be much push back from dramatic increase in their compensation and I think there's a recognition now of differentiated employment so even within instructional staff a teacher is not a teacher is not a teacher and SLP is clearly not the same as a teacher I think a special needs teacher is not the same as a Jan ed teacher so uh we have seen uh negotiated settlements that have allowed for differentiated pay in the last two years uh so I'm not predicting any issues but I recognize that there's a hurdle with that what I'm trying to do is give a one-year grace period for this so that that gives the superintendent and staff time to come back and develop this plan um to determine what the market salary is for slps that would allow us to recruit in big numbers not nine but in my own view if this takes 3 years we need 75 recruited this year to fill positions next year which is a hard lift and it's probably not going to be done with the current system but you think 19 million is sufficient to fund the contract um agreement slps for this year for one year M yeah terrific chair I um when the discussion wraps up I'd like to make a motion on that subject thank you okay m Sam thank you madam chair one of the discussions that are just we're just rolling over is why are we not paying our inhouse employees higher or better than the one we're Contracting out and getting from Kelly Services and other services why isn't this discussion about shifting funds to that and trying to attract more in-house employees because we do offer free health insurance we do have dental we do have some perks that would be very attractive of the people so let's have that discussion and then therefore we might be getting the same people or the same caliber people but saving money and we will have some extra money and funds to use elsewhere so let's do that can I make a motion that we put that up for discussion yeah go ahead yeah my motion is that we discuss increasing in um in-house uh salary employees specifically um special needs as Dr um um Zan is just uh said apparently that they're not considered in a separate payu and also um the ESC students needs s so is there is there a second Mo by fam second by Altin public comment on the motion thank you Jackie lusen I think that's kind of what Dr zon was saying um I know you're broadening it out I would love to see differentiation between uh um all kinds of uh staff based on their skill set um uh but yeah I think this is a a broadening of what Dr Zeman had already just said so absolutely have that discussion thank you for one more comment on the motion Mr charson yeah I was going to ask m f if you would just clarify the motion what do you what's the intent idea for just yeah just clarify what you're trying to do thank you generally um from my point of you I like to start broad because you can always come in to me it's more difficult to start small and try to move out so that's my rationel for that but I would like all in-house people as far as why broaden the motion um as far has in-house people I would like to start if you want Miss L come we can start with your group alone and then move in but like I said I preferably normally start Broad and then it's easier to close in but and then accommodation I will gladly do that because I think this is urgent I think this needs to be addressed I think it's been glossed over and I'd like to move forward any other comments Dr Zan yeah and on the broad concept I think it's important to recognize there are times where contract staff's essential we cannot recruit some skill sets sometimes we need a skill set for 3 months or 6 months or 12 months and it's not appropriate to hire government people when you have an intermittent need so There Are Places um where uh uh either a short-term staff or specialized skill staff is appropriate as a contractor in general and we've heard from our chief operating officer Chief facilities officer of this hybrid model which is a long-term thing which is primarily to address an inability to hire high-tech Engineers to kind of oversee our construction and Facilities uh business and so there's always kind of General economic rationale for doing things like that but there's also tremendous kind of recognized advantage is to having people on your team so that they are all part of one single team responding to one set of management one set of policies and the like contractors are not uh to actually to one of Mr alon's points earlier contractors are not subjected to our employee policies right because they're contractors not employees uh they're handled separately but employees are all managed as a single group um and they belong to one team and in education particularly K through2 education it's a team that makes things work not individuals and so I I think General Miss fam this this is there's some clear economic reasons why sometimes you would have contractors and then there's sometimes you'd want a hybrid model because that makes sense and then sometimes you completely contract out like Legal Services because you need attorneys to handle specialized cases or you just don't have the volume of of of General Council staff that you'd like to have forever so I think in general there's there's a good kind of um way kind of a rubric for thinking you know about contracted staff and in this particular case it it seems to me that it falls in the case where it's better to have them in house like on the team working for bar County Schools uh but it's going to take time for us to get there you cannot I don't think unless David Aero is and Dr heon are absolutely you know their Supermen underneath their their suits it's hard to hire 200 slps in a year when you hired nine this year you know but going from nine and ramping up and maybe taking three years is a plan to get it together uh what I was talking about is giving the superintendent time to work out that plan and come back and ask us for the more money on the pay and to put a plan before us of what he and his staff would do to get up get up and you know dramatically improve recruiting will it take one year three years five years I think we need to let the staff kind of come back and give us the best plan B I don't like plan a because this is just admitting defeat this is saying Brower County Schools cannot recruit slps I don't think that's true Mr rert thank you um I know we're discussing microphone I asked it's that we we're discussing the slps but I remember uh not two years ago or three uh we went to Kelly and this same situation happened then and we voted bit closer there you go better okay it's going to be it's going to be um thanks thank you so so my my question is the intent was to move away from Kelly doing 100% to go back to internal Subs so we could have our people on the bench I mean I can tell you two people in this district and there's got to be a lot more that started as substitutes uh Dr canning and Nora rert the this is the way we build a PCH um so has there any movement to move away from Kelly and try to um build that bench up oursel because it's the same conversation different employees but it's the same conversation I'm 100% wanting to have our internal people getting more money than a vendor does that has to come in and help us out not the other way so um that that's my question to the superintendent do do we know or maybe m um have we started at all making any steps to move away from Kelly and if yes have um how did you do that what was the time frame so um we can be working on that just like Dr Zan and um Miss band mentioned Dr he yep um thanks for the question um no we have not made any attempt to move away from Kelly um I would suggest probably give staff an opportunity need to really examine the r the return on investment as far as that being um addressed in-house because we have what probably about 15,000 teachers uh for a very very large school district so the majority of the large school districts have moved to a service like Kelly Services to for efficiency purposes um operations purposes just to make sure it's effective um so it would we will have to analyze that in depth um just to see if there's a return on investment for BCPS to handle um substitute so right and and wow sound good here I am good morning um and I appreciate that uh and of course this was prior to you um prior to Dr Lata um where we talked about this so my um you know my question is I don't want this just to be a a commentary I want this to have legs and us to be able to look at it and as a board and uh decide are we going to be investing in our internal employees are we going to continue to hire companies where our substitutes are making less than some of that go to the vendors so um I'm looking forward to that thank you Mrs Hixon thank you Dr heurn do we have substitutes that are Broward County substitutes that are not part of Kelly aren't they all part of Kelly now Mr zero yes we do yes we do I would defer to miss rockan she may have more specific answers on that working with talent management but we do have Subs hi all hi good morning Susan Rockman director of talent management um yes we do have our our own subs for Broward County schools and long-term assignments they um are hired by our school district and our internal employees so you've heard of interim subs and also another re um reference is classroom monitors that are used to cover internal suspension virtual classes um for supervision of the children so those are our Brower County Employees but we don't have through Dr heurn we don't have any bar County Subs that are daily subs those are all Kelly Services correct day-to-day Subs belong to Kelly Services okay thank you you're welcome Dr Zan thank you uh um I'm just going to make a motion about moving forward on this uh so this already have a motion this will be a substitute motion chair okay and the substit I mean the first motion um is a motion to discuss and um I get that um but I think technically this will be a substitute motion to that um which would approve $19 million rather than $35 million and ask the superintendent to bring a plan within six weeks for the best uh timeline and expense to insource slps in less than three years second moved by Zan second by wholeness public comment on the motion I think you can predict what I would say to that I think that's an awesome plan I think incrementally over the over a period That's the migration you need to be making also we we are in really hard times and we're being told you can't afford this you can't afford that this is a a great um uh concept to adopt for so many other things and Mrs fam's Right um when you talk about broadening this to other areas absolutely if you can have your staff in house why would you not um pay them more but still be saving uh money for yourselves to put in the pocket for other things too so thank you thank you Miss fam okay thank you madam chair um I would ask if Mr Z would consider broadening his motion and or I can make a substitute motion um based on just for that uh to include data on what the percentage currently is that we have in-house slps compared to um that we're retaining from third parties so at least we have an idea of what we're looking at and how much improvement we need I I normally would I mean that's that's very consistent with kind of my approach to all management issues but those data are in the item we have 200 in-house slps Broward County schools slps and this request would have us have 200 agreement or contracted slps in a mix so total of within a few give or take 400 200 right now are inous and they're requesting permission with this spend authority to retain 200 more over the course of the year if if you feel comfortable that that's current data great yeah I do yeah thank you Miss P okay thank you Miss chareston thank you could I ask for the motion to be restated Dr Zan yes I move that we uh replace uh 35 million with 19 million to provide 19 million um of spend Authority for hiring contracted slps and ask the superintendent to bring us a plan for insourcing slps within 6 weeks with the plan to be concluded in 3 years or less Mr Charon thank you madam chair just a broader question uh maybe superintendent Financial team is the intent I thought was the district is looking at reducing its footprint financially rather than increasing the footprint financially um so clearly I support the spirit of this if we shift many of these contracted services to now become permanent full-time employees because there are a myriad of issues that the new nine will deal with starting in mid November which I'm excited about that um you will be you'll have some other issues that will Clearly Now bubble up at that point so it's just maybe a broader question is this the right approach um I mean clearly I know the board is asking you to go explore it um but just I'm just asking you because we're we're increasing the the phys we're increasing the number of employees which comes with other things right um and I get on face it looks I mean there's a balance right from when you have contracted services to when you have uh employees um I thought your board I'm sorry the current board uh told you uh to go back because they rejected did uh this twice now um I think they've given you to December to go back and look for $100 million of savings um if we had done that already we would be in a different posture right now but the board has not done that so maybe this should be a part of that plan along with some other areas that clearly you will have your operation side to look at I just don't know if you increasing the staff footprint because of everything else that the new nine will have come mid November if that makes sense for you so it's just a question I don't know if you if the financial team have thought about it and just just a question drer now great question I think um with the motion it's about bringing a plan right in that plan it's going to talk about return on investment talk about uh on which are we spending more money on contractor Services versus if we actually hired these individuals we would spend less um just from my rough math I think we're spending probably over $150 $175,000 per contract did service um so with fringe and benefits and salaries um that we would negotiate it would most likely be less but this plan will bring it back to show the board hey uh maybe it is cheaper this to stay the rout that we're on or maybe there's a opportunity to do a hybrid model and save the district some money while having staff in house that's readily available and not worried about the changing people that were that are providing contracted Services I think we can bring back a a very good comprehensive plan um we have a little bit of time to do that so I think um you know regardless if it's this board or the or the upcoming board to be able to make an informed decision on how we move forward November six weeks is too soon push it back mrog only thank you very much chair and I just wanted to add to this and appreciate the spirit of the motion I think if we look at every position across our district right we we can all get paid more right we can all look at the budget and different things like that but for me I've said this before because we've seen this come before us before um but I wanted to add especially with slps and and my experience of what I've dealt with is is it always the money right money is a big reason why people leave everywhere teachers admin slps all of the above but my question is what can we change what can we do better and I remember when my son was working with an SLP she was working in Independent Business and I remember talking to her I asked her why she wasn't working for Broward County Public Schools and she told me well Mr fogan holy of course the pay right but I challenge you when you visit your school asked to see where the slps are just start there and I did I started to ask and and I said where are your slps I want to see where their office is where are they and it's not fair for our slps in majority of our schools are stuck in a closet they're stuck in a small room and for people that dedicate their lives and this is for everybody in this District people that dedicate their lives to helping children they should be treated with respect we start there because that's one of the most disappointing things I saw with our SLP so I think money yes and this is something that we're talking about we want to adjust that but I think we should start there with everyone start treating people with respect and I just wanted to say that for the record shair thank you thank you I have a question regarding theps is this is there in a bargaining unit where their uh salaries negotiated yes yes that's correct Mr AO can you be specific about the bargaining unit they're they're a member of yes to the chair slps are part of the btu ep the teachers union okay so I have great um how should I say concern when the board decides to negotiate salaries up here on the de we need to go through the process and and we can't we when we Frogger jump the process and negotiate this in closed doors then we run into problems and and this happened when we asked the the superintendent to look at us starting our own police force and and then when he did do that um plan we we saw there was there was a lot of gaps and holes and and and it was a lot of money and and then the board end up negotiating salary up on the de and I I just I really hesitate to for us to continue to do this I think that we have to stick with the process go to closed door and and then you know we talk about it and then it gets negotiated because if we don't stick to this process and then this board you know whether it is um you know I it's genuinely wanting to fix this problem publicly absolutely but we have to I just think stick to the process so I'm going to state that and then my other thoughts and questions is the regards to the Ida rollover funds so the last 2 years there was 10.7 Million about and $10.9 million that were rolled over so my question is where did this money go to and why we we have to prevent the denying of services for our ESC students and in the 2014 Evergreen report said that special revenues that roll into future years repres present funds that could and should have been used to provide higher levels of service to children with needs in the current year you know this this Evergreen report was um created they gave recommendations and and even though you know we're now in 2024 these recommendations are still becoming an issue and and we have to learn from the past and we have to be able to fix these problems so my question is this money from the previous two years where is it it's still it hasn't been spent that money is a roll over from um vacant positions uh with positions that um staff was trying to hire in fi for the past couple of years but unsuccessful to find candidates um and as a result the money rolled over uh year after year for those vacant positions um the ESC team and I've since talked and they have a better strategy throughout the year instead of waiting on um having this large lump sum of money from a carry over at the end of the year every quarter they'll be looking at the budget see if a a vacant position was filled if it was not filled a different strategy will be used to expend those funds to ensure that we're providing a high level of service um one of the one of the things about our district although we've lost enrollment uh in many areas our um ESC population has steadily um increased uh which from Ida funds we increase uh allocation for Ida funds and so over time we're trying to um fill those positions but if we can't we have uh secondary U Services that we can provide with those funds on a on a looking at it on a quarterly basis instead of on an annual basis like in the past okay and the Florida Department of Education you know it states that the Ida funds may be used to pay the excess costs of special education related services for students with disabilities and so so thank you Dr heern um you know moving forward and the board we you know we really need to look make sure we're looking at this and making sure that money is being spent because at the end of the day it affects our students our most vulnerable population our students with special needs and we want to make sure that we are connecting their services and they're actually getting them in in the classroom M zon thank you for that that was what I was trying to get at earlier so if we look at what the spend Authority is in every quarter there's money not being spent that was my question could we use that money for the slps that are contracted and then we could free up that money for other things so that was where I was trying to go with the questioning we kind of cut it short that we we don't traditionally but if we can we should be and not just slps I think Miss LOM made a mention of audiologist right Physical Therapy OT we have all of these things that we I think speech we don't contract all out but I think PT and OT we do so anyway I think there's a way to use those monies out of Ida so we could free up our general fund money and then we can do some of the things we're talking about here increasing salaries and where do we find the funds that we're looking for to make sure all of our employees um are getting what we can give we'll never be able to give them what they deserve but what we can give them if we free this up so I would ask that as we're looking every quarter if it's possible to pay that bill then for slps with Ida that we do that and free up our general fund money so let me just clarify the I the idea funds cannot be used for that purpose it can supplement but not supplant so if you are already allocated in a general fund to provide a service or hire a teacher for certain reasons you can't supplant that you so if I was uh just throwing a hypothetical out there if I was uh allocated out a general fund to let's say hire a reading teacher um I have to use those funds for that reading teacher I can't just use the funds that were allocated for the re reading teacher and go use it for something else and then use this categorical fund to pay for that that's supplanting that we can't do that but in the world of the idea when it comes to SLP Services we can go above and beyond just like um they described earlier we didn't provide a level of service for a certain group of kids two years ago and so they already are allocated SLP funds in general fund but we need to go above and beyond to recover the services that we didn't provide two years ago we can use it for that so that's why that money is still sitting there because we can't use it for a lot of different things so uh that's why the ESC staff is going to budget differently for the idea funds to make sure we're exhausting those funds throughout the year instead of the huge rollover that we' experienced the past couple of years um so just a uh a long answer for probably a short question is no we can't use it for that y I will just say it's very confusing because when so what can can someone be very specific and it can be a followup we don't have to we Prov follow what can we actually use funds for so that we are have a better knowledge of what that looks like yeah we can provide a followup to the board just to make sure everybody has a clear understanding perfect Dr Zan can you repeat the motion we're going to vote Yes um uh to approve the additional spending authority of $19 million between uh for the agreement between Schoolboard of barard County and the 22 vendors listed in the background section of this executive summary districtwide and direct the superintendent to bring us a plan to hire Schoolboard slps in 3 years or less that plan should be presented to the board within six weeks roll call school board members ala no Altin no fam no fog hly no Hixon yes holes yes lardy yes rert yes Zan yes passes 54 okay yep all in favor as the all in favor of the item as amended say I I those opposed say no no no no alaf no Alon no fam no fogi um item passes may have a motion and second on item number one chair before we go to the next item are we going to go 1 through 16 except for the ones we've already included correct thank you very much yes item one is moved moved by Zan second by second Leonard public comment we have several I'm going to call two at a time if you can make your way up to the podium please Arthur Brown Sandra sh frier are the first two speakers good morning morning morning my name is Arthur Brown I work for theil James education center for 40 years and I'm here today to support the recommendation for 5 day of suspension for Dr sha khita Ro the documentation presented to you today does not include the multitude of violations against School Board policy by Dr sha R it would take a all day if I did that not to mention her unprofessional behavior against personnel and staff I took too many chances and often placed myself in compromising positions professionally to perform tasks and I ran errands that were personal questionable and not in my job description there's a culture of Rel retaliation that exists throughout the district I chose to speak at a time when I knew my future was Secure my retirement was set in motion and I would not have to be worried about being retaliated against as head facility service person I gave the district the best of me I was resourceful and I went beyond to call the duty to perform tasks and I did it with pride if you ever step foot at lenil James education center you will see where I took pride in what I did my work Des made me respected throughout the district therefore it would be out of character for me to come here and lie or say anything un false against Dr sha Ro the recommended 5 days suspension to me is far too lenient in what I had to deal with but it's better than nothing actions have consequences and Dr sh Ro action warrants a level of reprimand the work condition she placed on staff was appalling the verbal abuse the nonwork rated demands the disregard of policy is unacceptable and to do nothing what kind of message would we send thank you thank you next speaker Mr suan uh Bel coming up Sandra yeah this I'm Sandra sheer I thought it was going to be in a different order because I'm actually counsel for Dr sha Ro but if you want me to speak first I will but I'd prefer if she spoke before I did I don't think there's an issue with that Carly sha okay um Mr uh he's going to give me his three minutes please come to the microphone and say your name uh Community leader Pastor Jimmy Witherspoon I would like to relinquish my 3 minutes to uh Dr schaw 6 minutes good morning I am here because there are overwhelming facts in my case that say that I should not be here I will address the three charges before you first failure to conduct a BTA I did not fail to conduct a BTA because it is not my responsibility to do so initiating a BTA is the responsibility of the assistant princip and team you will not find my name as the initiator of a BTA in this District on one BTA the employee didn't ask me to initiate a BTA she asked the AP she copied me and the then Cadre director on the email sent to the AP I followed up asking for details that were necessary to successfully conduct the BTA because my responsibility is to look at the BTA to make sure that it complies with all district distri policies the employee admits in her own testimony to the detective that she did not respond to my numerous emails and calls asking her for that additional information so in summary the email requesting a BTA went to the AP and the Cadre director and I were copied yet I am the one here facing discipline when it was not my responsibility to conduct I also categorically deny the second charge of verbally abusing a student and threatening that student and the facts that are presented in that case do not support that it even happened this Alle alleged event supposedly occurred on December of 2022 but it was only reported nine months later on August of 2023 there is not one record in the on the school campus of this happening anywhere in the school files the student in question was one that I recall with discipline incidents that occurred almost daily sometimes multiple times a day with multiple teachers the detective mentions that he and she talked about the incident off audio before going on the record the adult who reported this alleged event had motive I had disciplined her for ridiculing an ESC student her typewritten statement does not match the handwritten one the accuser said said the student wrote a statement but the student never said she wrote a statement and the investigator failed to ask her about it the student's alleged statement could not even be located in the student's discipline file the detective failed to question people who were reportedly involved and in the vicinity when this incident occurred the AP does not recall the the incident happening at all he testified that he never heard me make this statement and has never heard me use profanity at student or anyone he testified that it is the students at lanir James who cursed adults in security has to be called to remove them there were additional holes in this particular accusation but I will go on to the third the third charge involves wine on campus I am a member of a wine club and during my events people place orders that are collectively taken and delivered to me the warehouse is near the school and I errored in having an order brought to campus and placed in my car but on the date in question School hadn't begun there were no students on campus the wine was placed directly in my car and driven home I was not thinking at the time about the policy but over the years I have seen Wine and Spirits brought onto school campus and gifted to people during the holiday season no one intends to violate policy no one drinks alcohol on campus this is the same in my situation in fact the employee who reported this gifted me a bottle of wine for Christmas in December of 2022 brought it in onto the campus and put it on my office table I even saw alcohol gifted to a director for Christmas during the time that I was at lale manners Elementary School when I was removed from school that particular director thanked the person and took it to the car my last point is about process violations I was denied student documents citing fura yet the district used the same or similar types of documents from students when presenting its case against me student information could have been redacted from these documents that I requested and given to me on September 6th 2024 just about a few weeks ago I repeated the same public records request for the denied documents for my case along with some additional documents to date I have not received one document to help me prepare for this meeting these violations of my duty process rights break state and federal laws that guarantee me the right to face my accusers and to build an adequate defense I was also demoted to a lower position at the end of the school year which is considered discipline for these reasons I am asking this board that this entire matter be thrown out and I be made whole this has gone on for over a year and I have I have been through enough thank you thank you next speaker Sandra are you coming up to speak now um as she's making her way up uh ARA wiberly and kimly moror will be the next two speakers thank you ARA wiberly I'm going to be yielding my time to Sandra shra six minutes I'm GNA first no that's that's I'm going to go first wait what 3 minutes thank you wait hold on who are you giving your time to she's giv it to me but Kim MN is born first okay no no so just we'll have to do that again you can go first and then we'll say it again no no go Kim okay all right okay all right Kimber bur mohorn um Margate Florida um I stand before you to talk about a young lady um Dr sha R Who Um I worked for and um she values and embodies intelligent toughness fairness love and compassion for children and her staff I had a privilege of um working for her and um teaching her daughter um many people um misunderstand her love for children and um don't quite understand that her toughness comes from her heart we work every day with children and they need the best of us and one thing that I must say that she absolutely brought out the best in her staff I can remember a time in 2010 when my husband got sick and I had to leave the district um Dr Shaw R was at the hospital with us for 9 hours um praying and encouraging us I want you to understand that not everybody likes accountability and the one thing that I can stand here and say as a teacher that when you did your job she was for you when you did not do your job she held you accountable for it a lot of that is missing in this district and the reason why because a lot of leaders are afraid to be leaders and actually put things in place and follow District policy because of the retaliation I think that looking over all of these things um there is a problem there is something that's not clean in the milk when it comes to the first um set of um violations that were brought before you and now there's a different number of violations I think that you should really take your time and look over this and say no to this five days because you you're you're basically punishing her twice you've demoted her you've taken money away from her and then you're going to give her 5 days suspension when just a a couple of weeks ago you were able to give someone else everything they they did and they violated the law so please reconsider thank you next speaker Miss Wimberly if you want to give up your time to miss fer ARA Wimberly excuse me I'm yielding my time to Miss Sandra Sher FR six minutes good morning everybody the last name is Sher FR it's just so it's shouldn't be so hard it's Sher FR it's like very very French good morning everybody my name is Sandra Sher good morning board good morning superintendent I'm here on behalf of the issue with um Dr sha Ro um you know there was definitely some due process violations that as we said that took place and I want to make I just want to I hope I should say I hope that the board actually took an opport Unity to look at all of the documents that was involved in this case the investigation and the file itself was over 300 Pages we provided a summary that was about 30 pages to the board I hope you actually took a time to look at it and not only just the one-sided investigation that was provided um by the superintendent um as Dr Sho had previously stated she with previous Council had made a request for public records most of which wasn't provided I myself um requested those documents they were not provided even though they were also o used in investigation against her so we have a constitutional right to confront our accusers and that wasn't given here right like if someone and statements are supposed to be cross-examined there was no opportunity to do that after the investigation that took almost nine months for them for the district to prepare for um Dr sh was only given 20 minutes to respond with mind mind you not having the documents that she needed in order for her to properly respond to the people who who accused her which she was not aware of who they were and she just had to basically respond to this blindly but even with that being said she still was able to provide sufficient information that would that puts you in a position where there's no other conclusion for you to draw is that this matter should complete should be dismissed in its entirety right um Dr Sho maintained that the um if you look at the the case where there was an accusation that was made that she said something against the students there were five individuals that was U that was interviewed in that three of them said they heard no such thing happen the one person who brought the accusation forward is a person that was disciplined for doing that and more and and did not say anything at the time if this in fact happened which we maintain never did happen didn't say anything until nine months later and also and understand that Dr sha was allowed to stay in the school the entire Academic Year so if she was a threat to a student or causing all of these issues how is it that she was allowed to stay at the school the entire school year without incident also remember Dr char 35-year employee of the district that have exceptional um ratings for her work and it's not until this these when we have employees who all have motives which was outlined in the document that I presented to the board and the superintendent as to why it is that these statements are being made generalizations and statements that are not supported by facts should not be um um accepted and particularly to put a person in position where their reputation is at harm they're going to lose pay which they've already which she's already um um lost pay we if we just go into um so that's with the the issue with the student when we talk about the the BTA as stated there that is a a function typic of the assistant principal Dr shroy has been an administrator in the district over 26 years and she's never had to initiate a a a BTA what happened here the the statement was sent to the assistant principal because that's what the employee understand the process to be for them to do a BTA they didn't do it however somehow they it was leap frogged over the assistant principal and now Dr sha R is being held accountable for something that wasn't even her responsibility to do and say she did want to do it she reached out to the employee um she wouldn't respond to emails or phone calls and that is also documented in the sworn statement that she gave to the officer in this case so for for that there's no way that that charge can be substantiated based on the record that you have in front of you if I hope you all took a time to actually look at that right and then when we when we deal with the issue with alcohol we always um as attorneys you think of the spirit of the law right the spirit of the law is really that you don't want people coming to work lit you don't want people to come to work drunk that's that's why you do it you don't want people come consuming alcohol at work that's what the spirit is the law about this was really not about people putting things in their in in in their trunks right and then also what you're going to start you're setting up a a space where at all the Christmas parties people going to start taking pictures or they going to go through their file and look at all the pictures who people who were gifted alcohol on campus and then you're going to have a Floodgate Of of of accusations that you're going to have to deal with considering this is what this is about it was a time where there were no students on campus there was no harm no foul and I can talk about alcohol um students being exposed to alcohol in situations that were absolutely inappropriate and doesn't R rise even close to the level of what we have in this case so we really at the dist when I say we I mean the district really need to think about is this the hill that you actually want to die on when you're talking about wanting to discipline somebody for something that's being done we acknowledge that was a laps in judgment but in no way does any of what you have in front of you rise to a level where there should be any additional punishment in terms of 5ay suspension one of the things that you need to understand is that um demot a demotion is discipline right a demotion is discipline Dr shro was disciplined by being demoted from her position again after 26 years that administrator exceptional recommendations but as a result of allegations that she did not get to confront her accusers she was given another position you're allowed to do these things however you're not allowed to do them and retaliate when you do these things so with all that being said and with all the information that you have in front of you there's no way there should be any recommendation of any 5-day suspension on the behalf on for Dr sha Ro thank you for your time our final two registered speakers Mr Bobby Henry and Mr vente thrower thank you good morning my name is Bobby Henry publisher of the Westside Gazette newspaper I wasn't going to speak because I was torn between what I'm seeing at the board and what I see is happening to Mich show my comments are this I don't want to see the board continue to make mistakes you yourselves mentioned earlier that you made made some mistakes when he was dealing with Mr Witherspoon I would hate to see those same mistakes made with an employee of the caliber of Miss Shaw I met Miss Shaw almost 30 years ago when she was a principal and my grandson was at her school my grandson was experienced some difficulties because of some home issues he was very outspoken lot of energy anger and couldn't deal with his anger appropriately I was called to the school along with my daughter to assist her in dealing with my grandson when I got at that school I met this vibrant Stern caring person who was Miss Shaw and in her office when she was dealing with my grandson she did it from a mother's perspective of of a child who needed some Stern discipline she did not hide she did not try to uh covert her actions because she came from her heart and my grandson actually needed it so I said to her at that time thank you so very much and if you had to do it again do it now here we are attempting to hold somebody accountable to some actions that can't can even be presented in a manner that's fair to her there have been some allegations there have been some statements made and those statements and allegations that have been made came from a personal perspective and one that was not conducive to what this school system needs I stand here as a parent and as a community activist and leader to ask this board to rethink their position on a 5day suspension on something that couldn't even be validated from the days before Miss Ro has given her life to this school system and has taken on the role of a parent she has a newborn child that she adopted and she's now taken care of that child and has lost money that has been I um misdirected and punished losing her position to be placed in a situation that's non-conducive to what this school system needs thank you so I ask you again to reconsider and not leave a tarnished impression on who you are thank you thank you next speaker Mr throwers our last register speaker um board members Vincente throw pumpo Beach Mr Henry said it all um I'm just the chairman Deacon and I'm going to say what he just said you know growing up in this County I'm 45 when we had principles our principles back in those days could paddle us they held us accountable to our Behavior some of y'all don't believe in that type of discipline but hey it made some of us and many of us accountable and grown adults today that we that we are leaders in this in this city in this County what is wrong with accountability and what message do you all send today to all the other principles first of all several superintendents prior to the current superintendent demoted an African-American woman along with several other African-Americans they took that on the chin all of them took it on the chin then you come back now and you want to slap them again when some else is before you what are you telling us every time something what are you telling the principles that they cannot be leaders in their school districts in their I mean in their schools I just wonder sometime does this board think about the decisions that you make and how it affects every other principal and how they view your policy decisions because guess what they're the ones they're the soldiers that are in these schools and when you do it to them you're doing it to everybody else and last part about what I'm about to say you already have heard everyone here today that came from the community where is the true opposition to the to the chair to the superintendent to say that what you all are about to do to her is fair I sometimes ask myself how many you all have family members in the school district how many of you all have family members in any position or children in the school district we sometime get represented by individuals that don't have a whole bunch of stake in it and therefore you make decisions and then think that at the end of the day when we come down here at 10:00 and then lately the chair been having meetings at 7:00 no 8:00 9:00 M Madam chair we want to come down here and express ourselves but this takes a lot out of us to come come out here and do this and we do it because we love this school district we appreciate the board but board members we ask that you all appreciate our opinion when it when we come down here to you all this is how we feel about those who are leading our children you all should not go along with this and honestly I will ask the superintendent to take this off the table and reconsider his position thank you thank you for member comment Mr Olson yes thank you madam chair um happy to kick off questions conversations and emotion um Kim you did not tell me and you tell me a lot and we didn't talk on this topic uh that you uh worked for uh Dr sha R so that was actually interesting to me um and yes you are right um I'll speak for myself cuz I'm only one of the current nine for two years I have been Mr a not Austin but accountability and I haven't been afraid to speak up and speak out when I see something that's right and when I see something that's wrong Mr thrower I do have family in the district there are some in District leadership in this building who I tell to keep quiet I've told them that for two years I have folks on different School sites all around this County Deacon Henry I respect you I hear you and I appreciate your words and your story I think I'm one person up here who actually has dealt with investigations um both professionally and from a board perspective I know that a demotion is considered discipline I know that when you reduce someone's salary that is considered discipline I've dealt with the EOC f c HR AB B CDE e f g it bothers me that someone could be and I'm going to use the words of one of you and I wrote some copious notes considered a threat that actually stood out to me let me start with our general counsel related to this matter has the individual before us been demoted or a salary adjustment based on what's before us today miss Pista um I'm going to defer to Miss Moore on this item as you know the Miss who um Maya Moore oh sorry yes sorry y i okay because as you know this is an item that is uh coming from the superintendent so um he has separate councel and I councel the board um this you know so just to make that separation she will be responding to questions related to anything related to this case or the investigation from the superintendent perspective correct but I can you you are still the board's attorney absolutely in this administrative matter yes okay so let's let's go there perfect you hear me hello better Maya Mo with the office of the general councel um Dr sha R was involuntarily demoted due to reorganization so upon information and belief there was a a new position that was approved on a prior agenda item and she was um assigned to fill that position during the reorganization that took place over the summer which I voted against so let's go backwards so I want to understand and I know that you do report to the general council is that correct yes I do and I know technically although this is a separation of roles so I won't get to that I thought anyway so anyway we'll get back to that wall we have a wall so there is I have had no discussions with her about understand I got it I just I'm also in the public domain so I wanted to be clear that we do have two attorneys that are District employees although one is the board's attorney and one in this case is representing the superintendent yes sir is that fair okay correct um so to the superintendence attorney let me make sure I got that right Council um in this regard um is a demotion considered discipline is a salary adjustment considered discipline so under the esab handbook there are two types of demotions there is one due to an administrative reorganization where there is no change in salary for 6 months so she would be receiving the same salary now currently um and there is another form of demotion due to discipline according to the handbook so they do make a differentiation between a reorganization demotion and a disciplinary SL performance related demotion so you that's according to the handbook I understand you would not classify the prior board action that I actually objected to you wouldn't classify that as a demotion and you would not classify that as impacting salary I want to follow you first they are both demotions but there are two types of demotions there's one for reorg and there's one that is disciplinary in nature so you're agreeing that it's a demotion you agree that it is discipline in nature or you don't agree with that statement well based on the the definition in the handbook the disciplinary demotion has a salary impact immediately this did not so I think I recall there was a salary impact to this individual before so if you're saying if there was a salary impact that that does indicate discipline I think you also agree that discipline has occurred for this individual already so I may want to if you could maybe just look back at that and I'm going to just Reas that question sure okay so at present um her discipline is a recommendation the board has not taken action on any no no no I got it I you're talking about the I know was before us I'm actually going backwards this board voted that I objected to and I don't know I I do recall who else objected um on that reorg on that topic and my question I want to repeat the individual before us has the person been disciplined yes or no I think you've acknowledged or maybe I'm trying to get you to acknowledge because I know the answer but we're in a public domain has there been a salary impact to this individual so demotion salary impa impact is this considered discipline those are kind of the overarching questions so on the salary impact I would probably defer to the superintendent for that fact ual answer but on the demotion um based on the information I received this was the part one of two versions of demotion this was the reorg related we agree on demotions Mr superintendent I defer to you and I know our chief people officer is somewhere and I think we all clearly remember the agenda item so my question is if the item that came before us before was there a salary impact that's kind of the question I'm asking just for the record in this setting in line with Council there's going to be a future salary impact U because it is number one of two which she just spoke about which she maintains her salary for I think a u minimum of uh or maximum of 6 months so I want to say probably in December her salary will revert back to what the role that she was approved to to um be in um in our reorg meeting so let me restate what you just said and HR please sorry Mr Chief people office officer the board voted on a reorganization that included a change of position and salary impact for the employee before us is that correct yes and that position change and salary impact will occur when the position change started July one the salary impact won't be till December cck MTH wrong January 1st January 1st got it all right so the board has this board um has already taken action on this employee before us we've demoted the employee we've disciplined the employee I want to keep I want to make sure the superintendent attorney agrees with my language here we've disciplined the employee uh the board voted to reduce the salary of the employee um and this is considered discipline I just want to go back Mr Austin um the Sal the change of position which affected the employee salary during it was for reorganization not for discipline well I I I you know there's a there's a difference here I know from your side as a CEO of the organization you can reorder any uh you know parts of the organization and I know there's another one coming right which if I can add which she was not the only employee in that reorganization that got a title change and therefore a reduction in their salary I'm only talking about administrative complaint for Dr Cara Char Ro so so in this case uh Mr superintendent this person before me has already been disciplined this person has already uh been demoted by this District I'm I'm asking questions so I know that's not for me um and this has been stated on the record by the superintendent's attorney discipline salary reduction demotion so now that we've passed that when is the first time uh Madam chair maybe the school board clerk that this item came to the board Dr CU we've been on we've been on the roller coaster the Carousel of crazy for a long time so when they first come to us call Mr ASO do you know when we brought this to the board yeah we're imp Plantation so I'm trying to help someone yeah if it was imp Plantation it would be July is that July got it thank you Vice chair so so from July forward so did the board vote on additional protections for another individual at that July meeting do we recall that Mr superintendent and or the clerk who would understand what the board voted on at that time will you say additional Pro protections did the board make a motion dealing with another employee at the time on that July meeting that provided additional protections against an employee who also faced discipline at the time that's my question Mr azero can you uh summarize any I believe there were no we had two main employees that were brought up at the July meeting both were tabled I believe at that meeting to the next meeting the first one what was the outcome of the next meeting for um that other employee which which Dr sha world was tabled again and then the other employee received the 10day suspension and what was that motion because that wasn't the only thing of part of the motion so I would actually love for our school board Clerk to pull the official record because the school board made a public motion that not only included what you just said Mr Chief people officer but I recall this board and the maker of the motion providing additional protections along with the seconder of the motion of an employee at the time so I would love for the school board clerk to give me that official board action because I want to make something similar I want to see if we're going to be consistent today um because I smell uh some Union related stuff that's been involved which I'm very familiar with um and some party stuff that's been involved for these last several weeks and but I'm going to say it and I'll let folks dance around it and see how they respond but I would love for that Madam chair while I have the floor if the school board clerk can tell me what motion was made by this board so while I wait for that let me go on to the second part this is also clearly another step and I know we haven't gotten to item 16 yet Mr auditor as we deal with transparency this district has been plagued with this for years not responding to public records is a no no I'm going to repeat again to my general counsel and I know it's not your responsibility but not responding to public records requests is a no no okay I've already dealt with it 14 days ago and I'm still dealing with it but I'll wait to item 16 but if the person before us in this administrative complaint is also dealing with the same issue and she can't get the same information that I actually spent the last several weeks looking at that's a problem but I know all nine of us Council and Madam chair We Believe In fairness at least that's what we State when we're on the campaign Trails or not we believe in being transparent right as n board members who fall under a a public body that believes in doing the right thing not giving an individual before us the same information that the superintendent and team has when making a decision general counsel is wrong and if eight people don't hear that shame on them due process forget about process this is this is part one of part two and I can't wait for the part two on item 16 do process transparency you can't give me the same records that you have that I can review so I can at least respond to and that's what nine of us believe is fair Madame chair my motion is to reject my substitute motion is to reject the superintendent's recommendation based on all of these things that I've stated for the last however many minutes it's wrong it's not fair it's not transparent this district has already clearly demoted reduced the salary and impacted an employee I wasn't one of them when it occurred weeks ago second and I hope that this board does the right thing today thank you second of the motion been move by hold on Mr move by alustin second by fogan holy public comment on the motion thank you for um putting the motion forward thank you so much I too want to say thank you but I also want to bring up the fact that I have a public request as well it goes back to August the 1st I resented it and asked for another one on August the 2nd I have yet to receive any information on that public request would you please forward that to me sir Lori alaf browardschools.com thank you we're still in the morning good morning again I do I support tor's motion and I also you know you um Dr Charro should be protected her job should be protected her salary should be protected there definitely needs to be more transparency I know I sent for several public record requests not only just since the month of September I sent some months ago never got them it's very is definitely problematic and we need to do better and she this definitely should be dismissed thank you for your time um I just want to Echo and and thank you uh Mr Austin for your your uh motion and the second I just want to Echo I have been working for the district for 35 years for 35 years I have never been through anything like this I've never been accused of anything like this what you hear from people about how I lead is that it is how I lead I understand board policy I understand what I'm supposed to do and yes I do hold people accountable for the work that this board asked for schools and principles to do and no I don't think that my salary should be impacted because I did nothing wrong and as it relates to the reorg I do understand Mr superintendent and I respect you I do understand that you have a right to do whatever it is that you do but when what when your right to do what you do has impacted me so negatively and my family I have to fight and I hope that you don't take my fight as any way in disrespecting you good morning uh board to each and every one of you to um uh Mr Austin's and the recommendation uh the emotion I stand in support as a community leader as a pastor uh but not only that but just uh a person that knows uh Dr sha Ro uh she's also um has always uh been a very uh gentle person uh very Stern in in her delivery and how she does things uh but I love the accountability uh that she brings to uh this district and so uh I Rise to stand in support of this motion and uh look forward to see uh what the the district is going to do as well um as it relates to um the public request I want to stand publicly and say as well um I have not received any public requests um documentation as it relates to um my case as well thank you please forward that request me too sir thank you madam chair um Mr charson I was I know I I I know I made the motion but I do want to hear the result from the school board clerk on the motion that was made so I have it I can read to the record Mr svin all right motion was made by Miss Hixon uh seconded by Miss Leonard and Carri to suspend Mr Norton for 10 days Place her in a lateral position and that she does not stay in the information management uh technical position could you repeat the motion one more I'm sorry repeat that one more time short um so the motion was made by Miss Hixon seconded by Miss lard and Cary to suspend Miss Norton for 10 days Place her in a lateral position and that that she that she does not stay in the information management technical position you can add me back in the queue Madam chair thank you Miss hion thank you I would like to say to the superintendent we're hearing over and over again about record requests so we there is a time frame I think they give that they have to reply so if that's not happening we need to see accountability in the district on why that's not happening and make sure that they're getting their records um in a timely manner for whatever our policy says is the time frame um and I just also want to apologize olz to Dr Shaw the last time I spoke I was reading off of a paper that was given to us and I believed that what I was reading was something that was substantiated since then um even after asking a number of times are you sure and told yes I was given by the press a paper that you got at home that we that I personally did not receive and that it is in the packet now so I do want to apologize to I said it publicly so I want to apologize publicly for reading things that were unsubstantiated but I did believe at the time that I was reading them that I was accurate in what I was saying so I do just want to take the opportunity publicly to apologize to you so thank you if if I can add on the public records request I'm looking at the two public records request that was just mentioned uh one is actually closed uh Mr Henry um says they completed 8:28 so if you haven't uh I'll find out where it was sent to um and Mr Witherspoon your records request um was requested on September 13th and that record request is still pending to get the information that you've asked for um so thanks for bringing that to our attention I've also asked the public records request to send me weekly reports of what's been requested by the end of the week so I can keep up because I hear these concerns all the time about folks not getting records that they've requested so I've did my due diligence just to make sure I'm looking at those reports myself so I can pull them up when needed and so um we'll find out where your records were sent Mr Henry and yours are still pending Mr Withers thank you any other board member comments Dr holess thank you thank you madam chair so I have a few questions uh Dr hurn regarding the item before us um based upon what you've heard so far is your recommendation still the same yes sir okay and um there are three uh concerns before us do you um consider all three to be still relevant based upon what you've heard today yes there's nothing in the documentation that has um resulted in me changing my recommendations okay so I have a few questions on each of the items here in the recommendation um before I get to that uh was any demotion of Dr Shaw uh in terms of her position disciplinary in nature in the past no sir as I stated before we have several employees that got titled and position changes um just like Miss Charro did so okay so I am going to go to count three on page five let me catch up um let me just make sure okay so it mentions here inappropriate conduct in verbal exchange with students um on an item uh number 28 line item it says during the verbal exchange with TC which is the student sha R stated to the student that she would mop the floor with with her with her um was was this were there witnesses that were there that confirmed that this was said or was this reported by the student only without Witnesses Dr let me um have Mr azero and whatever staff he needs that help with that investigation they could provide details okay or Miss Moore Maya Mo with the office of general counsel um I believe detective dimler is here but in the investigative report there was a corroborating witness Miss striggles who um testified under oath to having witnessed that exchange okay um I'm sorry you mentioned there was one witness one witness in the report that testified under oath to having witness The Exchange yes okay so um so for the record The Exchange that took place between Dr Shaw and this particular student there was one witness that um ascertained these words were said correct yes one witness and the student herself yes okay so um is it normal when staff is um having um allegations of um verbal exchange inappropriate verbal exchange um that is there a protocol for number of witnesses based upon prior um incidents similar in nature Dr Miss Moore or whatever supporting staff you need thank you Mr superintendent I would ask that the detective um come forward and discuss his methodology Madame shair if I may Batista um so I I just want to make sure that the board understands that at this juncture the board has delegated the authority to try the case and evaluate the evidence to the division of administrative hearings so um I understand that the board also has the ability to change the penalty at this point but um having said that this is not the place to um listen to Witnesses um figure out you know all that happened basically you have to take the complaint as true whatever is written in the complaint as true and if you feel that what is in the complaint is um Rises to the level of uh penalty or discipline then you would move that forward to the due process process which would be to send it over to the division of administrative hearings um for um to be heard by an by an alj an administrative law judge and then that person would make the evaluation of the evidence would uh weigh um and the the testimony of the witnesses and that's when the due process would take place having said that as I said before you have the ability to based upon what is before you um make a change or you know ask for a change as to the uh penalty okay Madame chair I fully understand that what's before us we are taking the information as as factual um however I think looking at comparatives of what has been done before in discipline other employees would help to guide us in making a decision about this particular employee so the questions that I'm asking is not based on whether or not what's before us is factual or not true or true it's looking at the degree of uh punishment as well as comparative from similar incidents to make a determinant determination if this is uh fair to go ahead thank you thank you for that clarification okay so um I have another question on count three if an employee is determined to have an appropriate conduct do we have any um do we have any pass uh consequence of such employees as examples to which which we can determine what number of days were given to such employee Dr um I think we went through this exercise um earlier this summer where we provided the board a list of staff that was disciplined I want to say over three or five years I can't remember the time frame but what we all agreed on um at least from my standpoint is there was inconsistency across the board of how employees were disciplined in in in the past I think the only consistency was around btas where there was a automatic one-day suspension um so I can't speak to this to um superintendents or leaders of the District of the past but I can only um you know talk about my level of consistency that we're going to create moving forward okay so at the end of all of this uh Dr heurn I'm going to make a motion regarding um consistency in how we um administer discipline uh I'd like to go to count number two which is failure to conduct a behavior threat assessment it indicates here that Linda Walker Behavior specialist um felt that she was threatened by a student this was first brought to the assistant principal John Hudson according to what I have um who had the initial responsibility of the BTA would it be the assistant assistant principal seeing that it was brought forth to the AP first or would it be Dr Shaw seeing that as the the the concern of threat escalated uh that um Miss Walker then sent an email to both John Hudson and Dr Shaw so since the initial contact was John Hudson and then subsequently an email was then sent when Linda Walker felt that the threat was more significant who had the responsibility of the BTA would it be the AP or would it be Dr Shaw than um I can't specifically remember all that I've read in here but there like you said there were subsequent actions a teacher emailed an assistant principal about a specific concern the teacher escalated the concern um with more information about feeling threatening to the to the principal um and also the principal acknowledge that a BTA should should should have been done and it was not done okay uh so with the concern of threat do APS normally fill out btas as well as principles yes correct okay so if an AP receive a threat would that AP uh a concern of a threat would that AP be under obligation to do a BTA once a threat is received yes they will was an a was an BTA filled out by John Hudson um no it was not okay um I'd like to go to the the count one um alcohol on school property what page are you on M um on page two okay so on page two and and three rather it indicates that alcohol was delivered on on campus uh that Dr sha uh instructed uh Mr Brown to put it in her car was there any student on campus when that a card um I'm not sure I would have to I'm trying to find the page um I'm on page three I think our pages are a little bit okay school had not started yet okay so it was in the morning correct so when school had started was the alcohol still on the ground okay hadn't start okay got it it hadn't started in general um when anyone is found with alcohol on school grounds whether it is for the intention of transferring it somewhere else what's the usual punishment I'm not sure what the usual punishment would be in the past have we had incidents of that in the past and what I I would have to review documents of the past okay can they tell us by the time this is over and I'd like a second round please yeah I think we can find the records we sent to the board um early this summer okay thank you um so I'd like to go to policy 2400 and in that policy number five it states that all right all right never mind that wouldn't be applicable to what I was going to say um all right so my point is with the alcohol being delivered to the school is there a policy in regards to directing staff to do something for you for personal reasons during the work day because that's that's what occurred it wasn't like they did something to help or benefit the school it was to benefit the person so was and that wasn't in the report but that's what my thinking was why was that allowable Dr heern well not allowable but wasn't addressed um I don't I'm going defer to Mr batis or Miss I don't know the the exact policies off the back of my hand but I knew I do know that there's a policy about alcohol on school board premises right that's the 2400 but but my question is in regards to the the person the staff member who was directed to get the alcohol during work time that should never have occurred that was for that person was using that person for personal reasons it wasn't for actual for the school so is do we a poli regarding that M batia probably have to do some research on that one so I you know I can tell you that on um in paragraph 10 of the complaint that's one of the items that um you know these um employees charged with um it says you know on or about August 12th and during work hours you know she contacted another person you know that worked for her to um pick up the alcohol but okay but my my question is specific to is that in policy because this is one situation today we could hypothetically have you know whether it's a a school board member asking their secretary to um do something for you know their personal um benefit or superint tenant or another principal you know if it's not policy it needs to be in policy so that's my first question is it I guess it's not policy that we know of well um and we can research if there if there's a specific policy to that I think U more so you've asked a um a custodian um or facilities person to leave their campus to go pick up alcohol and bring that alcohol back to campus right I um this a high school principal I've sent custodians to go get gas for the lawnmower for that's for school purposes but um the large amount of alcohol that was picked up to bring on on the school grounds is definitely um called a question right so okay so I'm going to say a couple things one I believe that we we have and I think you addressed this Dr heurn we do have an issue with inconsistency of discipline and but you address that which I'm thankful for you know moving forward that there needs to be consistency in administering discipline yeah administering discipline so that's one two if there isn't a policy already there needs to be a policy in regards to an employee directing another employee to do something to personally benefit that person when it has no regard to um their their actions in their position or to benefit the school in some capacity Madam chair I mean that that would be you know misuse of their position I think that's something that um so is that in policy though I go back to the policy well it's it's not in in policy um that I'm aware of um but I know that is in in the law prescription too right in what law so it's uh um for one um you know misuse well it's in the code of uh conduct for the education professionals um they use of your of your position um um or you know using uh perhaps government resources for something that is not um appropriate okay so that all should have been put into this item because it is it is part of it is what happened there you know there was the misuse of their um position to ask somebody to go do something and then obviously it was also in violation of the the drug-free workplace policy and then my third point is the behavioral threat assessment we cannot afford to miss one behavioral threat assessment we cannot afford to have a principal not feel and I'm not saying that in this situation but that a behavioral threat assessment is not important it is vitally important that we make sure that every BTA is done and complete it in in thorough and and I know Brower County Public Schools we are the leaders in in btas you know after the tragedy at Marjorie stowman Douglas High School um but in this there is an issue with with the BTE the other thing I'd like to say is and and you know I know that there is there always seems to be more to the story that what the board is receiving and and needs to as our general counsel said take this information and make a decision about but I also um caution the board to constantly go against the superintendent's recommendation uh because today is this tomorrow is going to be something else and and and then you know we we have to be supportive of of the superintendent and his recommendations and the the staff's work that that goes and and puts on um this so miss Batista after the board votes what will be the the next step in the process you said there was a a DOA hearing correct so um as you are probably familiar with um because we have had those types of hearings before the board uh the board delegates the authority to the Department of uh division of administrative hearings um so then after that there is a hearing that takes place where evidence is adduced the witnesses give testimony that um administrative law judge would make the the determinations evaluating the evidence and weighing the evidence and The credibility of the witnesses and then would put together a recommended order that comes to the board at that point after the board uh receives the recommended order then both sides the attorney for the superintendent and the attorney for the employee have an opportunity to file exceptions to the recommended order and then those items come before the board and youve um act in your qua qua judicial capacity and you would make as a um as an Arbiter of that process you would make a determination um as to those exceptions and then issue a final order understood okay any other board member famam um yes Dr Zan thanks so much chair next a few questions I have uh pertaining to to this case um I understand that we have to make a decision based on the facts are presented here and to the chair's just most recent Point uh in principle I think the superintendent recommendations always are very sound and well thoughtful uh about it but I will also point out that by following the superintendent's advice over the past 10 years we've done very inconsistent consequences for Behavior so it's worthy for us and it's our statutory responsibility to review these recommendations and make sure that the facts um uh here are contained what we have before us today is one step in a very long process we have to accept the facts that are here uh I'm curious if the uh a person involved in this investigation has ever uh uh agreed to a 5day suspension Dr H Mr AO I think that answer is yes if I'm not mistaken terrific and was she advised by Council before she agreed to the 5-day uh suspension Mr AO oh go ahead Miss Moore yes Dr Zeman she did have prior counsel and there was a stipulation agreement entered into and did she sign the stipulation agreement yes she did given the evidence that is presented to us and given the process that we are standing in today to accept these things to be true I I can't imagine rejecting this recommendation uh when you add to the fact that a stipulation agreement was drawn up legal council was provided and it was agreed to prior to uh the prev School Board uh uh meeting and and speakers who spoke then and speakers who spoke today um and you know based on kind of the community standards for what we expect of school leaders we do not expect them to have alcohol on the campus ever the fact that some people have done that in the past does not excuse this we expect them to report BTA chair as you have mentioned no exceptions for that and we all know that there's no exceptions to those two rules the nation knows you don't bring alcohol on a school campus and bringing alcohol to lineer James in particular whether there students there or not is particularly uh Troublesome uh to the community I will follow another rule that I heard from a fellow colleague if you threaten one of our students I will do everything I can to make sure it never happens again and there is a witness to what happened this is not just hearsay this is something reported investigated witness came forward and said that a student was was threatened by one of our school leaders I cannot imagine rejecting this recommendation knowing that it's still got to go before an administrative law judge knowing that it's going to have to come back to us for a final decision I am going to uh plead that we move this forward with the with the uh superintendent recommendations and make sure that we tell the community that we don't believe the things reported in this investigation are acceptable for Bard County Public Schools thank you chair Miss Fam thank you let me go back what's really surprising thank you madam chair what's really surprising is um that we are living in a situation where certain things are approved and people look the other way without consequences then other things are disapproved and people zero in Target and focus on taking them down or giving them punishment that other people have walked away from and I I hate it I I hate it so I'm just going to give some analogies um we had someone come before us where um they admitted wrongdoing they said they did something wrong they said they do it again but yet board members here defended them getting the same pay it wasn't made by motion it was a statement made I want to make sure if this person's transferred they've received the same pay in addition that person was receiving back pay so where was the consequences there um part of that involved bullying which was alleged here which has been dismissed I saw and read that that the bullying was dismissed and the allegations that the student made that they were threatened one person sub substantiated that while three others said it never happened but that's admitted from the record here the other three adult Witnesses said it didn't happen so I think that's a really important and important and relevant issue um in the other instance we also had where um the person said that a conversation had taken place but yet I remember in reviewing the file the superintendent said he never he he didn't recall that conversation but yet that person was given the benefit of the doubt not the superintendent and there was no official letter any email or document substantiating that individual but she was given the benefit of the doubt I want to move forward because we need to compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges I know of a situation where elementary students were taken to a bar on a field trip was there any demotion no that was looked upon as favorably and as I recall a newspaper article quoting saying I'd like to do this annually was there any back pay taken I don't know I don't remember that punishment being levied uh was that person uh salary reduced no not at all so how does this all seem fair across the table it seems to me that favoritism is dealt out generously and and I can tell you the two different categories I've come up with that seem to be treated more favorably than others but the problem is these kids were taken to a bar not where there's walking by a car where there's a a case of wine in the trunk this was a bar that's promoting drinking that has bottles up of alcohol on display for our elementary kids students is that right that no penalty was issued on that case in this case from what I'm hearing there was a lack of intent there was no open container no open bottle no alcohol in the school what this was is a delivery of alcohol put in a trunk and it goes for he said he said she said he volunteered she he said she asked him we'll never know the truth maybe it's something in between oh that happens all the time time but why is Dr Shaw not being given the benefit of the doubt like we did to these other two women why is that how many years 35 years she's with the school district but she doesn't get that luxury Dr Shaw's incident happened over the summer when the kids weren't in school the bar incident happened on a field trip where they were taken from the school was there open container laws then I didn't even think miners were allowed in bars especially without parents I don't know um in addition there was no alcohol actually consumed if you go through your policy it talks about the consumption of alcohol there was no drinking and the alcohol wasn't even in plain sight no one knew that it was in the trunk except for two people the fact that there weren't any students on campus or even scheduled to be there that day that's huge you've already penalized Dr Shaw you've demoted her and I looked up the the definition of demotion i' like a little more time continue um and it's downgrading it's penalizing and that's what you've already done in addition to what you've already made her go through this woman of 35 years who has an infant or five-month-old my God is you want to take five more days in suspend her this is like a slapd down in my opinion I'm questioned there was a a complaint about the bullying but yet it wasn't reported for nine months by the adult in the room that sends up a red flag so I want you to think about what you're asking us to do here and I want you to carry the same level of compassion and Equity that you did for the two prior people the two prior women that happen to to not be of dark color okay not to be an activist and show her the benefit of the doubt here so thank you thank you is it second round yeah Mr hon okay thank you madam chair uh now that we're on round two um so let me just what I was going to say on the round one I'm actually glad I saved it for round two you always got to listen to your colleagues I thought I actually heard the then principal accept responsibility that's actually what I wrote down on my round one because I agree with two of my colleagues and I think on everyone up here um the role of btas it is important and it really should be important in the goal standard to your point Madam chair to all of our school leaders so I do hear a takeaway second point if you got it wrong the first time do you get it wrong again I think the answer is no if you have an incomplete investigation in front of you do you accept it as the gospel I think the answer is no and I'm hoping that three other people will join me you've openly heard in this public discussion not fair not transparent withholding records previous District discipline to an employee pre previous District salary reduction to an employee a previous action by the board which is the district to this employee you've heard it in open Forum you got it wrong the first time but there are some up here who want to dig in the sand and say you know what I'm okay getting it wrong again I disagree with that 120% there was a prior agreement and I actually looked at all the documents and I'm actually appalled so now I'm going to go back to our Council who represents the board because I recall there being an agreement the agreement now coming off the table and going back to the drawing board to a new starting place that was not stated from the other Council representing the superintendent I want to be clear about that point yes there was a prior agreement agreed to from Dr Cara sha R who was represented by another Council that council is no longer representing Dr carlea sha R make sure I got this right in a public forum she has new counsel that agreement because I am the board member who said go back and have conversation nobody up here did that I did in that moment I then understood that both sides agreed we're now at a new starting place so let's talk about timeline because the other count the other side and I respect you I know you're representing the superintendent so this is a we're in a different space here okay and I respect you as well Dr superintendent I think that's the new term here but the other council did not give the factual timeline for for this board so we'll go backwards if we want to do that and I'm happy to do that because if I had not made a motion this board was going to rubber stamp the wrong decision by this District again we started for bullying if I recall three days maybe I'm going to let's see if I get this right because I think I know how to count I know how to add and subtract because I think we've added we've subtracted we've gone back and forth so let's see if we get this right it started at 10 days on one of them then I think it went down the two days you're my counil I can't look at anybody else and I can't talk to the superintendent because this one board member has actually voted no against several superintendents when they do wrong when their actions don't align to mine and I'm not going to stop doing that Council so let's talk about timeline let's talk about addition and subtraction bullying I thought was 3 days I think SIU let's see if I get this right it's somewhere it started at 10 days then it got reduced to two days and then somehow it got back up to five days let me make sure I got that timeline and that addition and subtraction right did I get that right councel you're my councel I can't ask the superintendent well you can you can ask the super intendent because um that's uh the review was done by HR and the superintendent right so I apologize done question so walk the board so let let me give you the let me give you the latitude to walk the board through a timeline that I think I understand well it started with a recommendation of X which included X number of days for these issues can we just turn the clocks off I mean this is for me this administrative complaint is important and I hope board members don't have a time limit here um then it went to a second recommendation of days for certain issues it got reduced which I believe was your reduction but I want you to clarify on the record correct for certain issues and then somehow it morphed back up again so it ignore my premise can you walk the board through the timeline the the number of days the issues and then I'll pause and and continue so I think um when this case was presented um as SP my days are all as you know with my job my days are all crunched up together but I know this is before June probably May when the case was presented and and reviewed I think the original recommendation of days were either 12 or 13 days um I suggested five they negotiated with their counsil with our Council came out uh with it agreed upon five that was signed um came to the board um I want to say that came to the board either late June or did that five include bullying it include everything okay all right keep going I want to it's a reason I'm asking these questions included everything y um and then it came to the board um which it was requested after M Shaw and um spoke to look into this further um fast forward the she acquired new Council um and so um in a sense the process kind of started over at the same time too because you have new Council thank you for acknowledging that yes um and um the recommendation for myself stood the same at 5 with the same factors correct so where would the 10day come from where did I get that from was there a 10day ever not for me yes um during the summer so I'm looking at St so there are a couple other numbers that's why superintend if if you don't mind let me just ask the chief people officer there are so many numbers and recommendations and decision points and involving different uh items before us can you walk us through that I think you understand what I'm asking I do so through the chair there originally three days for bullying that was done by the employee Labor Relations Department with the supervisors of the employee and then a separate 10-day recommendation from the PSC 3+ 10 3 plus 10 so the the Professional Standards committee recommended 10 10 days for the three counts that are in front of you today out of six so they found just cause for three no just cause for the other three recommended 10 days in the negotiation Miss Moore had with Dr sha roll's previous representative that's when it was shrunk down to a 5-day stipulated agreement and as a as a whole package M then that was kind of blown up at the one the board then directed you which passed 90 to go back and talk both sides let's give a clear timeline yes all right so make sure we understand we had a couple of meetings with Dr Chara R and her new representative M The Bullying part was um removed so the bullying was removed from the five day I want to follow your same number here it was 5 day that was included in the first stipulated agreement stipulated agreement right okay keep going now we're talk now when that was gone now we went back to the table so we looked at everything else so now we're back at 3 days for bullying so everything start again 3 days for bullying okay 10 days for the PSC recommendation right so we decided that the bullying we would remove those three days we're sitting at the 10 days per the PSC recommendation so it went from 3 + 10 to five back to 3+ 10 correct minus the three sitting at 10 all right recommendation is five got it all right so now that everyone hopefully understands that um my position hasn't changed Madam chair I recall the individual on the record accepting responsibility which a principal or a leader should for me that was important I clearly heard in a public forum District employees admit that this school district has already reduced the salary of Dr Cara sha R this school district has already agreed to demote Dr carlea sh this school district has already disciplined Dr carlea Charo in Open Session our employees have acknowledged that when you work for brow County Public Schools if you're not in the In Crowd you may not get all the public records and information that will help you defend yourself I heard that in this public forum which is a shame I also heard in this public forum that the investigation before me is not complete I've done investigations you ask questions from all sides you ask every party involved then you make some recommendation this was not done in this case again due process is questionable at best on one hand we go back and we say we're going to have both sides talk to each other we did I heard in this form that District employees admitted we started in one place we went to another place and then we rewind the tape to go back again that's wrong Miss Lisa Bailey yes I do ask you to go to Dunkin Donuts for me I'm a Duncan guy I believe there's a public purpose Mr superintendent because it helps me stay alert and sharp and asking every question I need to ask when I'm sitting up here I do admit to going went to Florida A&M University games yes I've gone to a few um games as well I won't talk about that game I think they allow alcohol on their campuses I've gone to a few other public institutions that allow alcohol unfortunately or fortunately on their campuses maybe it's for a fundraiser maybe it's a foundation event I've served on the University Board of Trustees that is the norm this was not that I'll conclude with this Madam chair Public public records requests failed transparency failed due process failed investigation being complete failed accepting responsibility I'll give Dr Cara Char R in a because that's what everyone on this board requires from all of our leaders I hope the board rejects all the information in front of them because everyone clearly has heard if you don't ask the right question the right way the first time you won't get an answer I'm used to that that that's wrong I will not support an administrative complaint and recommendation that clearly is not fair that clearly is not transparent that clearly shows that if you're not on the end crowd if you're not or if you are holding holding folks accountable if you're asking questions then shame on you I'm not going to support that I never have I never will thank you point of order thank you point of order um I just wanted to point out to the board that rule 2400 I'm sorry policy number 2400 rule three specifically STS out that the um each board employee must refrain from possession or use of including alcohol in the workplace so if uh Dr Shaw was working out of her trunk that day I'd like to at least get some background information on that because I don't see how this was in the workplace in the trunk of someone's car on a day when there's no students that's just me thank you on school campus M rubert this has gone round and round and round I'm not even going to say the c word Carousel I did uh that's what it feels a little bit like here however um I would I would like to ask um through the superintendent would what we're looking at today be considered Progressive discipline Dr har yes is there anything out of the ordinary that uh that you see in this that uh you would never put in another employees um Progressive discipline record um um if I understand the question correctly if there's anything going on in this case as far as discipline that I wouldn't repeat for another employee no that's just pretty consistent track that we're trying to create right and that's what I I wanted to ask about um also no I think I'm just going to leave it there um it's it's difficult to look at these we do have due process has it been bumped a few times yes I'm not saying on this case but um we have to let the process play out so the administrative law judge will kick it right back to us if if that's what is uh you know they find that's the fair moment and we will look at this information again and weigh it fairly again so thank you Dr holness Madam chair if there's anyone else who needs to speak because um they're printing out the information that I requested which is pertinent to what I'm going to talk about Mr Zen thank you I just have a quick question to make sure I understand regardless of what happens today this um item is still going to DOA is that correct correct correct okay no oh miss Batista okay that that's why I want to clear it up right no that that's that's not correct so if the board um if the board decides that there is no penalty attached to this um to the issues that are before you then it will not go to DOA because there is nothing for DOA to to try on the other hand if you um approve the item before you then then it would go the the um in the path that I described before okay thank you okay Dr okay so I'll begin Madam chair until we get that information I'm being told you're printing that information out for count one that I requested um but I'll go ahead and make some more points that I have until that information is forthcoming um so uh basically uh Dr heurn um just for iteration purposes would you um conclude that there are inconsistencies in terms of consequences for um certain um uh employee violation within the district or infractions yes um as I stated before I can confirm acknowledge put a stamp on it that there are inconsistencies and how dis employees were disciplined in the past um prior to me being superintendent okay so um on count three um uh based upon what the superintendent said um on all three counts there are existing inconsistencies in how employees are disciplined um with similar incidents um on count three um so that's one would be my concern and um and then after this motion should it pass or not pass um I have a motion that I'll be making so on count three um uh the only um count that was is consistent is the one about the BTA which is um standard uh one-day suspension okay so BTA is a standard one day that's the one that's pretty consistent thank you Dr heurn so on count one and three there's no existing consistency in how discipline is administered correct um not from what I've researched and looking at uh pass patterns understand and I know we have um a similar BTA concern that is a one day that's coming up so on count three um my concern here as a board member and looking at the information that we have is that I personally um would have loved to see uh a lot more witnesses that would confirm that this did occur I don't believe it's substantive enough to to determine that this took place with that being said I am not uh ascertaining that it did or did not I just don't believe that I have enough information on count three with one witness to determine that this did happen so I um um I have concerns with count three on count two in terms of the the BTA um Dr heern for when a threat is reported to a leadership staff um if that threat is reported to the assistant principal first and then subsequently to another leadership staff whose responsibility is it to do the BTA is there a protocol in place so who um initially the assistant principal I think in this case um and correct me if I'm wrong Mr ASO or Miss Moore that the teacher emailed the assistant principal at that time the teacher didn't really articulate the events as very threatening it was the subsequent email um where the teacher really expressed that she's feel like she's threatened by the behavior of the student etc etc which which included the um the principal okay so I'll ask another question when the teacher made that first um concern um was was the teacher concerned about safety with the student I'm sorry Dr Hess I was a little distracted if you can repeat that one more time okay so when the student made that first uh I'm sorry when the when the staff Linda Walker the behavior Specialist made that first concern to the assistant principal can can we get a definitive answer if the staff was concerned about her safety can we get a definitive answer from the school St from my staff or um okay well what I have in front of me is a sequence of events that occur and what I'm trying to determine is whose responsibility was it to do a BTA and what is the district protocol and I know a BTA is done when there's a perceived threat to someone so when the when Linda Walker um expressed her concern initially about this student to the assistant principal Mr Hudson the question is did Linda Walker feel that her safety in some form or way whether minuscule or not was at risk Dr he need little um Miss Mo or M or go ahead Mr Lozano M Walker expressed that concern in an email um dated March 6th I don't know what the substance of the discussion with Mr huts and the initial discussion was but I can tell you that Dr sha R was the person to which that email was directed and it was copied to that AP that she had spoken to earlier that day okay so it appears that maybe I might have read this wrong it appears that the first communication was to Mr Hudson and then subse when communication was to both Mr Hudson and Dr Shaw is that incorrect for the record or was the first communication to Dr Shaw there was a verbal communication to the AP Mr Hudson and a subsequent email to Dr sha R copying Mr Hudson and others okay so the initial complaint was to to miss Mr Hudson correct yes okay so at that point verbally or written if a student if someone rather a staff or anyone a student Express a concern of threat whether verbally or written does it fall under BTA reporting guidelines yes sir okay so again the first Contact based upon Mr loz's ment uh with a verbal communication was Mr Hudson is that correct yes okay was Mr Hudson directed to fill out a BTA take no okay would it be the first leadership contact of any threat that exists would it be that person's responsibility if they receive the threat first or what is the standard procedure so anytime a report of a threat or a staff member reports their safety is in concern a BTA should have been conducted so Mr Hudson should have initially conducted a a BTA in the model at that time the principles and assistant principles could could initiate and conduct the BTA process so we had many principles during that time initiate btas themselves because in that model principles and APS were fully trained and could conduct the threat assessment that process changed where principles became the second layer January 1st 20124 so once the email was sent um um the principal and the assistant principal had co-responsibility to ensure that a BTA was conducted okay so Mr Lozano um do we have any current action for Mr Hudson that is prior to now or current or pending we will have to look into that okay so just so I can understand this clearly and this is even for my own knowledge and I think as a district we really need to have diff you know uh very clear protocol on how things are done so if I'm at a school and we have I'm an assistant principal and we have the principal I need to know and all APS and all School leadership need to know if a threat comes to me first is it my responsibility to jump on and do the BTA no sir in the in the new model every school has a chairperson that is the mandatory person that that all threats and concern and behavior must go to now and that chairperson is responsible for leading the threat management process currently okay so as it existed before if I were an AP and I received a threat first I would have first obligation in filling this out correct you should begin that BTA immediately upon receiving that report okay correct all right so uh Dr heurn um on count two I do believe that based on what's before me and and Dr heurn I I very much appreciate your recommendation on count two I believe there was a level of responsibility on the part of the assistant principal receiving the information verbally first to proceed with the BTA there was subsequent communication through email to Mr Hudson as well as Dr Shaw at that point yes Dr Shaw had some responsibility in ensuring and if the protocol was the AP who was to do it then she had some level of responsibility in ensuring that it was done by Mr Hudson based on what I have here I I think the greater obligation of doing that BTA was on Mr Hudson I think Dr Shaw had some responsibility in ensuring that Mr Hudson gets it done now I'll go to count one on count one with alcohol we asked for some information and Dr hurn can you uh based on information we have our staff tell us what the normal procedure is should someone bring alcohol on school property regardless if students are there regardless if it's for not for consumption on the property what is the normal uh procedure in in consequence in that staff Dr so I have um Mr re miss azero or Miss Moore with their um history um in the district kind of elaborate but it would definitely start with it with an investigation just like how it started here if if um somebody made allegations or or accuse a person of having alcohol or bringing alcohol to school property District property once it's once it's confirmed what is the based upon what we've done in the past can staff elaborate on some of the punishment that we've given for just alcohol um in uh and I'll let you add Miss Mo or Miss Aero in a minute based on the documents that you have I don't see that we've had any um allegations or acts of a person person bringing alcohol on a campus I think it has everything but that page two page two possession of a controlled substant letter of reprimand issued yeah we don't know if it's alcohol so alcohol or marijuana no there'll be yeah okay so Dr heurn um there is there any staff that can speak the past history of consequence when someone brings alcohol on school grounds we Sorry yep go ahead Mr AO so on the the document you guys have it's some of them are labeled drug/alcohol offense but I believe those are most drug test not necessarily alcohol possession uh we do have uh one employee that was uh drinking on a field trip and had a 3-day suspension Okay so Dr heurn and this is just a if this was brought to us as just as only an alcohol on possession on campus violation in not not just with Dr Shaw in general what would what would be possibly your P your um recommendation as far as suspension well I I want to speak to a firm recommendation I would look at the totality of the situation um just just like I did with this case been s suggesting or recommending a 5-day suspension so okay um I I don't want to preempt my time is running and I'm not speaking please stop the [Laughter] clock I I think I need 10 seconds more my time was running when the superintendent was speaking I I need fairness in how we allow board members to speak and I'm I'm tired of this happening to me yeah but as I was saying I I I couldn't give you a heart recommendation right now I would have to look at the totality of the situation what how did the alcohol end up on campus right did the person bring it or did they order somebody to go pick it up and bring it and it changes all the Dynamics could change based on the circumstances and how the Act was was uh happened on on um School District property okay so the only um direct uh comparison that we have is a student Mr AAR through the superintendent that was given a a three-day [Music] Mr AO I think you may need to repeat the question yeah please repeat okay the the only existing similarity as far as incident with alcohol possession was a student that was given a 3-day suspension is that what you just said there was an employee an employee and that employee was given a three-day suspension correct okay um thank you so much for your response um for me uh there's no there's no there's not enough evidence or substantial evidence for me to to support count three count two although I believe Dr Shaw had some obligation when she received the subsequent email to direct the assistant principal or to have the BTA done I believe it was the primary responsibility of Mr Hudson since he received the information first and we had no clear protocol at that time regarding alcohol on campus I believe uh having alcohol on campus whether or not it's intended for use or not or or students are on campus uh there that is uh a violation and so I am going to should this motion not pass to recommend less days um based upon the the the alcohol on campus the other two points uh the third point I just cannot determine if it occur or not and the second point I think it's a procedural problem that we have to fix as a district but number one I think it's clear that there was a violation there whether um it was intended or not intended um it was uh shown on campus it was there on campus uh and so I will not support the current motion but I'm going to support a reduce in the number of days okay thank you all right so I'm going to try to land the plane here uh this five days the value of that we're talking $3,155 and for me the um position that this person went from and two there was a reduction in salary of a little over $20,000 so I understand that it was not discipline action but in reality yes they the fact is they reduce salary by $220,000 there seems to be a lot of holes I'll just say um we as a board this is our third meeting discussing this we have been discussing this for hours and hours and hours we are discussing adult problems and and this is taking away from our students and our schools and what I am also concerned about is that whether it's a one- day suspension 2 day 3 Day 4 day 5 day this will come back to us again in a DOA hearing and we will spend hours again discussing this issue over this 5 days $3,155 so I feel that you know Mr alon's um motion is appropriate at this time we need to end this we need to move on move forward and start talking about students and schools and redefining Brower County Public Schools and how to continue to be keep our a so I call the question all in favor say I I I those opposed say no no no roll call on Mr Al the motion to reject the superintendent's recommendation it's on calling the question chair you have to it's on calling we have to vot on call they I thought we just did you want a roll call they want a roll call on yeah okay go ahead roll call and call the question School Board member is Austin you know I'm consistent I like every board member to speak so I know it goes against because I know how to count but I'm going to support my colleagues who want to speak I do that they don't do it for me um so the motion to call the question uh was called so I am going to object to that so let me say no on calling the question fam no I'd like to hear from other board members folen holy it is one o'clock highly in favor of Hixon yes Honus no lardy yes rert Zan no aha yes 54 moot well no no doesn't fails okay who would like to speak I'm done who would like to speak nobody oh so we didn't need to call we couldn't call the question chair Dr Zan thank you very much um I just have a difference of opinion uh about this I don't think this is is about the $3,155 I don't think it's about the uh the magnitude of the financial loss um this is about our solemn obligation to take care of students and to hold leaders accountable and people want to talk about accountability but to whom much is given much is asked it is wrong to ask a civil servant to do personal favors of any kind and let me make it clear to our Schoolboard members and anyone else who's listening the public gives us their money to do public good and that public good is to educate students to provide them counseling to lift them up to do a higher thing they do not give us money to wash your dog to fix your child's laptop or to do any other personal favors for you of any kind to deny that is to deny the entire theory of government and I would challenge anyone in this room or any room to challenge that theory today to my knowledge uh chair we have to accept this investigation and whole and we have to decide whether not this recommendation is sensible given the facts of the investigation to push it to a doah hearing to hear what happens where there will be due process provided during that hearing and then that decision decision comes back to the board and we'll make a decision on whether we agree with the administrative law judge or we do not and looking at this investigation there is a link between a reasonable consequence and the things that happen I will repeat my statement from earlier Broward County does not accept this kind of behavior in our school leaders full stop what has been alleged here has been cerated by a sworn witness in some cases and what's been Limited in this particular investigation is things that are specifically against Schoolboard policy and if we don't stand up for Schoolboard policy why do we have it I think we're all better than our worst days this is not a personal judgment but our job our solemn job is to do what's best for br County and I think in this case uh rejecting this uh motion and moving forward with some degree of consequence whatever the board thinks is uh most appropriate I think is the will of the community to say otherwise uh I just think has no substantial basis thank you chair any other board member Madam chair Dr is the motion on the floor a substitute motion yes okay Mr Alon I think it's just a motion it is a substitute motion just to clarify you are correct Madam chair um since I made the motion could I just conclude with 60 seconds does anybody else want to speak all right so thank you madam chair and board for having this very public conversation has it been five minutes okay all right 60 seconds I'm not gone yet um the consequence Madam chair actually has been what you just said we've spent hours and I think a colleague asked me how long it would take and I did not aine how long it would take because I knew we'd land right here hours we spent days from July forward on this same topic it was easy on some other decisions it was hard on this one I wonder why we cannot continue with a culture of getting it wrong the first time and agreeing to get it wrong again we've heard the non-transparency we've heard the lack of public records requests given in its entirety we've agreed that this clearly is not fair we've seen data points that I think I asked for Dr holness just looked at and went through meticulously again we have not administered discipline I'm going to use a term from my colleague from a different District equitably we haven't done that we spent three hours clearly hearing that it's our role because nine of us are responsible for the school district nine of us are it's our fiduciary responsibility when we see something you should say something and it's on nine of us us to do that there are three people that report to this board and they all do great work in a very challenging environment answering tough questions from us all the time but it's upon nine of us to do the right thing because Dr car the Char has actually been ridiculed for months it's not just the $3,355 is not just the salary reduction that's supposed to occur it's the public shame that she's already taken from July forward anyone thought about that anyone thought about having your name in the newspaper when you're not nine of us I can take it you can punch me all day but what about a district employee of 35 years who doesn't deserve that she's accepted responsibility there are other folks when we administer discipline would never do that and would never utter those words so I hope this motion passes because it sends a message back to staff get it right I trust our law enforcement I trust our staff but when they get it right it's upon this board to ask the tough questions thank you can you just repeat the motion before we vote reject the superintendent's recommendation highly in favor of roll call school board members fam reject is that a yes just making sure yeah tricker trick or trunk yep hly yes Hixon yes Honus no linardy no roer no Zeman no aha yes Austin yes highly in favor of 54 okay we're done M Madam chair Mr auson so now that the board just voted 54 to reject the recommendation could Council advise what are the next steps now are are there any next steps this now goes away is that correct that is correct okay thank you good okay may have a motion and second and item number two so move mooved by Zan second by Hixon public comment board member comment item number two two no comment all in favor of item number two say I I I those opposed say no item number two passes unanimously may I have a motion second on item number three move second move by Zan second by roer public comment no register board comment Miss fam yes thank you madam chair I just wanted to say if the stats here are correct that this the Improvement is wonderful and that doubt the data shows very positive outcome so highly supportive Dr Zan thank you so much chair um the experiential data the results uh from what we would normally call pilot projects uh with J&J boot camp science intervention materials uh shows between a 20 and a 38% Improvement in the percentage of proficiency and science those are awesome results I want to ask though about the source of funds in my experience um we're getting a little gray about where funds come from and it's an important Point it'll seem like a budget geek is kind of picking at a budget geek kind of issue but the public needs to know what funds are fungible and what funds are not and if we take money from the operating budget or the capital budget or a grant or we have some other uh very Arcane source of funds they need to know that because those funds are funds we could use within those categories if it's operating funds we could use it for salaries if it's Capital we could use it to improve our improvements if it's grant money we can use it for the specific purposes of that Grant and in these items today we continue to say things like this money comes from uh School funds well where do school funds come from they come out of the operating budget which means they could be traded for additional salaries for educ ators and the like so uh the that's just a kind of a a point which I'd like to clean up these issues so that the public is very clear about the sources of the funds and second uh uh maybe for the superintendent are all of our transformation elementary schools included in this uh program that is showing incredible results for science proficiency yes that's correct terrific so we have 20 transformational ele Schools they're all getting this it's 20,000 per school do we expect the same results in these schools as well yes put implement it with Fidelity we expect the similar results well I think implementing with Fidelity is your job Mr superintendent so I trust that that will happen and uh look forward to seeing the results at the end of the year chair I'd like to add this to our uh performance monitoring uh plan progress monitoring plan to make sure we get the results as soon as they are available right after pm3 um um make sure that the results that we get out of this in fact are uh the results that we expected thank you chair thank you any other board member rert uh yes and I want to thank staff for getting back to me um but I had asked about Charles Drew and um I wanted to see if they would be utilizing this program again because they're not on the list and they did so phenomenally well and I I found out this morning that yes they'll be using using their own money from the school um would that be taking money away from any of the other programs they have and have they been utilizing their own money for the last few years they've been UTI utilizing their own money for the last few years for this right and and we talk about inequities at at schools and I I can uh you know speak well of that with Markham Parkridge and tedar um and the schools that are listed on on attachment a is that District money Dr um Miss fon good afternoon Angela superintendent Mrs those schs that you see are from school transformation office so the M that we're using for those are coming from a state Grant right to improve to improve instruction gotcha um interesting and we'll have another another conversation privately because I I would like to learn how um you know how the process works with with these schools especially since they're near and dear to my heart H as is Charles jur so but but thank you so much and I'm very excited about our transformation schol you're welcome Dr olness thank you madam chair um I have a few questions um whoever needs to reset the clock um oh I didn't even know this is on the boot camp uh how will the implementation and monitoring of this software be conducted I I just want um further information on that Dr Dr fter good afternoon Angela Fulton Deputy superintendent than thank you Dr holess so we'll be monitored in many different ways through school visits School walkthroughs and also through our instructional reviews that we do with our schools on a day-to-day basis additionally uh we just finished the beginning of the year Science assessment so now we're sitting down looking at that data and making sure that this particular supplemental material it's being used to Fidelity because if it's being used to Fidelity we're looking forward to results that we have had in the past okay so as you mentioned results in the past how can we attribute the success data in schools currently using it to this software rather than um taking into consideration other variables or did we did we consider other variables that lead to success how can we know for sure that this is what led to this success in those schools using it I just need knowledge on how that has happened so there's many variables when it comes to a supplemental curriculum because it's on top of the initial curriculum that we use that is dictated by the state but this adds another layer we actually use J&J boot camp for um beginning and end of the year tutor um be beginning and after school tutoring as well too we also do tutoring and the school day we were able to do small groups with the J&J boot camp and then also that particular vend does come in and do Hands-On experiences with our students okay so you've noticed substantial increase in learning outcome when this uh is being used um as opposed to when it wasn't absolutely because it provides additional experiences our students get above and beyond the initial curriculum that's provided okay and how will schools within the uh stto let me get used to that acronym correct student transformation office as I was in formed yesterday when we met Dr fton uh so how will students within the stto collaborate with those using this software may I ask for correction students or you're talking about teachers um collaborate yes well teachers and um and I guess how how will we apply this to the stto schools um and how what will collaboration look like so with stto the structure provides additional opportunities to bring our principles our instructional leaders our instructional coaches together in addition to what our regular principles get so we also do monthly professional learning communities where we bring our principles together the first thing we do is we provide them to do walkthroughs at various schools so they can see firsthand some practices that are taking place some best practices and then they go to a PLC environment where we sit down and talk about those best practices how are they implemented it what makes it successful what are the instructional non-negotiables that that school has in place that can be transcended to other uh School settings but once a month again we come together with all of our principles and stto and also all of our assistant principles to talk about all the best practices that are happening across all of the 20 campuses okay great thank you Dr fton my my that's all my questions chair you're welcome okay anybody else seeing none on in favor of item number three say I I those opposed say no item number three passes unanimously may have motion second on item number four so move move by Zan second by rert public comment Dr Zeman thank you chair I'm wondering um about this particular item because we get uh on lots of items a report about whether small minority owned are women businesses uh women owned businesses um uh have bid were there any uh vendors and the like this is particularly interesting to me because this is software to support our EDC office and it is not from a small minority or women-owned business but it seems like a uh a type of software that might and so my question is did we make aggressive steps to try and find a small minority or women own business to provide this software to our EDC Department Dr miss andreo good afternoon Jennifer Andreu executive director operations uh yes board members Zan all of our solicitations we have a what we call coner service in which we contact all venders with these commodity codes and we let them know that the solicitation is advertised we them of when they'll be pre-bid meetings we let them know what the affirmative procurement initiatives are on the item and encourage them to submit a proposal terrific but after all those aggressive steps there were no biders from those communities are you still referring to JJ boot camp no ma'am I'm sorry I'm on EDC management software oh this solicitation sir was uh a direct negotiation with with the software vendor because we currently use this item now we have been utilizing this software for a number of years so this was a direct negotiation with them this was not advertised terrific was this competitively uh bid through the solicitation process no sir it was not terrific thank you chair any other questions on four Madam chair Mr charson thank you um and I'll just supplement uh the what the officer just stated um because I was in a different hat in a different District uh who's actually used this service um and I think at the time although and I don't know what's happened since um this uh b2g now is utilized by school districts all around the country and I'm looking at our uh new coo uh who also knows this as well um utilized by the top 10 20 uh folks who've done this work um they have uh been very successful uh with compliance all the questions that this board has asked about has been very successful uh monitoring uh contract Awards contract payments uh so I'm just adding to what's already been stated uh so while it might not have been competitively and I don't know what's happened since um I know other districts piggybacked on different districts who got great rates and services at the time which is why they continue to serve districts all around the country they only uh they were to your question uh board member Zan one or two vendors I think at the time who were minority uh compliance software vendors um I don't think they're still in the space um but there were probably 15 20 years ago so I just thought I would add that uh based on the question um so I'm happy to support the item any other comments all in favor of four say I I those say no four pass unanimously may have a motion and second on five so move second move by zon second by Hixon public comment public comment board member comment Zan thanks chair um this kind of raises a red flag to me because uh I just have a few questions are we um being asked to approve the purchase of books for our dual enrollment students through a single vendor Dr Folton yes and could you tell me why we've chosen this vendor Dr fton um guy hello board guyra MOA director secondary learning yes through the chair we pick bar Barnes & Noble because that's the ventor that our colleges use fa and Brower College terrific was this um compelled Upon Us by a contract we signed with Broward College or FIU with brow college and FAU ask the the item says FIU is that correct Broward colge in F sorry Fu you correct I just want to get my letters right I I it was late at night when I was reading these things so I might have uh might have missed a letter here and there so we've signed a contract with B college and FIU for a specific tuition rate and for providing books to students who are dual enrollment students and they've specified the vendor for us to use in that contract correct does that give the best deal to Broward County currently I believe it does we've looked at other options to buy books and the other option is basically to turn Brower County schools into another bookstore and House books and deliver books so the best option we have right now is through Brower college and there are some processes we can maybe put in place Dr Zeman to maybe mitigate some of those expenses like the way we return our books we currently have a buyback program at Brower college so if our students do sell the books back we do get a reimbursement check back but as you know if you were college students when I was a little while ago we get Pennies on the dollar when you sell the books back so we think we can have better processes in place to maybe keep those books on our high school campuses and reuse them until the additions go out of date and we have to Rey them all together terrific I I appreciate that very much um we used to get State funding for dual enrollment students do we get any state funding for dual enrollment students anymore other than FTE we that's the only funding we get we have to use the FTE that we currently receive terrific so just for the record we're we're going to spend $1.4 million for textbooks for Broward County uh students who are enrolling in dual enrollment classes so that they can have textbooks associated with those courses correct terrific thank you very much there'll be more on this uh I think um it probably offers us a really wonderful legislative opportunity to go to Tallahasse and talk about this we used to get 50/50 funding from the state uh for du enrollment the reason that's important is we're a k through2 organization we are not a college organization it's a great opportunity for our students um given that you mentioned our high school experience I will share guy that uh a few million years ago when I was a high school student um all we had was AP options and so there weren't options to do college if you wanted to enroll in college uh colleges wouldn't accept you if you were a high school student and so all you could do was AP uh that was a limiting factor and I'm glad that we've broken through that limiting factor but at the same time I think we have to be serious about about priorities of our funding and I think that we have a tremendous opportunity once the legislative agenda comes back uh to think about uh working with other school districts in Florida to think about uh this funding it is something we love to do it's incredible for our high achieving students um but it is not something we're funded to do and our funding is specific to K through2 education I hope the legislature in the future will consider uh going back to a better funding model so that we don't have to pay 100% of the fees thank you yes sir thank you Mr Mr Alon thank you madam chair um I happy to support this item um but I also have a slightly different view on the role of a school district um and the role that I believe that we should be playing uh for our students since hopefully we can spend an hour talking about this Madam chair I'm happy to do that um but I think our budget actually speaks to our values and the value of supporting kids whether it's honors dual enrollment AP IB why would the school district have a different view to support those going to college those that may have career path opportunities those who want to go and support and you know enter the armed services I just think that you know to qu to openly question you know whether the school district of brck County uh should be supporting our kids uh as they think about college while they're in you know 11 or 12th grade or what have you um and actually even younger now because it's actually the trend has actually started much earlier than when I was in school um so you know I actually just have a different View and I hope that this board the new nine uh hopefully will maintain in its budget uh a priority uh that dual enrollment matters that AP matters um and that all opportunities for both High achieving students and those that need some additional love and support is what I call it um is also uh critically important so that's what I wanted to offer thank you thank you um my question on page two is this uh just the hard books or is it also the online books G MOA D director secondary learning it's all all instruction materials it's the online textbooks as well as the hard cover books whatever normal college students would pay for is the same exact textbook that our Duan Roman students get so is there a cost difference in the online textbooks from the hard cover books sometimes there are but there's not much of a cost difference and it's really depending on the college so the college tells us what books we have to buy for each course because our teachers are basically adjunct teachers to the college and whatever Department Department had chooses what we have to use as well so if they use the online version we use online version if we use a hard if they use a hard cover we use a hard cover but if there are opportunities to save money and if the online version is cheaper we will direct students to do the online version I was going with all right any other comments questions concerns all in favor of item number five say I I those opposed say no item number five passes unanimously may have a motion second on item number six so moved move by Zan second by roer public comment board comment Dr Zeman thanks chair uh the only question I have on this and again you know we've worked tirelessly in this District at least for the last 15 years to improve opportunities for our students to earn high school diplomas but how many additional graduates do we produce with uh the ACT Testing every year Dr fan thank you Mr bomb good afternoon uh Richard bound director of educational assessment analysis and research um so we produced a chart when we did the um the workshop um and we showed exactly how many students uh met uh met graduation requirements based on each of the assessments I believe in each opportunity um act has an opportunity in fall and in in Spring um and it was close to a thousand students Al together that um that meet the ACT non-oled reportable opportunity and are able to graduate based on that so I I don't have the exact number I can give I can produce that chart um and a followup but um I think it was around for each opportunity I I think one of the opportunities it had around 700 if I remember correctly and the other one I believe was around 400 or so so over a thousand maybe terrific so chair let's just assume for a second that this estimate is correct if we have a th000 high school graduates and I think that this contract is completely for concordance score or is this for this is for concordance score the cost is $600,000 per year for a th000 students so we're paying $600 per student to get them a concordance score so they can be high school graduates is that correct Dr Fon Mr B so this is the maximum spend Authority um so we don't we don't actually spend the 600,000 each year um it's based on how many students we need to meet graduation requirements so I don't know if I we can make that exact calculation um but we can go back and look at how many met the requirement based on and how much the the assess the test cost and how many students took the test and do that calculation terrific thank you very much chair any other comments on six Fam thank you m chair I just have a a quick comment I I I bed on um this preest for the ACT test and I think it's really going to be beneficial the only thing is is that um last year I heard some information from students that had um said that teachers were assisting certain students in the classroom um just in preparing and and and actually helping to answer the questions I'm wondering what guard rails have we put in place to make sure that this doesn't actually occur reoccur um in the future to make sure that this is actually a reflection of the test skills of the the student and not the teacher or Proctor assisting the student in getting higher scores so teachers cannot assist and when it is brought to our attention we automatically launch an investigation and come up with other findings and then if there are findings that speak to that then we take action any other guard rail so it's something you do after the fact is there any kind of um repercussions you put out or discipline in advance to say if this occurs this is going to be the outcome so that does come up with the training that we give to all test administrators and also Proctors they do sign that they have understood their requirements when there is an assessment and so if there are any allegations that come up we automatically launch an investigation to determine what the findings are right thank you for the clarification Miss Hixon thank you um I just wanted to point out based on Dr Zeman's question on page 335 it says that last year we spent [Music] 244,000 what is it is it possible if we could cut this in half and that way that would free up that money for us to be able to put into our general fund in our discussions with um looking at salary increases for all our employees since it I don't know what the previous numbers are I can only go on what we have here um so that we don't encumber that money Dr unnecessarily thank you Mrs andreo good afternoon Jennifer Andreu executive director operations that the spend Authority is not the dollar amount that is encumbered the user Department in this case probably Mr balm would have to do a purchase requisition for the dollar amount so it would not free up any money per se so depending on what he's averaging a year and to your point the last um quite a few months have only been about $245,000 so again he can do the calculation and see exactly what he'll need for this next term of the agreement and if it's less he'll do the requisition for that dollar amount but he would not be tying up $1.8 million okay so I I I hear what you're saying but we have gotten such conflicting information on that and there was another item that came to us in a different setting where we knew we weren't going to be spending that much even though that was the number but when I said we're not going to spend that much so it should be okay they said no it still has to go in our budget so we can't spend that money it has to sit in there so can someone maybe clarify that is it true for some things and not others because if we're giving you spend Authority for a million $1.8 million and you have to actually spend that and we didn't put it aside and we spent that money we would be in trouble because we agreed to give you the spend Authority so it's not making sense to me if we're giving spend Authority we have to put aside enough money to cover that cost but you're saying we don't but we had another item that came up and we did so if someone maybe in finance could better explain that cuz it's not really making sense it come of our budget or not Dr Miss Andrea could you address that Mr shim can address it from a financial standpoint but I will tell you that again this is not the budget and which you know we're doing the budget annually so there're this is just giving the user Department an up to amount so that they don't have to return and ask annually for a request but that does not mean they'll spend this amount nor are they putting this amount in their budget so again that doesn't make sense because they can spend up to that amount if we don't put that money somewhere for them to spend it then how do they spend up to that amount so I'll I'll let I don't want to I mean I I hear what you're saying but the answer is different in different items so can Omar answer your question yes please Dr Fon Mr shim good afternoon Omar shim acting or I'm sorry task assigned uh CH Chief Financial Officer um I the difference between the spending Authority and the actual budget is that spending Authority is over a contract and it and it could actually be different terms than the budget for example you could have a three-year term with the spending authority over that 3 years um which of course is different from the budget altogether now the as uh was mentioned when you issue the requisition it apply that's what actually encumbers the budget so I hope that clarifies the question it doesn't because if we are saying we're going to spend up to we can spend up to $1.8 million over three years and let's say in year two um they've I'm trying to figure out how to ask this question if we didn't put away $1.8 million or know that it's going to be in a budget over three years and we get to year two and there's no money for them to spend on this but we approved a spend Authority how do they get their money we have to have encumbered it or set it aside even if on paper somewhere right do do the chair yes the uh they cannot spend money that they don't have in the budget without asking for additional dollars so even if there is additional spending Authority um that that's not what allows you to spend the funds you can you can spend up to that amount and that would limit you on the contract but you can't spend money that you don't have in the budget okay um I'm going to just it still doesn't explain it still doesn't make sense but thank you for your Mr Alon thank you madam chair uh this makes sense to me so let me try to help new nine so and I appreciate staff uh and I've I sit on both sides of this so spending Authority well let's back up we all approve a budget spending Authority is the ceiling that we give to staff typically in that ceiling I assume and you have to assume that there is some cushion we've heard that I think response a couple times so there is a balance on to what I think you've heard this last couple uh items here if the spending Authority is the appropriate number is it too high and if there is some wiggle room I'm talking to the board now staff will clearly have a different perspective where do you put those funds right that's really what you're asking so there is a difference Vice chair um the spend Authority allows the staff not to come back to the board that's really what this is so when you give them a certain number staff does not come back and now it's in the hands of procurement I'm I'm I'm I'm saying plain language what the staff has already said uh as well also to the point around using the additional dollars to put certain places that's why there should be more scrutiny on the spend Authority because typically it's not always your contract is a million dollars it has five renewals whatever right typically it goes higher than the contract so you somebody asked the right question what previously was spent right each quarter each month or annually and then you use that as a baseline that's typically how you should project the spend Authority going forward for that contract so there are ways around finding money the issue in Broward schools is not that there is not enough money board there's plenty money it's how you allocate it as a board Miss leonardy so I think to Miss hixon's question what is preventing us from reducing the spend Authority on this item since we have historically not spent even you know more than half of what the spend Authority is okay okay Dr do the chair there's no there's nothing preventing you from reducing the spend Authority again I when the items come we don't know if they're planning on increasing the user Department plans on increasing the number of act exams given to students and that's why they're predicting an increase but there's nothing preventing you from reducing that number and if need be uh they need additional dollars we'll come back to the board and we'll do another request for additional spend Authority thank you Dr Zan thank you so much chair I noticed in this item that the funding comes from both uh the educational assessment team and from school budgets is there a reason why we pay for some of these through Central funds and others through our I'm imagining it's our high schools that do this through the school budgets uh at the high school level Mr bom Richard B uh director of educational assessment analysis research so for a cncr um we do include this uh we included that statement about school budgets but for these for these major assessment Windows the the fall and the spring those are covered by um by our office uh budget but sometimes there are schools that will ask you know if certain additional students like Juniors could take this for graduation we focus on seniors to to make sure that we're making sure that um the the students that absolutely need to take for graduation are taking it but um high schools will will approach us and ask for stipulation for other students to meet this uh to to have this opportunity um and in certain cases that's why we put in a buffer here on the spend Authority because in certain cases um those those schools might have a need they see that you know these Juniors might um benefit from this opportunity earlier on than than waiting till they're seniors so we wanted to kind of put that in um as an opportunity for schools that want to be um either Proactive or see a need for for this assessment for those students sure thank you very much and um a couple other quick comments that spend Authority is always over uh not always over multiple years but can be over multiple years it's a procurement term it it's it's a limit uh for how much can be spent through a contract when Mr Bal wants to spend money he still has to submit a requisition and that gets checked by the finance guys for their budget so you have the authority to spend 1.8 over3 years but you go in and ask for 50,000 for this and 12 for for that because and you have to have that within your budget so there's really two controls the the rigid one is the budget the up to amount is uh to allow some flexibility in the case of in this case High School seniors next year all fail Algebra 2 they need the ACT you can double the size of the program without asking our permission to use another cont contract you still have to go check with my friend Mr shim to see if you got any money to do it or he has to go find you some money to make it up in your budget so that's that's really budgets are annual Concepts um and and uh spend Authority is really I also need to make another comment because I'll never end trying to spend money well that's why sometimes I ask ideas that might not be good ideas it may be the most amazing thing in the world that we pay for college classes and college books and that's great if we land there um I will continue to point out out though that we need uh to Mr Austin's point to spend our money uh wisely to counter Mr Austin's Point our budget from the state is equal to $99,000 a student the United States average is 13 we do education in Florida on the cheap that is a fact and so we can't just fix the problem by being wise Spenders of taxpayers dollars which we should always be anyway uh we need to to uh to figure out in Florida whether we want to fund education uh or not and and the answer so far is we fund it okay but we don't even fund it to the national average by a big amount $4,000 per student is not something you can make up uh by just wise spending thank you Mr thank you I have a motion but before I do that I'd just like to say um I don't want to let it slide that someone called out the Integrity of teachers that Proctor these tests I think that was um very inappropriate to do that on this stus and our teachers work hard sometimes there's bad apples but the majority of them are not and I really wish that we would stop doing that um I'd like to make a motion to reduce the spend Authority on this item to $900,000 as opposed to 1.8 million move by Hixon second by Le nardy public comment on the motion board member comment on motion Dr holess Madame chair um I understand our some board members desire to reduce the spending Authority but I have concerns with regards to this item because I know that traditionally we have not spent up to um up to the8 one 1.8 million um if we reduce this to 900,000 and this item is based upon our Juniors and seniors who need to pass the reading and math graduation testing requirement whereby uh we will be able to provide additional in school opportunities to meet the testing criteria my concern is if we reduce this to 900,000 let's just say we have some of uh our students um and um you know in my district we have uh concerns over um performance outcome because of various factors um I need to know how reducing this will impact the um opportunities that they'll have because we will say to ourselves that yes if they need more money then they just come back to us and then we're going to look at the item but I just believe that that adds a whole another layer of um task that someone will have to do and what if we have a reluctance for doing that so to me the greater the spending Authority it provides um greater access to funds that our schools may need or students who are um at risk for graduating I don't want to risk that I don't want to have uh if more funds are needed reluctance to come and ask for more and then we have some students who fall through the cracks um so I am not in favor of producing this I think that there needs to be adequate funding available should they need it for our students who don't meet the criteria for graduation to for the staff to be able to do that without having to come back to us for more money and reducing this by half I can't support that thank you Dr holness I agree with you I think the unintended consequence if we do reduce this that maybe sap doesn't offer it because they know they have a small amount of money so I don't want that to occur and to make sure that all the opportunities are are given to our students Miss hixen thank you um Miss Andreu through the chair could you please address that if if there was I mean it would be good to have historical information but if there was a need to have more money would you be reluctant to come back to the board and ask for more money have follow them through the chair uh no we would not be reluctant um actually though I had been encouraged user departments to do this in an effort to be more efficient with the board's time and energy as well as theirs so if that is not the will of the board we will re revise that but this would allow them actually the agreement says till 2027 but there are also two one-year extensions so it really takes us to 2029 so they would have the 1.8 million all the way until 2029 but if the end user department needs additional funds we will absolutely come through the board and follow this same process thank you Dr Mr Charleston nope I think you got a few of those right here um um the way to do this Madam chair is for the board to support cuts the way to get to more money in the pocket poets for employees along with all the other board priorities is to support all of the cuts that we know need to happen so I understand I just gave the example and I appreciate the motion on the floor but I'm going to not support it for the reason of this board the new nine needs to support the millions of dollars of cuts that will not be comfortable but staff has clearly demonstrated that there are cushions that exist somewhere that's the way the board deals with it thank you Dr Zan thank you so much um I won't support this either largely because I I think a 100 items per school board meeting is enough um and this is just a reasonable uh kind of spend Authority um and these funds um um have been spent in a very responsible way in the past and they've generated you know significant benefits uh for us so I'd rather just have them have them have the Management Authority for the next I'm sorry I think she said it was five more years for the 1.8 uh so that that just gives them a little bit of wiggle room in case there's a year in which we really really need it they don't have to come back to the board uh you're already going to have to go get the money out of a budget uh that we pass every year so we have plenty of authority to uh uh make sure that the funds are spend in the right way thank you any other comments Dr thank you madam chair so as mentioned before we we already have um uh layers of checks and balance um it's already indicated that if it's not within their budget then they would have to go to Mr shim and try to get additional money but at least they will have this wiggle room to work with and you know as a district many of our schools in District 5 as well to which I represent um boast um wonderful graduation rates I I I just don't want to take that chance that we miss even a small percentage of our students because of Any reluctance to bring this forward because we did not give that Latitude that we needed to give it's just too much of an important area to try to cut um spending Authority I think that we should provide what's requested here to ensure that should they need it um for any reason that we don't put any of our students at risk of not having the support they need so I am I can't support a reduction this this item is just too important and I'm going to respect what's brought forth to us um I just don't want to take that chance okay so M six the motion on the floor is to reduce the spend Authority did you say 900,000 yes okay Miss famam sure I think of course all the board members here want to see our students succeed that's the whole goal while we're here isn't it um and this money would be nice to have but my question is I just want confirmation from um staff that we can afford to continue along this vein can we afford to have a cushion can we afford to have extra monies outlaid if you say yeah we're not in the danger zone and we're not putting ourselves close to it thumbs up but if you're telling me we are at risk here because of the our finances we're looking for $100 million and we haven't found it yet then that sums up a red flag so I need clarity thanon thank you I'm going to ask Rich Richard bomb to come up and speak to that please um so the question the question is do we have the money in our budget to um to afford the the contract is that the question what we're running so tight we're supposed to be looking to make Cuts right now approximately $100 million in Cuts so are we in the position to do this or by taking this action are we putting ourselves in Jeopardy do we is this something that we need to cut back on or are we going to have $100 million fall out of the air somewhere else tell me so um respectfully I don't think I can answer that question but I I can say that um we do have we do we do have funds in our in the um educational assessment um and Analysis uh department for for the agreement but um as was mentioned we do take take um the stewardess of of our funds very seriously and so we work with the schools to make sure that only students that that do need to take this assessment take this assessment um uh we we have found that with the ACT NCR it's one of our most successful um vehicles for meeting the the testing requirements for graduation um if of of all of them that we have which we will see for the next item uh PSAT and sat or other vehicles that we use for um for alternate uh concordance for graduation act NCR is one of our most successful opportunities um we do have um we do have the funds uh for for this uh for this agreement and as was stated also this is a multi-year agreement so um we are we are very careful with uh and we have also in our department we have the controls in place that we are the ones that um up load the the student um the students for for the pre for the for the assessment so we can control that um schools are not over um assessing or or um giving this assessment to students who don't need it okay sorry roll call to the the motion by Miss hixen to reduce the spend authority to $900,000 per year roll call on the motion Mr fog no Miss hion yes holness no Leonardi yes rert no Zen no elev no Austin no fam no motion fails 72 okay going back to the recommended action to approve this agreement all in favor say I I I those opposed say no motion carries you unanimously item six passes may have a motion and second on item number seven so move second move by Zan second by F public comment no public comment word comment Dr Zan thank you uh same as the last item we're going to spend $800,000 a year this is split between freshman and then uh Juniors and seniors uh presumably the Junior and senior allocation of this funds is to have another concordance score to provide High School graduation to meet High School graduation requirements how much of the roughly 800,000 a year would expected to be spent in order to provide concordant scores to meet high school requirement standards Dr Fen thank you Richard bomb and you could tell me how many graduates to if you don't mind so unfortunately I don't have that um information at hand um as was mentioned so the for the PSAT um nmsqt the National Merit qualifying assessment um the that qualifies for the math concordance and we're very successful with uh with that I think I believe it's a we have a around a 30 35% pass rate um on that um the SAT is um is not as we're not as successful on um as a comparative as a concordance score um however we put that into the agreement more for schools that want to use that that believe in that product and want to want to use that uh we wanted to provide that opportunity for them so our department is not funding the SAT part of this agreement that's going to be school funded um the PSAT aspect of this agreement is will be funded by our department and we have a long history of um of providing the n9th grade PSAT for for all nth graders as a census wide the state pays for 10th graders to take um the PSAT um and we've also put in here for the 11th graders that need it for for the math concordance score and um and for students that needed for National Merit those 11th graders that that take it there unfortunately I can follow up with uh the the numbers if you need not those aren't required thank you very much what would be interesting I think from The public's perspective what is the passage rate for PSAT for concordance scores yes I believe it's around 35% I'm sorry for act I thought you said it was 35% yeah both we have we have uh similar Pass rates for PSAT and for act but PSAT can only be used for math uh whereas act can be used for um the reading requirement and the math requirement terrific thank you so much any other comments on seven all in favor seven say I I those oppos say no item seven passes unanimously may have a motion and second on nine so move move by Zan second by Hixon public comment no registered speakers board member comment is thank you thank you um I just I have a question because we put out in our FP we put aside money for this and this came back at 1.3 almost $1.4 million higher so can someone explain why it the it came back so much higher than what we initially put a spend Authority on which as you can see had to come back to us anyway just Dr he miss Paul good afternoon uh board members uh Dr heurn uh through the chair uh this is what the vendor provided us that this is how they bid the uh proposal so miss Andreu if you want to add any additional things to I'll add a question to that then in negotiation because I don't work for procurement we had a price right um was there no negotiation here do we just say okay we'll pay you an extra $1.4 million we had agreed on and I'm guessing the RFP there was a lot of research done on what the Val of that should be we don't pull numbers out of the air so is there some kind of again we're trying to find money to make sure we can do something and everything that comes back to us is higher than it we wanted it to be or it needs to be so do we just accept what it comes in at or do we try to negotiate here Dr H Miss so this was a request for proposal so with that they were sealed bids so we did not direct negotiate this particular firm came in with the lowest um cost Factor again this is over three years I'm not quite sure I understand your initial dollar amount that's being represented but maybe that would be the average for one year and this again is an up to $4.2 million over the course of three years so I think it's within the budget you mentioned but I'm not quite sure so this is coming to us on page 411 that says there's an additional impact to the project budget and additional funding of $1,366 th000 will come from the capital project reserves this increases the total project budget from 2,924 th000 to 4,290 th000 so it's coming to us at an increase of the budget which we had already approved when we put out the RFP at 2.9 at 4.3 so why if we if in the RFP did it not have what the total budget approved by the school board was I don't do the chair no it did not the rfps usually don't State the budget um the vendors they propose what their price is to do the scope of work that is needed by the board so where did the two point and that might not be a question you can answer but we approved a 2.9 because it's coming back for additional money where did that number come come from why wasn't that had to have come from somewhere based on something so where did we get that number go ahead um Mr shim yes Omar shim yes the funding set aside in the 5-year plan for this is uh the 2.9 um and then this item with the way that the bids came in uh required additional dollars of 1.3 or 1.4 uh so that's why uh the financial impact shows that I get that the point is do we not have the ability to negotiate we set aside a certain number of dollars this is how we got to where we are we just kept keep saying it's more okay like did we question it did we say listen we put a point put aside the 2.9 you came in way over that can we can we negotiate do in half is it there the ability to do that we are looking for funds and we just keep hemorrhaging money out and out so through the chair I will tell you that there were four responders to this particular request for proposal the other three responders were almost double I get this price so there was not a lot of room for negotiation okay all right my Point's being lost but thank you Dr Zan thanks so much chair uh I've spent a lot of time reading the RP and reading the contract um my assessment is we didn't do a very good job uh being consistent or clear about what we wanted uh we mixed products when we asked for asset management and facility assessment in one contract which is generally a no no you're not going to get a good price when you ask people to do more than one thing uh it does ask us for a condition assessment report in 12 12 months and I think that is incredibly important to us we need to make decisions about future bonds we need to make decisions about priorities and we'll continue to have the perception from the public that I hear a lot about which is we play favorites and people come in and they show us uh products projects that we have funded and approved um and they have perceptions that we are not doing it based on the requirements or based on academic contributions we're doing it uh for other reasons that condition assessment report I just want to ask chair uh are we sure because it says this in the contract that we're going to have a condition assessment report in 12 months Dr he miss Paul baring any unforeseen conditions uh we will hold them accountable to the contract um okay um I believe that this is more important than that answer uh uh suffices and I'll tell you why uh we had a smart bond that was not executed in a smart way everybody knows that took too long cost too much a variety of other things go read the reports if you want to uh get all the content but it didn't go well we also have 68 billion in unfunded facility requirements and we're going to go back to the community we're going to ask them to pay for that again thankfully brard County's never voted down a referendum uh I think we're at risk given our past performance and other things with prior County schools of not getting that referendum to pass and we really need it to pass but for that to pass we have to produce a list of projects based on strict criteria about what's going to contribute the most to our Central Mission K through2 education if we don't have this done in 12 months from the award of the contract the timing for going out for the next Bond in a responsible way is going to be delayed by another whatever the delay is in this period uh given the impact of6 to8 billion worth of unfunded facility requirements I think we absolutely have to have this in 12 months it isn't optional it isn't in case of unforeseen anything this is a condition assessment where a team goes out to visit facilities and comes back and says you need new windows you need a new roof your HVAC is broken your cafeteria doesn't support how many times are we going to hear cafeteras of 200 people when we have 1400 people at a school and it's a shock to the school board we need these data so that we can get credibility with the community it should not be a shock to the school board that we have a cafeteria in the middle school that requires seven different lunch periods but that's the world we lived in today so I'm I'm worried about this a lot uh I wish that we had been very clear in this contract about what we wanted which was a condition assessment report the asset management could have been done in a separate contract with a different firm altogether uh the reviews of this firm are not consistently good Bureau Veritas has past performance things in databases that are not exceptional so I worry about that does this firm have a local presence to your knowledge chair Dr Miss Paul or Miss Andel through the chair um not that I'm aware of no they do not but I will tell you they did provide references and those references were checked well there's no doubt that they provided their best references I I would do that if I was Bureau Veritas as well but there's other references that we can find uh that are not hard to find about work that they've done where customers have not viewed them as exceptional Talent so I am worried about this and and this B has to be very clear that whatever the staff needs to get this done in 12 months must be provided because we cannot go forward with the bond we cannot stand uh uh up with any credibility about the decisions we make on facilities Investments until we get an analytical solution in place that we can point to and say we're building that school or that cafeteria or that roof uh because that's where our greatest need is for the mission that we have as PR County school so I'm just going to point out that I I I don't think uh and again this is previous staff but I don't think this contract was written in a way that allowed vendors to really bid competitively um it's very uh uh it's ambiguous from what we would normally see for a facilities assessment or or a uh assessment of this type so I'm just going to put it out there that I'm worried about this I'll be watching it every month and I'm going to continue to ask whether or not we're on progress because we got to get this done in 12 months thanks chair Dr holness thank you madam chair so I do have similar concerns as Dr Zan um and I always say that um basically you get what you pay for right so um price to me uh should not be used in a criteria to select uh the service that we're looking for because you can get the best price you can get a it's you can get a much lower price from a company with 75,000 employees um but as Dr Zan mentioned what is the past history of the company what is the quality of work they've done before to me those are important um in in in actually um accentuating those positives in in the selection process as the past history of the company as opposed to price being our main factor it should be a factor but not necessarily the main factor so by the fact that um Miss andreo I heard you mention uh price was a defining factor in selecting this company is that correct through the superintendent Mr Andrea through the chair that is not correct um price was a factor not the main factor okay okay so this company um had 15 points is that correct what was what was the what was the uh you mentioned four companies that were selected what was the difference in in how they all fared out in why this one was selected so we had four companies can can you kind of give us an overview of where the bureau um Veritas is that what it's called Bureau Veritas Veritas um how do they compare to the others that that the other three in terms of your point system through the chair so there were various rounds in which the evaluation committee reviewed the four firms they shortlisted three of the four and so those three firms were then called in for interviews in a second round if you will and uh the evaluation score was relatively close um I don't know if you want the exact points or I can send that to all of you but uh it was extremely close but at the end uh this awarded firm had the most points based on several criteria including some of what was mentioned uh their references the pricing their uh ability to have a diverse firm of um staff members all of the criteria listed in the initial RS FP okay so um Dr he are we privy to the information as to the the end result of the rating system uh so I can get an idea I just want to get an idea how did the other firms fair and if cost was not the major factor what was so would you like me to review each firm's points very very briefly that's and then the the factors that really made this firm sort of uh emerge to the top so um for part A this particular awarded firm received 50 points Roth received 47.75 ex exp received 5025 for part A and the last firm MGT received 49.2 as I stated then they were shortlisted and uh then a second round was conducted during that second round um the awarded firm received 69 points Roth received 5710 exp received 65.5 and MGT received 53.2550 so or inclusion of local or SW MBE in any of the proposals through the chair there was an affirmative procurement initiative of up to 15 points allotted for this particular RFP Express received Five Points and Roth received two points oh okay um so the RFP um to me um it appears to have some contradictions um when we look at deliverables um how are there deliverables for space planning uh when we look at like ceria Labs libraries and so on 30 superintendent Miss Paul so in their uh proposal they outline the basic characteristics of uh facility condition assessment as well as they outline uh the plan for the space utilization uh assessment so we can provide you uh a copy of their proposal okay all right thank you madam chair thank you through the chair that was provided this morning to all of the board members Other Board member questions okay I have some questions my first question is in regards to the the process were there any violations of any Florida state laws that occurred Miss Andre do the chair no ma'am no okay thank you with the roofing condition assessment I know in 2014 uh the the roofing assessment at the time was botched it didn't peel back the layers of the roof to see really what was was underneath so we didn't really know what we were getting into throughout the smart Bond projects so was there a specific template used to for this for this current RFP to establish what the roofing condition assessment would be I can speak to that um chair uh so we have a company under contract called Blue Fin that is currently assessing our roofs in this particular proposal Roofing uh is a nonvisual invasive visual uh part of the complications with the previous uh Roofing situation was that number one they missed roofs number two they didn't price them appropriately uh but we do have a contractor that is currently working in the district uh that is doing an assessment of our roof's physical assessment of every roof and do they have some type of like template that they're using I'm sorry are they have do they have some type of template they're using to assess the roof yes they have a a process procedure a protocol okay um do we do we feel comfortable I guess that this this company that we're going to be using will be able to properly do the risk assessment for all of our schools uh may I answer yes go ahead Miss Paul absolutely not I am not comfortable about anything uh our our goal and our role is to hold whatever company we have accountable uh and so whether it was this company or another company my Approach would be the same um so I will not feel comfortable until this is completed verified uh and we have an approved Bond down the road so uh and it's okay for us to feel uncomfortable and to ask these hard questions uh if we don't we'll get much of what we got before or what the district received before and that is unacceptable thank you any other comments Dr hes Madam chair so I just want to ask a final question so should we go with this company is there anything um that would assure us that this company will utilize uh in doing this work any of our local or mwbe firms Dr M Andrea through the chair no they will not that was not part of their proposal okay so it so they they could but there's nothing there that would and that would force them to do that correct that is correct okay so they literally could come in with their own staff from out of broad County 100% do this work and and not enlist any of our local um companies to participate So currently they have a project office in Coral Gables uh Florida so that's I assume how they would run the project but as uh Miss Andreu uh mentioned there is no requirement uh in this particular RFP uh okay that requires them to use a local firm okay and is there a reason we did not include some sort of a requirement that they use local or mwbe firms at at least to a certain degree um is there a reason that that's left out I'm just trying to get a better understanding that decision was made by the goal setting committee a group of um representing various departments throughout the district reviewed the proposal and the scope of work and they decided to a lot points instead of a mandatory subcontracting goal okay so the decision made then has resulted in us voting on a company and that decision did not consider the use of local or minority women black firms to do this significant scope of work is that correct yes so I have a problem with that um thank you thank you um I have a question in regards if the board votes no what would be the consequences of that action Dr heern M Andrea the board votes now if the board votes no we will not proceed with the facilities condition assessment and we have to go out for another RFP correct necessar I ask how long that would take hold on hold on hold on wait go ahead M do the chair we would not go out with another facilities condition assessment unless uh there was a different scope of services or a different need we would have to do something drastically different from what has already been solicited okay Dr hes thank you madam chair just one more thing um can you uh help us um through the superintendent Miss andreo to give us a better idea as to um the relevance of price in the decision making um what percentage of did Price play in in in in this company because what I don't don't want is for a huge company who like BV with 75,000 employees to literally buy a job uh based upon their ability to be able to bid at a great price so I want to know in your best um opinion what what percentage did Price play in the decision making process be uh if you could give us and then I have another comment your your opinion on that so price was not a percentage there were points given as to price and as stated earlier this firm it was very close between the awarded firm and the number two firm so I believe that the price was probably what assisted this firm in being the awarde um because the points were so close in the evaluation um did I answer your okay so so so this company basically um provided the best price that sort of tip them over to to to have more points than than the others correct I wouldn't say that because again we look at can I ask the question another way okay did they provide the best price from all of the companies yes they did okay um so that is concerning to me because um sometimes the larger the company the better the prices it doesn't necessarily mean the better the quality um and and so I I have a concern with the RFP uh that um price plays a kind of relevant role it appears and I also have a concern that there's no um requirement to include local mwbe firms um so they could literally come in with 100% of staff and none come from brow or locally um in addition to that there's nothing there that includes minority firms women firms no requirement um Hispanic firms um and and that to me is concerning so I I want to know can we include that requirement when we have these rfbs um that so if I may Dr holess uh through the chair um I I think that this is the procurement method this was a RP a request for proposals this wasn't an invitation to bid in addition to that um this was sealed proposals so you know we didn't say do this service for this amount of money so I I think we're you know when we talk about about this I think we need to be clear and Miss Andrea you can help us on the procurement method you know this is not the same as doing an invitation to bid I understand but what I don't like is the end result because now we have a company that we are uh possibly could bring on that will not that do not the company does not necessarily have to include any local or snbe firms so how can this be done so when we bring a company on they enlist our local and mwbe firms through the chair sometimes we have mandatory affirmative proc procurement initiatives or goals sometimes they are not mandatory as in this particular solicitation they were points given if if a vendor chose to utilize our certified firms the sum two of the four that proposed chose to and received the points that I stated earlier the five and the two the awarde chose not to but still earned enough points in the scoring and evaluation process to be the awarde understand so we cannot make it mandatory now after the fact okay but if we refuse the this we can go back for RFP that would make it mandatory correct that would be at the discretion of the board and the superintendent okay so the board could make a decision that we have an RFP that would make it mandatory that a company coming to do work in Broward County cannot say that we're not going to choose the option of including local and minority firms we can put something in there that would make it mandatory so we could we could refused we could vote no on this and go back for an RFQ that would make that mandatory is that correct through the superintendent D through this go ahead Miss Andrea not right now I would caution that and I would probably defer to our legal counsel because we have an established procedure so that would be going outside of our policy in which we have a poli to have a goal setting committee and that committee decides on what the affirmative procurement initiatives are so um I'm not an attorney but I would not suggest that that would be the route we would want to take okay so I have a question for the attorney because I I believe the board can make a decision on how to proceed so miss through this Miss Batista rather can you clarify if there's any legal concern if this board board decided to vote no on this particular company and direct the superintendent to have a an RFP that would make it mandatory that we include local and S swbe firms for this particular item M Batista um I'm calling on Kathleen Jack Adams I do agree with um Miss Andreu that we have an established procedure with regards to how we're going to proceed with our RFP um the goal setting committee is supposed to establish how we are going to proceed in terms of whether there's going to be a um minority um local participation whether there uh what's what the percentage minority participation is whether or not there's going to be points established the gold committee is the one that establishes that so if we right now decide to for the reasons that you just stated decide to vote this down and do something other than what our established procedures are then there there will be some issues okay so the board would be in violation of a policy when you say violation of a policy if the board direct the superintendent to um should this not pass uh that we have RFP for this item in include a mandatory requirement for inclusion of local and minority firms would that be a violation of policy by the board that depends upon what um I'm not familiar with the policies related to the goal setting committee so we'd have to I would have to look at that to see what what rules surround the goal setting committee but if we are working against those rules then then we'll have an issue and Miss Andrea do you have do you have any um responses with regards to the policies and procedures of the goal setting committee if if I may um through the chair if I may miss Madam shair um so uh pursuant to policy 3800 I believe that's the policy that has um the goal setting committee or 10 1080 well there are a couple of different ones 3320 okay so there is 3320 then we have um then we have um well then we have 1080 which is the ethics for the board members and uh in that policy talks about the fact that the Schoolboard members shall not participate or interfere in any manner with the functions or activities of the Committees um and shall not interfere with the performance by the School District staff of their duties pertaining to the selection process you are able to ask questions um after you know make a full inquiry as you're doing now um but I would strongly advise against um changing the rules of that the committee has established um additionally I think as Miss andreo mentioned um you can go out for another RFP if you are asking for something different from what is before you here today if the scope will change um in some manner in other words if you're looking for something other than what is being provided here correct and thank you Miss Batista so let me just ask a question on that then and I understand clearly that it would not be advisable to change the policy I get it um however um can without changing the policy can this board um uh vote no on the current item based on uh the company not having uh chosen the criteria pertaining to inclusion of minority and local firms without changing the policy and go back out for an RFQ without without implementing the mandatory requirement can we vote no on that basis um I don't believe so because that was not the established criteria for this process okay so can we can we vote no on a concern uh with the role Price play in the decision making again no because that was not the criteria that was established by the committee okay so can we vote no for the sake of just voting no without any reason yes yes you can vote no for for no reason okay and is there any consequence to that uh there could be if you are if you try to go out for the same services with another RFP there could be consequences for that because this firm uh would have some um ability to perhaps go okay can we can we vote now based upon what we consider to be the past history of this company and the quality of work they've done before just vote no if you're vote no vote no um that's that's a good question I don't know Miss andreo if you can help me with that one sir you can vote no as you so see fit however an evaluation was done there were nine members of the committee that conducted the evaluations part A and B and this is what they are recommending to the board okay so I understand the recommendation and Miss Batista I just want to make sure that I as a board member is not violating anything can I vote no and I'm okay yes without I just asked some questions I did not say I'm voting no because of this that or that but can I vote no simply because I have concerns that I don't necessarily Express yes you can vote no okay so I'm voting no on that basis chair Dr Zan thanks so much chair um I in procurement situations like this um where there are uh multiple biders that are double what a winning bidder is one of the concerns is did the winning bidder really understand the work that's required usually when you see a difference of 10% or 15% that might be competitive energies it might be the firm really wants to do work in Brower County it could be that they'd love Dr heurn and they just would do anything to work here with him there's a million reasons why you might be 10 or 15% uh less expensive when I find in procurement space when someone is half the price of everybody else I'm curious whether or not they understood the work now again I've spent hours and hours and hours reading this RFP reading this contract um it is not the classic kind of uh of statement of work built into this or a performance work statement that a company could look at and know exactly what they got to do except for the amendment that says you will produce a condition assessment report in 12 months that's an amendment because originally the contract said 9 months and it pushed it back to 12 months that is the critical part that we absolutely need and so the reason I'm going to be okay with this contract in the end is that we made it very clear they have one thing they got to do which is a condition assessment report and we absolutely got to have that in 12 months and so I don't want to introduce the three to 6 months of additional time I think we could break this contract by the way up into asset management and condition assessment report very easily those are two totally different workforces that do that work but uh I don't support doing that uh I'm going to be very very hawkish on this one I will be watching it every month to see where they are on the schedule that they need to get to to be finished in 12 months and I will report that to the public at every Schoolboard meeting uh that's how concerned I am about this vendor and and this the the wording that is in this contract um but I still feel like we have to do that so the one question that I have chair is is did we do an assessment whether or not this award this this this vendor that we intend to make an award to or that we're being proposed we're being asked to to approve this contract did we do an assessment given how low their price was to make sure that they understood the work that was in the solicitation Dr Miss Paul based on the proposal that they submitted um yes they they understood uh the different major systems that would need to be evaluated as well as the um uh space utilization study and then if you look at their list of references um and their experience level with large districts that is also present how many past performances do they have to turn in for this uh solicitation M Andrew I would have to read that section however I know that they turned in several um including I believe um they had several large districts I want to say Chicago was there um if you give me a moment Boston Maryland Tulsa so Memphis New York State so they have experience thank you very much and those references we checked and they came back positive how many references did we check on on Bureau veritos question I would have to ask uh the committee members and follow up with you but I believe at least minimum two or three yeah terrific now this is a firm of 75,000 people right that is correct right they do thousands of projects a year the idea that they could pick a handful of references and get positive responses does does not impress me one bit I will continue to watch the execution of this as closely as I've watched anything and we're going to report it to the community about staying on track we must have this uh in 12 months thank you very much drer if I may so Dr Zan you referred to 12 months on the or having FCA completed the terms of the contract is three years so those are the the terms that I read so I I appreciate that but U Amendment Three to the contract says a condition assessment report will be completed in 12 months does it not or did I read the wrong contract I don't have that Amendment this is exactly what I'm worried about I'm worried that we think we're going to do something in three years when Broward County School Board needs this in 12 months Dr heer I think we're looking for the Amendment if you can be specific or where you found it Dr Z um you know I'm going from memory because it it was a lot of reading but I pretty sure it's Amendment Three and Amendment Three says that a condition assessment report will be done in uh 12 months it's an amendment to what it said originally in the contract that we were going to do uh it in nine months we have legal checking that there was get you reference my God it's Amendment Three the facility assessment report is due one year after award that's right out of the contract contct I I I'm I'm not supposed to be the expert in contract and I'm not supposed to be the expert in this solicitation Dr Zan we're we're going to take a 10-minute recess e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e okay welcome back Dr Zeman I think we have an answer for you Dr heern Miss Paul board chair board and uh Dr heern uh what we did find in agenda three was a staffing plan that said that the Staffing plan is over a 12-month period uh nowhere did we find within the that uh the FCA would have to be completed within 12 months but I I understand your uh motivation and the sense of urgency of trying to get it done as quickly as possible and uh we will do our best to make sure that happens we'll set that as a goal get it done as quickly as possible no thank you very much I I uh misread the addendum and I apologize okay Mr Alon mine is very easy thank you madam chair could I recommend I was actually going to go down list of things purpose of goal setting committee um purpose of a disparity study what we agreed to as a school district why we have a goal setting committee what do they do when do points apply when do goals apply when do SUB I'm not going to do that but I'm going to recommend for the new nine Madam chair that you put on your agenda a workshop on a dispar what what is the role of a disparity study goal setting committee how you set affirmative procuring initiatives what's the role of the board what's the role of staff just go through all of that around mid November that's my recommendation thank you thank you random if I may miss AA thank you that's the lesson learned um for for me to just the that we need to make sure our board is well educated and well informed um as a uh corporate body uh so we have a clear understanding yeah we we'll do it after after in mid November so we'll make sure that happens thank you I have a couple questions um one was was this it at all through the facilities task force or or the long long-term planning committee if I said that correctly um I asked Mr andreo but I'm I'm I'm not aware um if it went through facilities task force because it was a previous um Chief facilities officer that um developed this one go ahead Miss Andrea if I could get more clarity on the question so the qet committee was the were the members of the evaluation once the proposals um were deemed responsive they reviewed as I mentioned before uh in sections A and B and evaluated the four proposals the user Department worked with procurement in defining the scope of services that are outlined in the request for proposal right but my question was what the facilities task force did they went weigh in on the anything and the long-term planning committee um not that I'm aware of but we would have to ask the facilities Department no but well the facilities task force our committee right but they would be the staff liais on for that I can't speak to that uh that would have happened I think before my time yeah we can we can um check and follow up okay well kind of need that information now but my question is well I guess with something this vitally important and knowing that we've had past grand jury reports that specifically talked about this item with you know in 2014 they they used the staff BCPS staff to do the needs assessment and the board at that time pick the the lowest um amount of money to choose to do the needs assessment as we all know that that hurt us now in 2024 with the smart Bond program I just want to make sure that superintendent you're comfortable with the the cost and also the the value that this company is going to bring for this assessment and also and then my next question is does this company have any school experience like experience doing these Assessments in schools thanks for the question sh yes I am comfortable I've U gone through their proposals also they have experience working with large school districts schools um and even um entire States um think for the uh State Board of Education for the state of Maryland um they did they they FCA for many of their schools also okay thank you okay Mr Aon yeah just want to just so I'm clear so I know i' uh recommended the other uh item for the coming weeks let me just ask a question since we brought to vote because I've heard sounds like some issues but I really haven't heard from a legal perspective from a process perspective uh procurement or for the user department so just so I understand because I think you asked the question Madam chair were there did we follow all procedures on this contract let me start there TR M and yes sir all procedures were followed okay did we follow all applicable laws and board policies Council on this process Miss Batista yes are there any issues that came to light during the selection process on experience or past work um yeah MRE no sir the references two references for each firm were checked okay so this was an RFP I know the difference of the different procurement mechanisms is price the predominant sorry actually no let me rephrase a question I think board member holness asked earlier there were different um characteristics evaluated in the process price was one of them is that correct that is correct out of the total scores I'm sorry out of the total score that you could that a firm could receive tell us what that total score is tell us what what is the total amount for price and all the other three four five six categories because I'm not looking at it sorry and I don't know if that's in front of you all but I'm just trying to repeat at least put on the record just as from a process standpoint because price is not the only thing that you all considered based on what you've said so you could just explain what those other areas are and What's the total amount of points a firm could receive and then What's the total overall score that a firm could receive mral so eight there were a total number maximum number of points that a firm could would receive or could receive is 100 points okay as you stated there were several factors that were evaluated for instance experience references and approach combined for 50 points maximum experience okay yep and then it's further broken down as to the rubric two points is excellent 1.5 is good so on and so on the current workload you could get a maximum of three points so it's very detailed as to the rubric used and how the points are allotted um there were points as you said for using certified vendors there were points for Price all of these are factors your team structure as we discussed earlier there was a maximum of 10 points for your Staffing plan how much was price in that overall 100 points cuz it wasn't in the 50 the big number experience what how much was price price [Music] was cost 0o to 15 so 15 points out of 100 points was price maximum up to 15 points yes so price is not the dominating Factor the highest amount of points the highest factor that you could receive the highest scores was experience in workload is that right correct okay so in the price category because I heard at least two or three folks focus on price if you if price was not a factor would the scores or the ranking substantially change or change at all if price was not a factor at all I that's off the you know I'm being then yes possibly okay so price so the difference in this case was I'm assuming this firm offered the lowest price or best value price whatever okay got it are there any other last questions issues that the board should know before voting on are there any protests are there complaints I mean just kind of all of that any of that there was a protest which delayed this item in coming to the board and that was resolved okay and that's why we're bringing the item forth today and the protest is one of the four firms I'm assum or three I don't know correct one of the firms that was not awarded filed a protest a protest hearing was conducted The Firm that filed the protest chose not to continue with an administrative law judge that was resolved and again that's what brought us to this point today all right got it thank you Mrs Hixon thank you just a quick question um is traditionally when we're doing rfps um that deal with facil facilities do we um bring that to the facilities task force and was the faciliity task force involved in at least the RFP part or or any part of this particular item Dr Miss andreo through the chair we normally do not um again it's usually the enduser department working in conjunction with the purchasing agent from procurement Warehouse Services uh I don't believe that this item was brought to any of our advisory committies but I would have to confirm that again with staff from the end user Department okay thank you Miss Fam thank you madam chair um through the chair I have two questions one I'd like um a description of the nature of the protest in other words I want to want to know what the allegations were and also I want to know the vendor that brought protest if they have a prior history um providing services to Broward County and how long that history is and and what that involved what kind of services thank you Dr Miss Andrea Madame shair um while miss Andre is looking for that um response I just wanted to um clarify that um voting uh know on a um on a procurement process such as this one you have to you cannot be arbitrary and um I'm looking at some of the the legal precedent um so it it says that to permit the soliciting agency to arbitrarily reject responsive bids would undermine and eventually destroy the Integrity of the competitive bid Pro process um and uh just wanted to make sure that I brought that to the attention of the board so are you saying Miss Batista that if you vote no you also have to State your good cause or just cause well no but it cannot be um you know arbitrarily done um because at some point they're going to have the district is going to have to post what the response is to the RFP and so the response could be you know if if there is a vote of no it would be rejection of all bids and then the the question would be as to what the reason is um are you speaking to the board as a whole or a single board member no no the board as a whole okay right the on the procurement Department once that this is um completed here you know there is uh there is a posting that takes place and so um just wanted to bring that um um that standard to the attention of the board okay what are we waiting for I think the question that board member fam asked was the vendor that filed the protest and that vendor was exp if we get into the reasons why they filed yeah I don't I don't need their name I'm just looking for the reasons well yeah why they brought what the protest was based upon I think the whole board should have that information I think it's very valuable and relevant and then if that vendor has a history of doing business with Broward County and providing similar same services or other services What that particular history is you know if they're not a good you know what I mean if they're not consistent they're not reliable or whatever I'm trying to compare apples and apples if we have a new vendor I would like to know their history as well if they're reliable in other counties it seems like they are so now let's balance the other side and hear about the protester M fam just so you know it was emailed to the entire board well it's not a matter of public record so well it is a matter of public record um if anybody were to Res request the information from the bid protest um that data information is available is there uh an objection to putting that in the public record now I think the people have the right to know what's going on here and this is the easiest and fastest way to get that information conveyed this is a public meeting public forum so that's why I'm asking questions sometimes a lot of times I already know the answers but I want people it's my people want to be educated on what's going on so just so that you know the bid protest committee rejected this item um that was the resolution the uh the the protester decided to walk away um and resolve the issue so they didn't even pursue it any further we still don't know the nature of the objection we don't we we don't know that what was it was it unfair bidding I think there were multiple reasons that's why that's why I'm asking for the details thank you Mr Dr the vendor cited about 18 different reasons for their protest um as was stated earlier after we all met and they did not want to move forward after hearing the stance that the school board of Broward County had um which included items like if they were not clear or on the evaluation criteria there was a question for there was a period for question and answers to get that clarification or if they did not feel like cost should be part of the evaluation they could have expressed that during that window period in which they did not so those are just two of the highlights but as I stated there were about between 15 to 18 different points that they made during this initial hearing and as stated by Miss Batista they chose not to move forward my and my second question if we had a history with this vendor and can you please elaborate on that whether they have provided these or similar services or other services and what that history was like working with them the vendor does currently do work with us not these same services but they do provide other services with the school district and I I feel like I'm I'm reiterating the same question ever what was the history was that a positive they're reliable I mean you're just saying they have a relationship okay were they married are they concubines what give me the relationship please don't make me pull teeth uh they have a good relationship with the district So when you say good relationship you me reliable and we haven't had any complaints against them in the past not that I'm aware of okay well thank you thank you m any other questions yes Dr Hess okay so um Miss Batista brought forth new information um that that um is in opposition to the response before so as a board member um this item is presented to us to vote Yes or no and the chair had asked a question do we need just cause to vote no and the answer is no so now I am unclear can I vote no and what is expected of me if I vote no Miss Batista the board can vote no however their responses um cannot be arbitrary and capricious so ultimately when when a decision is made and if the decision is no we're going to have to post um that we're rejecting all of the um we're rejecting all so in terms of the rationale what rationale is going to be placed there um if our um if the decision of the board is um considered arbitrary and capricious that's that's going to be an issue if it is challenged by any one of the um proposers who did not um who did not win actually all of them all of them have a a point of entry in which they can challenge the decision um of the board okay so ultimately if if it's found that uh the decision is arbitrary and capricious that can be an issue okay so on this item when is the decision when is a no considered um to not be arbitrary or capricious M Batista if the RFP contained information and guidelines um that were properly um evaluated by the committee um the fact that you know you may disagree with some of those guidelines at the back end um is not sufficient reason to reject um because it's something that was already set forth in the process with the RFP okay so if I vote no do I have to give a reason you don't have to give a reason um but if the board as a whole were to reject um then there would have to be a reason and the reason would have to be something that is not arbitrary Ora capricious okay thank you Mr fly yes CH I'd like to call the question all in favor of calling the question say I I I those oppos say no okay roll call on the item school board members Hixon yes Honus no linardy no rer yes Zan yes aha yes Alon yes famam no passes uh 63 sorry wait yes Mr H but you said yes you said yes I was like I heard I heard 6 three passes okay it I have a motion in second on item number 10 move by Zan second by come on guys Hixon public comment none board comment Dr Zan thanks again chair I'm gonna ask again about small minority women owned Enterprises this got flagged by a couple folks that wrote To Me is This is the kind of work that uh small firms do all the time uh but again we're not we're making a an award $3 million spend Authority and no minority women business enterprises U either bid or were awarded I'm curious what Outreach we made to find firms that could do this kind of work Dr eer MRE thank you for the question so this will be coming to you in multiple uh pieces if you will so this is the first round of probably three or four and you will see certified firms in some of the upcoming uh items that are before the board board for approval we are doing them as the Agreements are ready thanks chair any other comments all in favor of item number 10 say I I those oppos say no item 10 passes unanimously May a motion second item number 11 so move second move by Zan St by roer public comment board M comment all in favor of item number 11 say I I I those opposed say no IEM 11 passes unanimously you may have a motion and second on item number 12 so move second Zan by Hixon public comment board member comment yes we're oness we're on 12 right 12 okay great thank you so um uh can staff clarify the financial impact of $400,000 for acaletics supplemental software it's noted that schools can purchase the software but there's also a district Financial impact uh of the $400,000 will schools be responsible ible for a portion of this cost with the district covering the remainder or if someone could explain how that how that works CU When I read it it shows um school budget as well as District Dr Dr fter good afternoon Angela folon Deputy superintendent I can kick it off and if I leave anything out I'll ask Melissa HZ to uh chime in but 20 of those schools uh are being paid from the school Improvement Grant from the state and I believe that we have set aside 20 $200,000 and the remaining amount are coming from our school budgets if they choose to purchase it okay so the district will will allocate $200,000 and then the other 200,000 is from the schools if they choose to correct correct uh 200,000 of that is coming from a grant we receive from the state of Florida understand so um I just like to say because for me I wanted to be sure that this software was effective so I made contact with uh Dillard Elementary and um principal Robinson's uh tenure as assistant principal at West Heights during principal Robinson tenure as an assistant principal at Westwood Heights Elementary they successfully uh according to principal Robinson utilize acaletics to improve math proficiency from 37 to 51% coinciding with this school achieving a B rating acaletics Pro to be both engaging and effective in front-loading standards ensuring comprehensive coverage of the curriculum the software is research based and has demonstrated significant improvements in learning gains by identifying and addressing skill gaps uh this Academic Year will be Dillard Elementary's first implementation of acaletics and principal Robinson is optimistic about its potential to enhance learning gains and proficiency also spoke to principal uh parent from MLK one of my schools and principal parent has been utilizing this program since 2018 possibly early as 2017 the program has consistently delivered impressive results one year saw a 78% Improvement in student learning gains a 50% increase in proficiency despite experiencing a slight dip during the covid-19 year there has been continuous Improvement annually at this school uh principal parent strongly believes in this program emphasizing its alignment with State assessment and its Effectiveness in supporting student learning so I will be supporting this item thank you thank you m burper thank you um this is some great stuff going on here I love it I wanted to give staff the opportunity to um share some uh way better success than what was uh misplaced Lu yes yes thank you so much so we did get a call this morning from is Melissa Holtz director Elementary learning I apologize that there is a typo in the information so Martin Luther King actually was a positive and not a negative increase in their data so we did speak to the um director and the principal and the uh Miss hudge uh to apologize and explain that we would have that corrected so they are positive not negative I have a question on that yes thank you um so I believe that was a negative 13 yes uh so what is the positive positive 13 or it is a positive six a positive six okay thank you for clarifying that thank you the chair yes if if I may add also Martin Luther King when they were at F school probably about five years ago go acaletics was one of the curriculum that we used over there to that really accelerated their growth they moved from a f to a c and one of the one of the accolades that they received from acaletics they were the top 1% school in the state that um achieved tremendous growth in mathematics I will also say Dr holess I was the principal of Dill Elementary in the early 2000s I used acaletics as well too and at that time we were a school and we contribute a lot of our success to math and etics okay anyone else seeing none all in favor of item number 12 say I I those opposed say no item number 12 passes unanimously may have a motion second on item number 14 moved by Zan second by rert public comment none board member comment Zan thank you uh this is my third time uh seeing this list and every time I see this list I kind of kind of bifurcated in my mind about uh being out of field like in a way that's um significant and being out of field um because you're a science teacher and you're working in PE and I'm I'm fine with a science teacher taking years and going to be a PE they're probably fully qualified and if they want to do it that that's wonderful what I'm worried about is people with uh High School certificates trying to teach ele school or people who are uh don't have any math certificates at all and they dive into you know calculus at the high school level and the like and and I'm not asking to hold up this item I'm just asking the superintendent uh whether or not when we see this list again if we can bifurcate this list into things that matter and things that are out of field but aren't likely to have any impact on our students Dr um thank you Dr Zan noted so uh probably our um positions are applied science applied MTH content areas that are hard to staff versus some of the other electives so we we'll come up with a good way of um presenting that information ter I appreciate that because telling the community that 900 of our 13,600 teachers are out of field doesn't settle well necessarily U but I by my look two-thirds or so of them are uh doing something they're fully qualified to do but technically they're working out of field about a third of them are people who are probably stretching a little bit to do this work and and I understand uh it's hard to find people in some of these jobs and maybe they're fully qualified uh to do this I'm sure they are uh but just not technically uh uh certified and so they're working out of field and I understand and I've been told that there's a certain amount of time you have to get um certified in these things and that's all good but I think the community would like to know uh when it's significant when it's not okay any other comments M rer um thank you I I have a little bit of a um kind of the opposite side and and it does cost for each um certificate that you get from the state so you could graduate with uh your Masters in exceptional education and you can be endorsed in reading and esol Etc but if you don't pay to put them on your um certification you actually still come up as at a field um so I know I brought this up last year um that it is a cost for our especially our new teachers um um I wholeheartedly agree with um Dr Zeman about stipulating uh you know what we can and can't um you know accept than that but I mean it is you got three years and most of the time teachers don't really have the opportunity to say yay or nay to a an assignment that they get so it's automatic that you have if you have an esol student you have a certain amount of time to be able to get that certification so um I would ask that if there is any sort of incentives that we could put into a um help the especially the young teachers that are just getting out of school right now to be able to afford putting everything on their certification list that they want to so that's my point Thank you thank you Mr rer any other comments seeing none all in favor of 14 say I I those opposed say no 14 passes unanimously may have a motion second on 15 move by Zan second by roer public comment board comment I have a Miss rert thank you um I just had one suggest actually a question and then a suggestion um I'm looking at the job description pink page and one two three under essential performance responsibilities is establish um performance-based measures blah blah blah meet with the chief of staff key cabinet members we still have that position Dr eper we might in the future but we don't right now no we we don't um we can we can um take that out so we if the rooll yeah uh we can just take that out it just a thought process I want to put another Ro in there then the RO the name of the role changes and then we got to bring the yeah let's just out where are you m rert uh fourth bullet I'm sorry fourth bullet essential performance I believe we'll need a motion I I know but I have another another part so go go ahead M you know me I give you at least a two for every once in a while um the next page on page two under minimum qualifications and experienced the last bullet was was crossed out and I was going to move that the last bullet underneath the um uh the minimum qualifications should be put back in and also the fourth bullet to remove meat with the chief of staff so those are second thank you move by rubert second by Al public comment board comment all in favor say I I those aose say no carries miss rert that is it for me thank you okay I have um question first on the minimum qualification experience is says you added in the OR eligible to obtain the Florida Department of Law Enforcement certification within the first 12 months of employment is anything prohibiting that from occurring the first 6 months of employment um not possibly um we we consulted with um um some experts in law enforcement and they advised 6 to 12 months would be a a good um number of months for a person from out of the state or who's in the state and doesn't have the certification to to acquire it okay CU my I was first thinking they should have it a but now I'm understanding why so you're saying it gives you more flexibility even though the goal will be within the first six months correct um the current scope of the job description really narrowed the amount of candidates um that probably could be successful in in um doing the work they were asking to do so that hence while we're bringing a job description back just to make sure we're not um screening out um great candidates right and is the certification offered at multiple times per year or or it's only one time per year no um from my understanding uh from the consultation we got it's available mult multiple times a year okay so because it seems that it is offered multiple times a year I feel more comfortable for being within the first six months of employment you know because it's it's so vitally important and you know how things get put on your plate and then you keep pushing things back so I move to change it to the fle certification within the first six months of employment second move by Alf second by wholeness public comment board comment Dr Hess Madam chair so for this particular certification um can uh staff inform us as to what's involved in in in achieving this certification are there courses they have to take how long does that take that kind of a thing I just want to have a better idea Dr a Mr AO I'm not sure of the specifics but I know if they have a if they already have a similar out of state certification or if they're a federal agent it's easy for them to get it's called equivalent equivalency of training but I'm not exactly sure we have a couple of people in the back that may know more about it want go ahead uh okay chief no good afternoon so the equivalence of training what uh that entails mostly um High liability it's Florida law Firearms defensive tactics um those topics and um so that would be like somebody coming from out of state let's say Georgia um if it's a chief or somebody that has a a certificate in that state they can go through that uh that training and they'll be able to obain their FDLE certification okay so um through the super so that training is this something offered online is this something they have to do at a college or at an Institute and I need some idea of the timeline for if you don't have it at all what what's the timeline in accomplishing that uh I believe the course is about 6 to eight weeks uh they offer it at Broward the Broward Police Academy they offer it at uh West Palm up in West Palm Beach in Palm Beaches Academy so it's offered at multiple locations and it's offered a couple times a year Okay so um it takes 6 to8 weeks and you said a couple of times per year uh for me a couple means too that are you saying several times per year because my concern is and I and I appreciate the item but if we vote to reduce the um the timeline requirement to achieve it to 6 months and it takes 6 to 8 weeks and it's only offered one time within that period of of 6 months um then uh it may be a bit difficult ult for that person to achieve that if there's some other issue that um with his schedule or her schedule that would prevent the person from attending so can you elaborate on the frequency at which this is offered so I know for sure when I vote that this person have access to this course multiple times in order to accomplish the goal right I don't I don't know the frequency that it's offered in in either County and and I know Dade County Police Academy offers it as well we have three local policey here within you know third probably 30 miles you know 30 40 miles either way okay so they would have to if it's if let's just say the time in Broward is once and it doesn't fit the schedule they would then have to commute to date County to be able to um take this class and the commute would likely be a daily a daily situation correct for for six to eight weeks yes was interesting Miss Fam thank you um I would uh ask that we made a change to page three oh on the motion Miss fam the six months oh okay we're let's finish that motion and I'll make mine okay okay so with that information that I just heard I think it is even more vitally important what that certification what they need in that certification that it makes it a priority that we make sure they're doing it within the first six months you know when um rules aren't followed there's lives at AK and and so I think by the board setting that standard it makes it to the top level that you know you're going to come in and you're going to get this certification if you don't have it and and and make sure they'll they'll get it done Madam chair yep real quick so with what Dr somebody mentioned like if they don't have it at all so if they don't have any equivalent license in another state or a federal agency they're starting from scratch so they would not be eligible so we're looking for people that are have certification in a similar FDLE training that's why it should be easier to get that's why yeah we put it on here and we're the sixth largest school district in the country I think our chief of Safety and Security should be the best of the best of the best agreed all in favor of the six months for the certification say I I I those opposed say no item passes motion passes Miss fam okay on page three on this would be considered on the preferred qualifications and our experience um line four says graduation from Advanced International Public Safety Training Program I would like to just change that to uh my motion would be to amend that to attend ongoing um here he is intent ongoing public safety training programs including state-of-the-art technology Innovations and the reason I'm saying that I think we should have that as a requirement um in order that evacuation procedures are always continually reviewed um Countrywide I'm get that input and also that we understand and are made aware of new technology at least annually at minimum once a year so I would add that that language be added so that's my motion to include that language uh go ahead Mr a probably about to say the same thing I'm about if it's about attending ongoing that would kind of go over in the essential performance responsibilities not necessarily qualification can we move it over there then doesn't matter to me my motion would be to move it over to um the attending but hold on Miss fam I believe it's already there Dr hurn oh no I thought you asking if it was too is it it better to go there yes it's better to go in the essential U performance responsibilities but let me take a quick glance just to make sure that we don't already have that in there that's two part one is like I said it would cover evacuation procedures and then new technology that comes available Dr heer and the fifth one two three fifth one from the bottom participate in training programs offered to enhance the individual skills and proficiency related to job responsibilities I I would still keep my motion in there because I want it specific I want to know that we're getting the best evacuation knowledge I want to make sure that we know what technology becomes available so that's a general statement I'm targeting M can you repeat your motion sure it would be um again attend ongoing public safety training programs which include state-of-the-art Innovations and then we can add my other language evacuation procedures and new technological um advancements made available is there a second moved by fam second by Altin public comment board comment on the motion all in favor of the motion say I I I those opposed say no motion carries any other motions on this item Mrs Zen U yes also on page three the same bullet point that um Mrs fam was just mentioning but I'm just wondering why these two um items were crossed out when their preferred qualifications I think it's great if they would be gradu a graduate from an advanced International Public Safety Training or a high level experienced person in the United States military so why were those crossed out Dr a Mr AO so with the military the one right below it prior enlisted commission officer status in US military I figured it was redundant to have two things in there about military the graduation from an advanced International Public Safety Training Program I could not find anything that is an international Public Safety Training Program okay so I looked on all the resumés plus talking to you know people outside it's nothing's listed and i' already passed it don't bring it up I I appreciate that I would just say the the one underneath prior enlisted commissioned officer status in the United States military um I mean that's fine to have too but high level experience in the United States military doesn't necessarily mean they had to be an officer so I don't know why high high level experience and a commissioned officer to me commissioned officer status is high level there could be other yes but there could be other positions understand just commissioned officers that would fall under this so could think there's a problem keeping both I understand would you like to make a motion yes I'd like to move that we keep high level experience in the United States military as one of the preferred qualification moved by Hixon second by Leonardi public comment board comment all in favor say I I those oppos say no carries next anyone else all in favor of 15 as amended say I I those opposed say no item 15 passes unanimously may have a motion and second on item number 16 moveed by Alon second by F holy public comment we have two registered uh public comment I don't see them in the audience but I would name them just in case they're out in the the public Kimberly morh horn and sander Shere sh shaer French names seeing none Mr Alon you want to kick us off no I think it's the superintendent and chief auditor right Mr R I'm listening superintendent do you want me yes um we'll have Mr Sullivan kick us off okay all right so as it relates to the public records um so for were text messages and emails as it relates to District devices that it that did include anyone with those devices we don't have any Communications as we also included I don't I don't know if it was part of the original one but we also included in the public records any calls to our Professional Standards Department because that was the department that had um interactions with the school as it relates to the placement or the temporary uh confusion about the reassignment about Mr Weatherspoon there was no uh there's no hits on that either so the only one that is pending because you included every single employee is calls to District cell phones that will be completed Thursday however with that said we did interview part of our uh investigation the uh employee who had interaction with Miss Fusco so um I think it was important for us um there was obviously was a joint in investigation between the chief auditor and the superintendent I was uh a part of those uh investigations so we wanted to make sure a couple things one wait a second if I could Madam chair Char so have a question to the superintendent and chief auditor and I appreciate you being the chief spokesperson so my question is are both of you delegating the update to the individual who was not tasked with doing this is that the intent today are you refraining from making comments today is that the intent just so I understand not not at all okay all right so then what I would prefer and I appreciate you Mr Sullivan um and I appreciate uh kind of you know you know at least for me I let other ones everyone else app um I would appreciate hearing from the two of you because you all are doing this work y so I I'll defer uh to you Mr Rose first and I can follow up but just to summize with some of the public records requests that Mr Sullivan just mentioned um the rest of it to be wrapped up on Thursday because there was no essential uh specific scope on employee group um so essentially we're looking at public records of all District employees um and so that's why for it to scrub that much data um is taking some time go ahead Mr Rose and uh also uh for purposes of maintaining continuity of the investigation it was uh Mr Sullivan was leading up the request and the Gathering of these documents that we were attempting to gather um only to find out that many of them that we thought would have existed did not and we believe that we've gotten uh accurate information that the information did not exist however we will find out on Thursday what else happens to come in so I think the most important thing that I would talk about to begin with is that we um we had an initial meeting so that we could talk about what is the scope of what it is that we're looking at and what we were trying to look at was what was it that triggered the situation that caused uh the the what we've concluded is a misunderstanding that uh Mr Witherspoon was going to be re- um assigned we had to track that chronologically to find out how this thing happened and to find out what happened with regard to any of the law enforcement who was initially involved in this before we came to into the situation to to begin looking at this process so what we found out was that um indeed there was a um a BTU meeting which was not specifically in our scope because that that was the situation that caused the activity that that included uh employees but it wasn't specifically in our scope to go in and investigate what's going on inside the wall of the btu or the BTU's procedures so once we got past that part and we took a look at the requirements of uh policy 4.9 we realized that we had to have some um investigative supervision by uh SIU is what the policy calls for and we so we were really also including um one of their detectives with us at all times who was able to take sworn state ments who was able to administer Oaths in order to do that and also gave theity warnings and for anybody who doesn't know what that means a GED warning is essentially giving a warning to a witness that's about to give testimony that anything that you say administratively that could incriminate yourself will not be used against you or will not become subject to a legal proceeding unless you lie in the course of uh this interview um and so we gave the gity warnings as are required by the policy um It's Not Unusual for that to happen in an administrative situation period um we took the sworn statements which were recorded we asked open-ended questions initially to make sure that they gave us their full and complete understanding of the situation as they saw it as it unfolded and it became clear to us very quickly that this thing was triggered by uh a misunderstanding in a couple of very similar sounding names as opposed to them using the names of the schools uh we got that information that was not just corroborated but it was um from all of the sides that we interviewed the this information continued to just show the same fact pattern coming together repeatedly there was uh nearly uh no instances in which there was a um a complete difference in the story as to how this stuff unraveled beginning with the uh Communications that came out of BTU after the incident happened uh right up to the various individuals who identified that um at law enforcement levels outside of the district inside of the district and contemporaneous with the items going on just for for example a fortify uh um report that was that happened simultaneous with the event there was information all throughout that identified that this did not represent a threat and so Mr Witherspoon uh was identified as no threat to anybody inside or outside of the district um the the individual who ended up becoming the person that this investigation kind of centered in on was the person who mistook the information that she had in the morning with um uh a communication with the the um task assigned chief of uh Safety and Security and um accidentally contacted the wrong principal gave the wrong information that's what caused this whole thing to kick into play we spoke with firsthand Witnesses we did not find it necessary to go and speak with secondhand Witnesses when the firstand witnesses gave us testimony under oath as to what it is that they said when they spoke to these different people that they admitted to speaking with and so the the end of the day it was uh a situation where everybody who was involved in any potential wrongdoing as was identified when we were originally tasked with putting this investigation together it was as though everybody was Vindicated as they gave us testimony that supported one another's claims and this was even the people who were supposed to have been adversaries I concur with everything that Mr Rose says um as we were um side by side and fact finding and reviewing all the facts and I came to the same conclusion also great Madam chair um last well question um so you are 90% complete with your work is that my assumption or what are the final steps before I guess issuing some report back to the board go go ahead Mr okay so um as uh Mr Sullivan said Thursday we're expecting some information to come back at which point there could be some new things that unfold between now or between then and the next time we were to speak to put an actual percentage on it that information is going to make that determination because right now we could be 99% uh complete with this investigation if there are no New Revelations from the information that we gather from those 30,000 records uh other than that I think in talking to folks there were some um other uh discussions about some potential um other complaints that are um they're they're likely to come forward um but at this point closing this out and completing this investigation is the priority like you made a statement so I have a natural question you alluded to likely complaints related to the specific subjects yeah and uh just to I'll do a very shallow dive on this I don't need to know who I'm just assuming no I'll I'll just do a shallow dive using just a policy um policy on bullying and harassing we all have known and have found out over periods of time when these investigations go on that with bullying and harassing there's a the acronym rip it has to be repeated it has to be purposeful and there has to be imbalance of power if you have somebody who's waging the complaint who is actually the source of the power it's very hard to imagine that that is going to get past the intake and routing uh position of a of an a complaint because all three of those uh elements have to be met not two out of three not one out of three not two out of three in an egregious way all three of them have to be met and if the imbalance of power could not be met that's just an example of how a potential complaint could be uh um routed into the uh unsubstantiated or unfounded basket early on got it Madam chair last question for me um my assumption is you have spoken to all of the direct parties involved um so and whoever they are is that a yes not only a yes they have been um uh recorded and interviewed under oath okay is my assumption that includes the principal you alluded to someone in Professional Standards or HR you alluded to Mr Witherspoon you alluded to miss Fusco I'm assuming all of those direct subjects yes uh you you made a great point with regard to the principal but the principal gave us a um written statement and and advised us that that was true all aspects of that were true great so that the and and with that in regard to the remaining portion of your question everybody else that you just listed has been personally interviewed on under great so with one question that was uh a big conversation open my assumption is you all will make some determination at least on one individual um if that person is covered I don't know if that's a part of your scope um under Schoolboard policy or not is that a part of the scope that you're answering in your review no not initially that's not uh part of the scope of the um investigation but we can't confirm that that person is an employee on on leave right my question is is that in your report because that was a huge conversation by this board um or your assessment I I won't even call it an investigation whatever you're doing we can provide it probably separately from the scope of that um investigation because the investigator report is going to go through the totality of all the statements that we received um be it under oath or like the principal verifying that what what he's stating is is true right um is someone going to talk to me the person who who actually made the motion um and made the allegation of bullying and political harassment is that the last 2% of your work or does that not happen go ahead Mr Russ um because we've already gotten the answers from the firstand um witness the information that you might share specifically when you're talking about bully bullying and political harassment that falls out outside of the original policy that we were told to conduct this investigation under which was employees which was under 4.9 so if there is an additional complaint that would be talking about bullying and harassment that would fall under some people call it 5.9 or 5900 I think that that would be a separate complaint for us to be able to look at that and conduct that under that policy specifically great so the employees since you've made a determination who they are um there's agreement now sounds like it uh you're going to make that affirmative statement somewhere how will you do that the affirmative statement where that's concerned will come in the report but it's also going to come in the report based on information that came out of uh witness testimony with regard to what that person that we're alluding to uh the position that they're in now that they're in in um leave you said earlier this leave un leave there there are an employee they are on leave and there doesn't seem to be anybody that's sitting around this table that we've either spoken to during these meetings or during the course of the investigation that disagrees with the fact that that person is indeed an employee of the of the uh County well two 14 days ago that wasn't the case so um thank you for the clarity openly I'm I'm looking forward to seeing that in the report um so last question on that because that individual from my understanding uh made the complaint uh and you use the right uh framework um a person of power um a part of an organization with another person also in the organization both teachers in Broward County Public Schools right so when you look at levels of influence as you pointed out perfectly uh you know I understand uh I hope that that is a part of your analysis that the board and the public will see um again because that is not a part of what 4.9 causes us to far it out that information may not be spelled out in the way you just described it or in the way you may be expecting it but it doesn't mean that it couldn't be fared out it just means that when you're talking about bullying and political harassment you're talking about something different than the confines in the four corners of 4.9 it doesn't mean that we couldn't get that information for you and it doesn't mean that there's not a different um finding or set of findings that could come out of that it just means that I am not certain that I can sit here today and tell you that based on the scope of the uh investigation that we performed and conducted under 4.9 that we would be able to answer those questions if you'd look at 59 5.9 or 5900 at the bullying and harassment area you would see that there's a a series of different elements that would have to be proven thank you both for your work thank you I have Miss lardy yeah um I had a a few questions and I also wanted to to correct the record on something um two weeks ago when this was brought up Dr heer and said the process of an investigation had already begun so um it is my understanding it was my understanding at the time that the board did not direct that investigation that Dr heer had taken it upon himself to begin that um because that was it was news to me um at that board meeting um as it relates to this investigation will there eventually be or could there be employee discipline as a result of this investigation there could um but reviewing the report and really seeing if there's any violations of any policy for for anybody involved in investigation it could lead to um some form of of um consequences or discipline got it thank you Miss hixen thank you I have a couple of questions so if an employee based on what Mrs leonardy just asked an employee on leave um do we typically render out consequences to an employee on leave they're still our employee yes okay and the other part of that which was kind of the conversation we had before if they're an employee if they're not an employee what does that look like so the that's news to me that was not what we were the conversation we had to Mr Austin's point a couple of weeks ago we were unsure as to what that was so the other point to that is um I think we all agreed on on an investigation of what happened with the people in our districts correct on that day but part of this is something that happened that didn't have to do with the district that had to do with an outside organization um and whatever happened in there so is that really under is that our lane to be looking into what happened during a BTU meeting that that was really my question last time I I 100% agreed we should be looking into what happened where we had an employee tell another employee not not to show up to work um and that was a miscommunication and as you indicated it had happened before so we definitely need to look into that and and apologize to Mr Witherspoon for what had happened but I don't know that it's our it's on any of our business or our lane to be looking into something that happened in a BTU meeting and I I said it last time and I'll say it again this time it it isn't taking sides it's just if if something happens again and there's a miscommunication or or um a disagreement in a BTU are we going to be doing this all the time um no um so I uh let me clarify so just to use some of the analogies you use as far as Lanes um something happened um where information was given to the principal that got us here today that was con conveyed to uh Mr Witherspoon so we had to backtrack enough to stay with them our lanes just to figure out what what caused the reaction um that led up to uh Mr Witherspoon receiving a call about not reporting to work thank you because it it just seems to me the the conversation was moving towards another investigation that would backtrack it even further into a meeting that didn't have anything to do with us as a Brer County School Board and I'll repeat that again and it may put me in a bad space Cas and write another article about me but that's not our business that's just not what we should be doing I don't agree with what happened but I don't think we as a bar County School Board should be re using resources or time to investigate something what if they were at McDonald's and they got into a fight at McDonald's are we going to be in I just see this mushrooming out to someplace that that was a separate entity I agree 100% with investigating what happened in in our campus on our campus to our employee but this was outside of something that the school board has any control over and I don't and will not agree that we should be investigating something beyond what we've already are investigating so thank you Mr Rose you want to add something yeah I'll be happy to microphone I'll be happy to jump into that boat with you because I we had very uh indepth discuss questions at the beginning to try to make sure that the scope was contained to the appropriate policy and that it didn't take us outside of Schoolboard employee behaviors and activities that led to this situation and so had we uh had we puddle jumped and went into another policy or tried to go in and investigate business under their corporate headquarters we would have been out of our lane I don't I think there are some places where the behaviors could arguably be brought under some of the policies that we're working with but I think the the precedent because it didn't match the allegation and it didn't match the scope of the audit or the uh investigation would be that we're better served to try to stay out of those uh those family feuds and let the appropriate authorities handle those feuds because they are outside of our our business thank you and just to comment on that some the um there was something put in motion right someone made a call to an organization they went out investigated it was unfounded so in my eyes Mr Witherspoon has been Vindicated of that there was no finding that he was of any kind of threat and so that piece is really done I mean as as a individual person you're allowed to if you feel threatened to call to call authorities and have them investigate it that's what happened it was found that he was not and the the situation should should be closed it was um you know I don't I just don't think that that's on us to be investigating okay any other comments on the investigation conversation Miss Fam thank you madam chair I'm um I'm on the opposite seat I think this happened it's a school related activity I think that Mr Witherspoon has every right to have a full and complete investigation especially by us since this was our employee whether she's on leave or not I was on leave on workers comp people were hounding me constantly you know to get in my Lane stay in my Lane so now all of a sudden we're reeling in we got the favored and the disfavored people going back there in addition I had made a specific request for to get a copy of the transcript of the police telephone call and I asked as well as for the police report I was told that the Broward count Broward County School District doesn't have that so you guys never access that obtain that put this in your investigation cuz how do you know how do you know the employee that made this phone call to the principal that her version of what happened doesn't parallel that phone call going in to call to the police department how do you know that will show that there was communication there was discussion if that person communicates exactly the information that was made during that police you know to to Institute that U arrest an investigation then that says something right there a pattern the other thing is if um the police investigation report indicates anything that substantiates what Mr Witherspoon said that's also going to be beneficial to Enlighten us all we want to keep it fair and partial I thought that was the goal here so why are we not we're putting our hands in One Direction but not the other that's not right he has every right to know we have every right to know and the fact that you said we're not going to get this and give it to you when it's a public record which you shot you guys should need and want as part of your investigation so give me the the rationale behind this please if I may super CH yes so the detective who assisted with this investigation has made a public records request for both the recordings of the phone call and also the police report so the your investigation which is we're concluding maybe 90% done hasn't even seen those records yet and I was given Miss information told you don't have them go get them yourself I'm not sure who communicated that with you I I don't believe that any of the three of us did so I'm not entirely sure I was told that you didn't have them in their possession I had to go get them well we were doing the public records request for it we did that last week so I'll follow up with the detective but we absolutely made the request for those two items and will that be part of this investigation or is this investigation going to be concluded before you even see those records determines of you know it's public record so we anticipate they will have to hand it over to us so um not sure if it would be within the count finds of the scope of the investigation but we'll review it and make that determination once we receive it okay any other important member Miss leonardy yeah so just to be clear do we or do we not have the police report and the recording from the call we don't have Poss we don't have possession of them but we've made public records request of both it so it is not inaccurate to say we don't have that information correct it's accurate to say we don't have them in our possession correct okay thank you Mr Alon thank you madam chair again as the person who initiated this conversation 14 days ago um because I actually wasn't surprised of how the conversation occurred um so I'll repeat for one of my colleagues um and I think I understand very well um what general consent means because uh when I made the recommendation uh eight people were silent um and because of that uh that's called General consent and I know the past uh president and head of the Florida school boards Association understands that very well so because of General consensus that was taken by the board um it was my recommendation uh to proceed and I thank the board for doing so um I just have a question on process and a comment based on uh sounds like you've already done some work um do we know if the head of the BR teachers Union made a phone call to any District staff of any of the days involved as you consider your timing in your process yes we do I'm sorry who go ahead M sorry yes not only did we we know who the indidual was but as Mr rhs had indicated we took a Soren statement uh so they were under oath when they gave us that statement to C no no no you just no no I got it so but you verified that there was a call from a district employee the head of the teachers union to some District employee has that been verified we verified there was a call between the teachers union and one of our employees correct okay um and you have not verified the official channel that went from the district employee to Mr Witherspoon is that correct the are you speaking about the initial conversation that I have no idea who I'm asking you part of your process so the principal so we started from the beginning we went to the principal the principal gave us a statement a written statement that was the only person that we interviewed that wasn't under um sworn so here's what I'm asking I don't need to know your details because you're doing your report because I'm still waiting on a public records request and you're answering a lot of questions already so because so I think you've said that there was some communication to Mr Witherspoon is that correct correct from the district employee principle and it sounds like there was some communication formally from some District employee to Mr Witherspoon is that correct cor correct uh beyond the the principle um I believe the the next call that Mr Weatherspoon received uh beyond the principle was the employee apologizing for the mistake okay so there was a call from someone to Mr Witherspoon correct got it would that or any calls that I'm still waiting on a part of my requests would that be captured in what I'm going to receive on Thursday it would be captured in the sense if the depends how the communications was made so we know it was a phone call but we don't know if it was a dist District phone or a personal phone so the sweep that we're doing is District because that's the only ability we have to sweep but Mr rhods has his hands up so yeah um but the answer to your question is uh in the sworn statements we have the uh various Witnesses giving us that information that you're talking about so as we summarize those statements to put this report together the question that you just answered will be answered in the report great okay any other comments Miss leonardy so if any of those calls were made on personal devices what in what way um how can we go about getting that information so we can request from the employee to provide that but um I miss Batista might be able to jump in but without a subpoena I don't not sure if we can repel them Miss Batista so if a um if there's a call made on a personal phone um or a text or anything else that constitutes a public record and therefore it would have to be turned over by the employee whether it was done a personal phone or or the school board issued device so I guess my question is um like I understand the district devices work being swept but what are we doing to get the information from personal devices then so I think we're going to go that that R we're going to have to be very specific because the the original request was for all employees and that's a lot of employees so it's way easier for us to make that sweep of all our district devices because we have access to that so if we're going to tailor it specific I would suggest we tailor it way smaller Universe because again the request from Mr Alon that there was all Communications for All District employees so if I may So based upon you know the findings in the investigation thus far you will be able to narrow down to certain individuals and ask for their personal um information and I would also add that no one ever denied not speaking to her yeah I was just about to say the same thing nobody denied not receiving a phone call or making a phone call um for the two subjects that we're that we're um talking about yeah I just want I want us to be very clear because then I don't want anyone to be able to come back and say like look we didn't do the public records corre requests correctly we're not being transparent um so I just want everyone's cards to be out on the table so we'll go ahead and do the specific requests for anyone that we've interviewed for communications as it relates to their personal devices because we've already done the sweeps for the um for the district devices as Miss Batista said so we'll just we know who we interviewed and we know who were the players in terms of the interaction so we'll just ask them just for personal Communications if they have it okay I think you need to check with the person requesting the the public records request to see if that is satis suffice well thank you Mr lardy uh and I know you were present 14 days ago as well as as well as everyone up here um I think my request was very clear um so I'd encourage uh the investigator team who's doing that to look at my words that no one responded to which is why it went forward via General consent by the board um if I could Madam chair um I'm sorry do I have the floor or does Miss lard have the flooor I'm just asking to be back in the queue again y do I have keep going keep going okay um let's play out if the phone call wherever it came from was the proper channel so when District administration calls an employee on a proper channel to put them I'm assuming on leave I don't want to say the wrong term um what policy does that follow and could you just explain that process to me because I want to understand if it was an actual person being placed on leave um I think there are some formal steps that are supposed to take place um yes I I'll ask uh Mr Lozano cuz there was a specific person that they were actually um contacting um but the mistake happened go ahead Mr uh Mr Lozano testing so so what happens is sometimes there's a situation where we have staff that maybe assaults a student so as per the directive of this board in the past we look at that issue and sometimes before we begin the investigative process to protect the employee and the school community and the students we would ask that individual to stay home so we can prepare the written notice that somebody's officially under investigation and being reassigned so there was a situation that I was dealing with that morning that specifically addressed a staff member in an incident with a student so um again it takes us usually we can do it so if it happens in the morning we're pretty efficient and we could get that letter usually ready and prepared and served by the end of that day sometimes this situation that I was dealing with happened that night before so we were dealing with it throughout the evening and then working on it first thing in the morning so to assist that PR principle um I wanted to make sure we provided that principle the support to deal with that employee on that campus before that employee arrived so they handled it correctly so there are times for the safety of a school we might ask an individual and use managerial rights to have an employee stay at home so in this situation where the mistake was made it was brought to my attention immediately I immediately reached out and apologized to Mr Witherspoon so at no time was he asked to go on leave and that was a clear miscommunication from me to one of my subordinates um we addressed it immediately I apologize and we now um have put some new processes in place so that we have clearer communication and by the way several folks told me you did the right thing so I'm not questioning I'm just understanding process AB so process is a call is made first then there is a formal letter that's given to the individual is that the normal process if you're if you're formally under investigation you're going to receive a written notice right but a call precedes that or you not only in cases where so so that call was made because we were again supporting a principal who might needed that staff member to remain at home for the safety and well-being of that campus got it unfortunately so those those are rare instances where we would have somebody just say please stay at home till Professional Standards um provides you further information later because that was an immediate situation we were addressing that's why that was a possibility in that situation so I so I had directed my employee to reach out to that principal in the morning so they knew the proper way to handle that situation prior to that employee unfortunately um the wrong call was made and we corrected it as soon as we noticed that and again as the leader of the department I own it Mr Witherspoon and I take full responsibility and I apologize thank you Mr Fen Hy yes thank you very much chair and um I've said this before it feels like we're we're talking in code a lot of times instead of being forward but I understand an investigation is going on um you know I want to just give a comment and I know to Chief auditor superintendent there are a lot of people in this district and at times I'm one of them that feels like the outside organization that we talk about controls this one and steers a lot of people in this building so we talk about this and we we talk about an investigation and he want answers or see an employee receive a phone call and being told not to come to work and all these different things moveing pieces I just hope with this investigation it makes it very clear that that's not how the things work here we have to make that loud and clear when we talk about transparency and Trust in this District because that's how a lot of people feel when you have somebody outside making calls of how things work here that's not how things work when people come in and find a way to control how public comment is done here that's not how things work or how they should work so I just hope that we can make that comment very clear with an investigation with how things work nobody runs this District but people right here make it loud and clear that's just what I hope to see in this investigation thank you Mrs hixen thank thank you and sort of to Mr alon's Point um I would ask the superintendent moving forward that there is a clear process when Mr Witherspoon called me and I said well what are you under investigation for he said I don't know so if there's a phone call that's being made because I said that doesn't make sense they should be telling you what the issue is so if there is a phone call because it's it's um a safety concern instead of the letter first I think it's really important that the employ employee know what it is they're being asked to not come to school for so they know immediately what the concern is because if someone had said you know because inappropriate action with a student he would have had a much quicker way to say that absolutely cannot be me I don't know what you're talking about instead of and it might have solved some of that problem earlier on than that those hours that he had in between trying to figure out and then having things happen so there should be a better process of you know the employees should know what they're being investigated for and if they're doing it quickly because there's a safety concern which I don't disagree with there needs to be better information and and to be said to to say to them a letter will be given to you in the next hour or two but we just need you to know that you know you're not expected on campus today so if we could just make that a procedure make sure we say that to the principles so that they understand if this um you know if there's another situation where someone's not to come in that they know immediately what it is because that was really unfair to Mr Witherspoon to have him not know what was going on in that situation and and um he could have he could have resolved it much quicker thank you Miss Le Ary yeah completely agree um and I just I want to be clear I do have the exact wording of the the statement that was made doing the public records request it says requesting all communication between the head of the teachers union and any District employee on the days in question the day or two before and the day or two after emails text messages phone calls so I just want us to be very clear about what's being requested um so that when staff does come back to us with those records that it is what was being requested um so that there's no confusion and and no accusations of people trying to hide things or not being transparent any other comments discussion final points all right next we're going to do the superintendent update thank you chair um real quick update just want to talk about some uh visits and uh attending some events I had opportunity to attend the pts PTA PTSA Council leadership conference um about two Saturdays ago on September 14th um just want to thank all the moms and dads and Guardians um and and supporters who are part of PTA and PTSA organizations at their schools um very exciting group they had a lot of fun um I probably took a million pictures with them um and uh made some commitments that we're going to ensure that we continue to scale out uh PTA and PTSA and also also PTO and ptso organizations um in in all of our schools um o o over time so um I know the value that they add to schools and Ely surely appreciate what they do day in and day out also last Friday had the opportunity to visit two schools her and Heights Elementary School and also Riverland elementary schools just want to send a big kudos to the ad the uh administrative staff there um the the teachers uh the supporting staff all are doing a a Yen's job and providing the best learning opportunities um to our kids uh we i i as superintendent I do uh pay attention to a lot of detail and notice some disparities when it comes to some facilities concerns um that I know we're continuously working on in the district um just to kind of close that Gap to make sure all of our students have the same type of experience on their campus when it comes to their their learning environment so uh we're continuously trying to work on that and but just want to send a big kudos to both of those schools for doing a great job in preparing our students for the future and helping them uh meet and exceed their potential thank you chair Mr svin oh yeah and uh just the superintendent wanted me to remind him to uh the fact that the the hurricane looks like it might be H some of her neighbor school districts and private schools as we always have stand ready to send our po to assist if requested okay does any board member have a student access or something they want to bring forward to the board Miss Hixon thank you I wanted to um thank staff and parents and Guardians and principls and teachers for coming out to our different Community conversations we talked about the first one Monday when we were here last week um at Dillard and that was a great conversation the community did a great job sharing with us things they wanted we missed the second one because we were all here um very late and then we had one at Coconut Creek which was very well attended and great conversation and then last last night we had one at Everglades which had over 300 people from the community come out and that was also you know great conversation so I just want to remind everyone we still have three more right four three more three more to go there's one tomorrow night there's one Thursday night Thursday night and then Monday at South BR which was rescheduled so please continue to come out and share your thoughts with us there were some really great ideas and and um I just want to say thank you to everyone for participating thank you Mr Fen hly thank you very much chair um there's two things I want to share so first was actually hanging out in your District chair at a millennium Collegiate Academy where we had the opportunity superintendent a lot of people out there with the media center um makeover just wanted to give the shout out to all the partners there um orange bull college football you know playoff committee Broward Education Foundation but it was awesome to see everybody out there but also CH I did want to share something and it was a concern of mine been having a lot of conversations um regarding Baker acts and and one of my concerns was the amount of Baker acts that we are getting in our district is alarming to me um all any of us need to do is just put it into your email and just type the words bakera and see how many are coming in from different schools um and that's that's a conversation I really want to have I really do want to want to see how we can do it one of the things superintendent I don't know if you have the answers on hand is in that situation when a child is going through that and we look at a child being handcuffed in a situation something that concerns me as well right I understand that that when a child wants to harm themselves and we want to protect the child but I want I want to talk about there's some cities some districts that are doing things differently I I know that there's a pilot program possibly going on right now in our district one going on in Tampa Bay that instead of having handcuffs being placed on a child we're having ambulances to come out and help and take them to the hospitals so can you talk about that a little bit and maybe something that can come in front of the board as well absolutely thank you chair thank you uh Mr poken holding yes we are um implementing something a little different just to make sure our kids don't go to the trauma of riding back of the police cars and and um uh as we traditionally do um and you know just trying to do things a little bit different we can bring something forward as a um part of one of our academic Workshop items to give the board to update of how we've transitioned and to help improve how we conduct Baker acts um and really understand how does a kid end up um uh into the situation of being bicker act and who makes that final decision and and all of that because often times that is not a final decision by the staff at the school it's usually law enforcement steps in and say hey I I have to take action so we can bring something back but we are implementing uh uh similar to Hillsboro Palm Beach County does uh does something similar also where we're not putting our kids in the back of a police car because that's an additional layer of trauma when we're trying to actually help them um with with some um strategic support initia got it and I appreciate that and I think one of the things and it's three things right number one we're talking about the the process um but also we talk about consistency right everying school every single City will have a different process and that's something I'm concerned about because if we're talking about a child and I want to talk about the process when that comes up and that happens it shouldn't be right for a child to be waiting three or four hours to get help also right for help to arrive so I want to I want to talk about that but also I would love if we did did come to a workshop and we always joke around about things in workshops um but also talking about data because parents need to know when we talk about about Baker acts and these situations we we may think it's only in one certain neighborhood or nobody's safe from that and and we we want to talk about you know parents being aware of that and we talking about the number of even high achieving kids being in that situation is alarming to me so I really want to have that conversation i' appreciate it for for it to come to a workshop thank you chair thank you and I would also just add uh Dr he if you could provide that data uh for the board you know per school what is is the number of Baker acts in the last year they have that yep Miss leonardy yeah I wanted to to address something you know as we talk continue to talk about redefining um I've been asking about some facilities improvements that were postponed or put on hold over the last few years and a lot of the times the answer I'm getting is well because of redefining this is a school that um is being considered and so it was put on hold but some of these facilities improvements were planned for years and years and years ago so again I'm wondering um you know why certain schools were were put on hold before the redefining uh conversation even started and I think it's important to note that you know the the facilities are exacerbating the the under enrollment issue um when you have a principal who wants to show parents around a school and there is not a functioning playground um and we've put that playground on hold for years and years and years supposedly for this redefining discussion that wasn't even being had at that point um you're you're making the under enrollment problem worse um and it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for some of these schools so I'm really really concerned about the responses that I'm getting um and I'm I'm wondering if you know where the accountability is around that y um thank you for the question Mr lard so we can we can look into that I don't know about um prior to redefining or the or doing the first phase of redefining um where some of that language um has come from about uh certain schools on hold um so we'll have to dig into if that whatever happened in the past uh with redefining and prior to redefining if that's holding up certain projects so we can look at that and and peel back that onion um because we do have kids in the building and you're right um especially if there are safety issues or or constant leaks and things like that we we need to um get them fixed right so we'll look into that um that that shouldn't be a hold up for things that kids are experiencing right now thank you Miss Fam thank you m chair um Dr heurn I'd love to get that data that you're getting on the number of children in Baker Act um as an employe on the Children's Service Commission we're working on a project one it's to um have it where children are not res removed by um police cars and by officers where a team shows up in plane Mark vehicles or if half me ambulance and in addition um I'm surely that that's going to extend extend to removing handcuffs and using some type of alternatives to deescalate the situation so I think um the city um Children's Service Commission works very closely with the city commission so I think we could partner on this and and really U make some much needed changes thank you Miss hixen thank you I'm sorry I forgot to mention this so I just want to say congratulations to the brow County student athletes who competed in the 2024 Special Olympics State Bowling and State Volleyball championship in Orlando Nicholas Chavez from Walter SE Young Middle uh won a gold bowling Micah Keller at Coral Glades High School won a golden bowling uh they do different age levels so uh Karina utton Rivera from South Plantation High School won a gold for bowling and Olivia Warner pernes from Indian Ridge Middle School won a gold for bowling and then two unified volleyball teams from JP Tavella one one a gold and one one a silver so congratulations and state swim meet is this weekend so next time I'll update you on the state winner for swimming thank you m rert um I just wanted to to ask for prayers for one of our family um Marcus Moore was in a terrible accident and I did found out this afternoon and um of course I I had the privilege of being his teacher at Piper but he's also someone that brightens your your face every day that you come into this building so I I personally send out a big hug to him and would love to be kept up on on the situation so I could visit um but I also know how much he he enjoys being in this building and being part of our Broward County school family so um I just ask for that thank you thank you all right I have um question or I know this I brought this up a few months ago about the scooter policy so I was wondering if when that is going to come forward to the board Dr would help if I turn my mic off Mr suiv uh we will try to bring that to the board during the uh November uh Workshop okay and then another policy I was thinking that we should start is called the observable concerning Behavior policy so you know there's a lot of students that what teachers or staff you know they think that this child there's there's some concerning behaviors and so I think there's an opportunity for for us to create a policy which would give our staff the tools the proper tools to be able to report that behavior um that they should report it you know sometimes maybe people keep things inside and they don't say anything and um so that was something I was wondering if my colleagues were up to doing yes yes yes okay and then um Dr H you were talking about the PTO PTA um so I had a community meeting the other day and some of the PTO PTA members they brought up a concern that when they get donations they don't know the proper necessarily like channel of being able to execute a project within their school in a timely manner so if there could be some more clarity given to our PT PT regarding that that process okay we we can follow up with the the um PTA PTSA council members um and provide that provide them that information they can um um get that information to the rest of their members okay perfect anything else Dr Zan thanks chair um it's been an issue uh that doesn't sit right with me for a long time uh and I've been talking to uh superintendent and other s even outside of this I asked rayart the president of uh of the Council of great City Schools to give us some more data about it but it's around student deaths and our protocol about dealing when we lose a student um if we could reserve some time maybe on the November Workshop to hear back from the superintendent Mr Sullivan on that uh without objection I just would like to spend a little bit of time on that at a workshop and make sure that we have protocols in place that remind people how much we care about every student in pror County schools and do more than just uh um um send thoughts and prayers and have a a moment of silence but in fact to uh just make sure that we're communicating to everyone in Brer County Schools how much we care and love and feel for for all the students of PR County um to me it' be worth a small segment of a workshop in the mid member if that's uh without objection thank you yep thank you Dr Zeman and I have a lot to add to that to to weigh in amen so I I appreciate you bringing that up and one last thing I forgot to add I was at the fsba training uh with Miss Hixon uh last week and thank you to Max Shaker who came to talk to us about the safe schools for Alex the dashboard and I encourage my colleagues to go on there you'll be able to find different incidence discipline information by school by district and also you can compare the districts uh from Broward to like Miami or Palm Beach and and so that's a really uh important resource uh safe schools for alex. org thank you all right seeing no other questions comments concerns the schedule of business for this special school board meeting of the school board of Brower County Florida has been completed seeing no obligation I now adjin the meeting e e e