##VIDEO ID:yD2usqojalM## town so we do have to compete um and one of my favorite quotes from our recent uh redefining our schools process was a parent who actually stood up and said if they don't know they won't go and I think it's a good message it it reminds us that we do have to be uh present in our community and make sure that there's awareness around our schools so the next page investing in marketing uh thanks to all of you uh we have a $1.2 million budget that will help us raise our profile enhance brand awareness and promote our programs in schools um the the circle basically shows all some of the pieces that need to come together in order to really effectively Market our schools and that includes obviously using Beacon uh who created our spots own channels uh like our we will continue to promote through parent link and all of our other channels that we we do have internally um mass media uh we have Nate Drew here today who will talk a little bit about that um customer service obviously we have to make sure that we are taking care of our customers not just new customers either new parents or new students we have to take care of our current existing uh families as well um the good news is that using a conservative FTE of $8,000 per student the 1.2 million budget pays for itself uh once we have 150 new or retained students um so that's something to keep in mind that as we move forward our investments will uh turn will become uh break even at minimum and hopefully will bring a profit um the next page marketing plan gestions as I mentioned amplifying awareness strengthening our customer service optimizing our mass media resources something that's very important that uh John alluded to as well is that we can't do um we can't tell our story our entirely we have to also help our Empower our schools to tell their own stor so a key component of this plan is to create marketing tools for our School principles to use and getting their message out to their communities um again with the goals the overarching goals being to retain recapture and recruit students in an effort to uh stabilize enrollment and grow our market share against our competition next page they really um several main target audiences that we're talking to uh families of students who are currently at BCPS parents of students that are attending private Charters and parochial schools in place of BCPS and then on a much more Global basis uh Broward County households with school-aged children Age 5 to 17 as well as families that are just becoming new families if you will uh with kids uh 0 to five we have to start talking to those those families before they even make these decisions um I'm from New York and I know that uh lots of families would make plans for college after an infant was born so uh there's a whole plan for some some families so we have to speak to those families as well next page very briefly this is our time frame um we continue to leverage our assets we've done the creative um we worked with all of the media uh uh compan companies that you'll see in a second we've negotiated the rate State parts and programming Etc we are an in-house agency so we save the organization a 15% markup on any media that we buy by being representing ourselves if you will if we were using a third party we would have to pay another 15% typically to them um we're in phase two which is really using a mix of owned and paid media to amplify the message and build awareness then we're working cons you know as we in tandem we're working on building the school toolkit with templates and resources I also want to test Direct Mail uh that's a big initiative because we do need to get into folks um homes uh not just through our channels like paid media TV Etc but there's something powerful to be said about having a piece of of an envelope addressed to you and and in your mailbox that uh has become less and less favorable in the sense that you know nobody body is reading their mail but in fact it stands out in your mailbox potentially so I'd like to at least test it as a way to um to really borrow a page from our competitors who use it pretty extensively um and then obviously continuous Improvement going forward rolling out a new school and District website with a simplified enrollment process on the back end it's a big big goal so we will be part of that and have it place at the table on the next page I'd like to just play one of these uh spots if the team could play athletics these are 15 second commercials that are airing and we have quite a few I can't see that congratulations I don't know what that says so just remove that and hit play and Sam will help s you're leading to soccer the best schools for student athletes choose the best choose BCPS do you mind replaying that guys thank you County Public Schools world class athletic programs from football to volleyball cheerleading to soccer the best schools for student athletes choose the best choose BCPS so this is one of 13 15 second spots that we've created each with a different theme some more General than others but we wanted to specify something around Athletics um we have one on kindergarten we have one in two in Spanish one in creel and then uh different spots that actually speak to Safety and Security school choice and electives which are things that set us apart from the competition so we we created very very specific um commercial around those themes and we're targeting our media with them as well so next page worked with our amazing demographics team um Joe back uh to create to find out well if we were able to Market in Broward County only what households do we want to reach we go back to our target audience we know that we want to reach a certain group of of families here in Broward County uh with kids at home and we used the um the percentage of students that are attending charter schools by ZIP code as one indicator to see if we could Target those families in particular in those homes so the zip codes that you see reflect uh ZIP codes with the highest percentage of students attending charter schools with the exception of the last three Lauder Hill Deerfield Beach and Fort Lauderdale those three zip codes at the very bottom have a ton of volume uh so they may not have as big a percentage of in Terms of Charters uh but they do have a significant amount of volume of students who are attending charter school so we included those as well um these Zips reflect 79% of all Charter students at Brower County uh and 57% of BCPS students so there's a gap there obviously um so it seems like it's the right group of people to Target and it's something that we were able to do with Comcast uh scripts digital the Cox Media Group Sun Sentinel and local 10 News um so those are the the the media Outlets that are specifically H reaching these targeted ZIP codes in Broward County next page and Page after that so we worked with all of our Network Affiliates that are local and if you could play the um lower left real quick this is a promotional video CBS News Miami is sponsored by Broward County Public Schools so that's just an example of a tag that was given to us as added value by CBS um the bottom right shows the kinds of day parts and programming that we looked at we looked at rates very carefully um we are running on things like the Panthers games right now those Panthers games charge a lot for a spot um and and we're getting at at half off but it's still $600 per airing per 15 seconds yet it's reaching a real Broward Community the Panthers have become sort of adopted by uh Broward County so I think they're they're great but we're also doing talk shows uh Sports and local news and of course local and network news which is where a lot of parents spend their um their day uh especially uh women at home Good Morning America uh The Today Show we're running on those as well on the next page we started the campaign this year with previews you may have seen our commercials at the movies over the holidays uh we started with um 15 uh 12 screens here in Broward County I'm sorry 173 screens 12 Theaters uh we only targeted certain kinds of films we would not be on Gladiator 2 or um any of the horror films that are out there right now uh but all of the family fair that that appears during December we we were there we also had the the clips played in the lobbies so as you walk into uh a movie theater you'd be able to see our spot in the lobby and then when you get into the theaters see it as a preview uh we've had over 30,000 earrings over the 9we period uh we end at the end of uh January beginning of February just a quick survey in the room if you've seen our ads on one of these please raise your hand they're working they're working um and then Joe Cox uh uh Dr heper suggested we speak about running in the IMAX theater at um at mods and we are piggybacking two spots at a time uh in daytime documentaries and evening IMAX films it requires a very different scale um but Beacon was able to deliver what they needed so uh so far so good it's a great way to capture a a very uh select audience that is going to the movies um on the next page we are also on radio doing seasonal spots and sports but if uh we could play that radio spot first at the very top at the time County Public Schools delivers a worldclass tuition-free education from prek through high school and Beyond discover hundreds of academic athletic College and Career Pathways including Innovative robotics Aerospace nursing and cyber security programs in their a-rated District unlock your students potential and help them fulfill their dreams choose the best choose BCPS visit browardschools.com choose BCPS today so that's one of our disckies uh who read the script and the first time she recorded it she said Aeros Smith instead of Aerospace so we sent her back to the drawing board with that one got more we probably would have gotten but we would have done better with that one um uh if you play the one below it this is a Hallmark um video on their countdown to Christmas programming I don't know if just like the ones Hallmark is making it a December to remember it's perfect it's a month filled with joy wonder and movies Am I Dreaming countdown to Christmas all season long only on Hallmark Channel this message is brought to you by Broward County Public Schools choose the best choose BCPS learn more at browardschools.com choose BCPS so as you see we've gotten we're everywhere with that that tag line and people are definitely reacting on the next page you see are targeted digital uh placements and there's a map of the um Charter School ZIP codes with the most the black uh ZIP codes here at the bottom reflect the most number of Charter School uh attendees so this is where I mentioned earlier that I can Target specific households through these kinds of uh Pro these kinds of media Vis um and that's been we'll be interested in seeing how that works out for us on the next page one of the key metrics that we're going to be using obviously to assess the the campaign's performance is impressions are we reaching the right demographic are we reaching the Right audience this is data that will become um actual over time so I'm waiting for the logs to be provided by all of the stations to confirm our audience uh assumptions but right now under the assumptions that they've provided we will reach 23 million approximately uh folks or have 23 million impressions across the south Florida area which is 1 dma um and 14 million impressions in just Broward County homes alone uh the CPM uh cost per thousand Impressions which is a traditional metric that is used to measure television results in particular uh will Final close to the $20 Benchmark that I actually set um in terms of from my experience that is what most folks get when they're doing brand advertising um and as you can see looking at the dma the CPM will be closer to $14 once you start targeting and very get more and more granular and who you're targeting uh the CPM goes up but to to pay for this flight which is $322,000 um we need 40 students to break even um and that goes into the very next page which talks about our analytics and what we will be looking at um in the coming weeks and we're looking at it already but uh pre- logs and post logs which spots cleared the station because you can hope to clear and then you know a Calamity happens like the LA fires and that could preempt your spot very easily um or Jimmy Carter's passing may have had an impact for a few days those kinds of things big news events what we do know is that we don't want to be airing during a presidential election because prices Skyrocket um so that's one of the reasons we waited until December to really roll out um our campaign school choice application volume is something we'll be looking at we're using Google analytics to track our page visits which are looking really good uh on a daily basis and then uh landing page you'll see in a second we've created a landing page where folks can go um at brow schools.com choose BCPS it's on everything we're doing um where folks can go and and submit an inquiry form if they're interested in enroll at one of our schools or want more information or want a tour they will be able to do that through this form um and we're working with it and schools to track all of these resulting actions uh this is ongoing and we will continue to look at the metrics as they become available on the next page uh just a real quick overview of the landing page as you can see the call to action is this browardschools.com choose BCPS uh which drives prospects to a landing page where they can submit a form an inquiry on enrollment they can research our schools find information on school choice and obtain additional registration information it's a very Dynamic page um with a ton of information for families and perspective parents on the next page can submit the enrollment inquiry it's a literally a Microsoft form get more information indicate an interest in attending schedule a tour or School visit request a call back from the school staff or ask in question about specific needs and accommodations and with that we can't none of this will succeed if we don't have exceptional customer service on the back end when folks show up we need to be speaking their language and we need to meet them where they are so to that end and to close the deal I'd like to introduce phah Wilson who is leading our customer service initiative all right good morning everyone I am phah Wilson the director of marketing and strategic Communications and with everything that Jose Shar We Believe exceptional customer service is at the heart of a thriving educational Community the superintendent customer service initiative launched in the fall of 2024 and is designed to ensure that every student family and staff member experiences a positive engaging and caring environment at every touch Point next slide our customer service philosophy is built on three essential pillars attitude communication and behavior the ABCs of customer service we greet every customer with a positive attitude creating a welcoming space for all who enter our schools and district offices communication we prioritize responsiveness ensuring every inquiry is addressed within one business day with professionalism and Clarity not that we will resolve it in one business day but you communicate and you respond to let them know that the inquiry has been reached Behavior we demonstrate mindfulness by being fully present and treating all stakeholders with respect and value next slide this initiative isn't just about sharing those standards it's about the people within our organization from the front office staff to classroom staff our security staff and everyone on our school campuses and our district sites they must be trained and provided support and guidance in order to sub be to meet these expectations and build trust with our community we have been able to share um through communication channels there is a flyer that was created in the email signatures of our schools and district offices they have been giving us survey feedback so to truly assess how we are meeting these standards capturing data is essential since our initial role out we have collected over 1,400 responses for schools the current data reflects a 4.1 rating on a fivepoint scale a snapshot of the data is included in the appendix and a plan to capture more feedback for additional communication channels has been shared with principles as one of the superintendent's top priorities he and Senior leadership regularly monitor this data in the processing Improvement dashboard to track progress and identify areas of growth also schools and District departments have been given access to detailed reports from the data collected empowering them to follow up and make meaningful improvements in customer service in their customer service delivery next slide this initiative has been rolled out in three strategic uh phases we're just beginning um we rolled it out as I stated earlier in the fall of 2024 introducing the foundational customer service standards across all schools and departments we have been collecting data and now we're moving into phase two where we're providing targeted support based on that data and training for select schools needing help with enrollment support and then phase three we will use all of the data collected this year to improve the training and support and resources to our schools and departments and move up our Benchmark of support in the district with and as Farah was saying this is not just schools this is departments our number one secret shopper is actually the superintendent he will be calling department near uh you soon because he calls whenever he has free time so make sure you're answering your phone number one and you're providing customer service because it could be the superintendent so we want to ensure that we're not holding the schools at a higher standard than we are at departments we want to ensure that customer service starts from us and ends at the schools thanks fa right and with that our goal is building a culture of excellence in Broward County Public Schools one positive experience at a time and it's not something that we can do overnight but we are committed to ensuring that we move the needle as it relates to customer service to retain and recapture students in Brower County Public Schools and then I'll turn it over to naen who's going to share a little bit about mass media and how we're all working together for one goal good morning everyone I am naine Drew Community um communication specialist with the mass media um Team I've had the privilege and honor of working with Brower County public schools for nearly 30 years actually um just a few months away from my 30-year Mark much of that time I've spent creating content to positively impact the way our community perceives and understands BCPS unfortunately our director Kayla concepion is not able to be here this morning but I'm happy to share with you some of the exciting ways that the mass media team supports the choose BCPS choose the best choose BCPS the slides 23 and 24 um provide a snapshot um of of our mass media team and the volume of work that we manage you'll see there that there a significant portion of the work focuses on what we call earned media that means that we strive to secure media coverage for the district through our proactive efforts rather than relying on paid advertising our primary goal is to showcase the incredible work happening within our schools and across the district we actively seek out opportunities to highlight student achievements Innovative programs and the dedication of our Educators slide 25 within the choose the best choose BCPS campaign our team is actively supporting the marketing efforts by coordinating a variety of interview and promotional opportunities for example at Channel 4 um we're coordinating two live weather shots today this is a good opportunity for me to give a shout out to my colleague Kathy Brennan who is on site at one of the schools this morning um to offer assistance in these segments that will provide valuable opportunities to highlight specific schools and their programs um in areas where enrollment is lower or where charter schools have a strong Presence at Channel 10 Dr hebburn yesterday uh participated in a one-on onone interview to discuss why BCPS is the best choice for parents at wsfl later this week Dr Fulton will Fe be featured in a segment one-on-one discussion regarding the district's vast variety of choices for our students and at Channel 7 we have secured three one minute promotional spots uh for these spots we've collaborated with Dr heurn our principal of the Year Cass uh freed and our teacher of the year Claudia s conrat hope I you said it I said it thank you worked hard at that we've worked with these three to uh showcase the unique strengths and benefits uh to a BCPS education we'll now share with you one of the um promotional uh uh spots that feature our teacher of the year for Broward County Public Schools Claudia sron rat is here to tell us why Broward County public schools are amazing our schools are so good because we prepare our children intellectually but what makes us really great is that we have a program for every single student in this County we know how to address children that need extra help or more academics but we also have the sports we have the clubs we have debate we have chess we have technical programs we have magnet schools we take care of our students in their social settings their emotional needs and we also try to open them up to their dreams and to careers they may not even have considered all of this together will make a very good education visit browardschools.com choose BCPS starting this week you can view this promo and the two others that I mentioned um that uh Dr uh heern and uh principal uh freed will be featured in Saturday morning's Channel 7 uh thank you for the opportunity to share represent the mass media team and I will now turn this presentation back over to Jose I believe we're looking at a social media update now yes thank you naen you're welcome uh just to give you all an update on our social media progress um our followers continue to grow uh you know we've grown 92% in the past five years in terms of followers to our different platforms um as you'll see here the big one being Instagram and other because those are the ones that have come up in the recent uh past and and you can see Instagram is up by nearly five times um in just uh since July of this past year um District followers have grown 53% over the The Last 5 Years an additional 25% since July so there's been quite a bit of activity and I believe some of it is due to pointing people to our campaign um we have the most followers on X which may or may not be a good thing but we we consider it a good thing um of any District in Florida with 167,000 active followers on Twitter or X sorry um and again Instagram followers have contined to grow in in Rapid numbers the other category includes threads and YouTube uh threads being the alternative to X and Twitter um which is not being hugely embraced but it is active so we want to have a presence there and I want to say the team does a good job of meeting the followers where they're at um so meaning um if you look at in Instagram which I will encourage you not to because you might tell me to do it differently it's really meant for the students and not for the parents so we're more ed for a lack of a better description but we've really been able to grow um our Instagram following um based on that interaction with the students which we think it's important that we're also having capturing the students because ultimately they're our number one end user and then they're doing recordings with my voice there is a great AI of Mr Perez closing down schools talking about big ass not officially Broward uh next slide I want to talk quickly about our U upcoming plans um and I want to give a shout out to our caliber Awards which are coming up in February early February the 7th um which are present another opportunity for us to make a connection with our community and our employees of course we will be airing that live on Beacon TV for the first time so that's exciting um or we we aired it live last year this is the second year in a row um but other things that we're doing the BPS BCPS showcase which is this evening at amarant bank um School tours and round USS we've been working very closely with Dr Fulton and a work group around making sure that we standardize and and and have a cohesive plan on how to handle School tours um for example and our kindergarten roundups we're working on school marketing toolkits as I mentioned earlier which is critical engaging School marketing Services providers we want to test Direct Mail launch a new website and test other potential enrollment effort so just a quick examples of those on the left you have a couple of uh the examples that we're using tonight including in the middle is that postcard um I'm sorry the postcard is on the right the schedule of school tour which uh we will be handing out this evening for anyone who wants to schedule the school tour it's a QR code that'll take you right to a page the landing page you will fill out an inquiry form and we will follow up and then kindergarten roundups are coming up soon as well so um the school marketing toolkits will include things like uh re-enrollment and reserve seating letters which is something that the charter schools do very well and they do it to our students they will tell you that you have a reserve seat at one of our schools uh or rather at one of at their school when in fact you know they're not enrolled at that school um so we're going to take a borrow a page from the competition and make sure that we are following suit doing um similar activities like that but uh for example an invitation to attend welcome letters um using parent and student testimonials making sure that we have a profile an active profile on things like niche.com um and then confirmation and gratitude emails so we're in the process now of Designing sales templates and tools including School brochures uh points of Pride Flyers these are things that have not existed in the past to support our schools that they urgently need uh so we are working very collaboratively with them to make sure that they have those tools in their toolbox uh video Sizzle rules are are challenging uh but we are working through the uh the schools and giving them that as well next page marketing service providers they ran run the gamut on enrollment uh so we are investigating quite a few of these but um an example might be school mint another one is niche.com um but there are other organizations that specialize in being out in the field for example at community events um unless the schools can actually manage to that we are we are looking at other opportunities to do that we're a team of what three four uh so we'd like to be at every event but we can't um but we are going to be focused on that enrollment micros sites working with uh School mint and looking at that these are things that have not yet been approved as part of the budget but um we will be um bringing those to to the table and then espe I want to mention Google reviews which never go away unfortunately um you can't just remove them from Google and and we have to do something about those reviews and the way that you do it is by engaging parents and students now to to have them submit new reviews so that they can improve the algorithm um but we do need to work on those because they're a lot of them are very old and very negative let's just put it that way so things change the next page is testing direct mail those are just a couple of examples of of of uh education related mailings that I've that I've pulled up but I think a letter in an envelope is very impactful versus a postcard um but we we can look and actually test one against the other and and and you know and when I say test I mean AB testing really control for the different variables that could affect response and at the end of the day you want people to take action which one will drive the higher action and the bigger number of of leads next page which is our last page um we have a well actually two more pages um we are working on a new and improved District website uh we we always take a lot of inspiration from Dr heer's uh comment on complexity causes confusion and we have a pretty complex website today so what we're working towards is a much uh fresher approach that is much more consumer friendly uh fresh looking feel we have a hero showcase Banner we're working with final site as we speak um easier navigation fewer clicks less scolling I can't believe the number of people that don't scroll I mean it it is amazing if you if you're above the fold you tend to act yet you can't put everything above the fold so you have to really encourage folks to interact with the page and we are working on that right now with a Target implementation date of May and then the last page uh which are some of the other programs that I'm really keen on on on pursuing a retail partnership a I'm sorry a realtor partnership in sales tools our realtors in the market are probably our a key Ambassador uh for our schools we have to make sure that they're armed with information that is positive and that they can share with prospective buyers home buyers pediatrician offices uh what a great place to capture an audience right so the the the waiting room signage has changed quite a bit today it's much more interactive in in offices however Miami Dade has done a similar program where they're getting a postcard in every dentist's office as an example so um I want to Target pediatrician so um in a good way and we will be talking to them about take ones and and samples of of our of our uh schools Etc immigrant families are critical in brow County where you have a significant number of families uh migrating from South America who are used to a charter you know uniforms only very rigid kind of environments so we have to educate those families and use things like the amazing International Welcome Center that Vicki and her team have created to make sure they feel comfortable with our schools and understand how we do things here in in the United States um new parent resources you know I'm not above speaking to to women and families as soon as a baby is born um we used to have a a hospital program uh where we used to give them a gift bag as soon as the baby was born to introduce them to Bar Bar County Public Schools I want to resurface that I think it's a great idea and then oh my gosh we have a big asset an alumnus and we don't speak to our alumni that we we need to I feel there are great ambassadors for us so I want to be doing more of that um and and figuring out how to even create them U to to give them the the title of a brand ambassador for our schools um we have had tremendous um support from from alumni from who were playing in the Panthers for example or in the NFL um so why not leverage those those important um visible uh ambassadors and that is our plan an update on our plan uh thank you we'll turn it back to you uh Madam chair I just wanted to take a quick opportunity to thank my uh colleagues on cabinet we can't do this work without them they've made themselves and their teams available uh to ensure that this is successful thank you if I could just add to that real quick and I'll be coming back to ask for additional funding so for next year how to get that in sorry thank you thank you so much for the presentation um do we have any public speakers on this item no public speakers Madam chair great so we'll go to board discussion Mrs Leonardi thank you I'll be quick and it uh to your last point about um you know reaching families in pediatrician offices and at the hospital I think that would be really beneficial um and in my interest is particularly in informing the public of the different child care options that we have um because they are affordable and excellent and you know most of the young parents that are the parents of young children that I know are really struggling with accessing childcare and I think we've talked about um you know doing a better of better job of advertising this to our employees on our website I would really like to see like a hub on our website to say like are you a parent are you a parent and an employee here are your options um because we have great options but I just maybe I'm missing it but I just when I Google Broward school's child care I'm not seeing it so when we're talking about redoing our website um I think you know this is a real need and this is a way to capture people very early on um so they can see how excellent the services that we offer are in our schools so again I will reiterate I would really like to see like a child care Hub on our website um but also sharing that information in the hospitals in the pediatrician offices um even at like at playgrounds and things like that um public libraries so thank you thank you Dr Zeman thanks so much chair uh I want to take a little privilege and thank you for the presentation I know you all are media people so it's not too much of a surprise that you did an amazing job on this presentation but um we see a lot of presentations and this one is just just absolutely very very professional I appreciate that um to miss Le 's Point um I I would suggest um that doing something even better might involve more of an integrated effort uh I don't think we have enough daycare centers in our schools where we have space and we to think about that as a way to capture uh folks because then you don't have to catch them in the pediatrician or catch them you know uh writing down 595 or on listening to a radio station or going to a movie uh those spots are terrific but but that's a traditional marketing and one of the things I think we should think about is taking advantage of the scale you know we're four times bigger than public charter schools but each Public Charter School is either managed by a single company or or has a small uh base I think the biggest Charter School management company in Brier county has 5,000 students and we have almost 200,000 and so uh this is something we can do and they're not likely to do it wouldn't be efficient for a a management company of a public charter school to spend money on radio or TV or movie theaters because um it just would be kind of uh dramatically expensive for what uh they might get but I think that if we thought about uh providing uh Early Learning Centers wherever we have space uh we're very likely to capture more of them and again that's you talked about AB tests and those are wonderful kinds of things to do to test it's um but I suspect without having read anything about this that if you go to a local public school for daycare and you get to know the school and you know where it is and you get to know some of the teachers not just your own but some of the K and and early education teachers in those schools you're at least very likely to consider that school if not uh more likely uh to attend so I'm I'm tickled that we're taking care advantage of scale I think that we ought to not just Market better to parents and to daycare uh customers but I think we should do more of it I mean we could easily double or triple the number of daycare or Early Learning Centers we have in PR County and that would lead us to uh inevitably greater FTE I also want to borrow a from uh one of our competi mates you know which is a combination of competitor and teammates which is what uh public charter schools are to us in many cases um our competi mates incentivize their school leaders to recruit people to come to their schools I can't think of anybody that's more persuasive to parents than principes I mean other parents are teachers are uh the people you know on the pickle ball court and where they sent their kids those are all influential but a school principal can go to an HOA meeting can go to a rotary club Lions Club chamber meeting um and can talk about the specific experience of that Community Based school and care uh influence uh like a thousand Twitter posts you post on Twitter is that the right thing just want to check that so I think um if we're going to do even better I think we have to think about Beyond U marketing from a passive marketing media uh perspective and start thinking structurally about things like the number of seats we have in Early Learning Centers and the the amount of time that we free up school leaders to go do uh critical things we are already asked School leaders to work long long days places times like tonight we ask them to work well into the evening many nights um but if we freed up time during the day for them to go on and do community meetings um I think we'd be borrowing from public charter schools who uh who do a really good job getting them out the only question chair that I would have uh and it's it's a rhetorical question not to be answered right now but it's a really a big hairy kind of question how do we know if 150 students show up as a result of this investment I know corporations have a really really difficult time uh kind of coming up with hard data about advertising or or Marketing in general and I wasn't looking for an answer right now but it is something we have one I'm sorry that we do have W I'm ready good we'll educate the corporate world how how will we know um so uh that intake form again uh so it's not a perfect system but um and I think Miss Wilson we have about 20 or so that have already expressed interest through that form so what we've what Fair has been doing is making sure that the principles at those schools um that the students or the families are interested in that they make contact with that student so we're going to have names of those families so what we're going to do is once we have the enrollment data we're going to compare those names to see if they actually did enroll so that's one of the mechanisms to to to track but Jose probably has a couple more but that's definitely one that we can simply check also you know our numbers we fluctuate between two and 3,000 that we've lost every year I think if we can change the trajectory of that it's probably because of the marketing campaign I know it's hard to say for definitively but again if you look at the history of the enrollment if we can make a dent in that I think it would be a big part of this initiative but Mr perz you want to add yes uh well said John that's one of many many ways that we have to look at return on investment we have to look at audience who we're reaching um and then action right the behavior are they coming into the schools are they asking for School tours so there are multiple uh Dynamic data points including the school tours for example but the question is closing the deal can we close the deal when folks are attending our our schools or or visiting um and so we need to to keep track of those those important elements because it's not just one variable right there are multiple things that go into a decision of where to send your student um but I do think I'm excited to see that the enrollment inquiry uh are coming in pretty significantly you know 120 qualified leads if you will if we think of the lead model now you have to you work those leads and make sure that you're communicating with those leads and closing that deal so to John's point we will be looking at comparatively were there was kids in school before remember part of this is also retention because folks are leaving the district so how many of those can we keep as a result of these um these important initiatives like customer service and having the principles out there so one of many but I agree with uh Dr Zeman that there are other ways to get quantitative data around um actions that Focus are taking and I love the idea of reaching the the that preschool population in particular because where they may not be part of our enrollment number we know that we're being set up for the future right they'll come back to us so I I really think that's an important Point um so just one more question um for me at least are we going to do a graduation splash page like some of our private schools and public Charters to if you mean a landing page yeah we do that every year I'm talking about in the newspaper Center fold here's uh 120 of our high school graduates going to Brown naal Academy and Harvard and we actually do do that we do that every year through the partnership of I'm looking at ad uh the alliance Alliance the alliance the alliance so we do that every year they actually sponsor it for us U it's a lot of work but I think it's important work because it highlights the success of our students and we celebrate the uh vows and Sals every year and and we do that in the local largest local circulation paper yes we do wonderful and o put it on our our website as well and theirs their we we have quite a bit of uh traffic on that but uh we feature about what 40 50 students at minimum in the spadia ad and we've been trying to include um the superintendent during his interactions with the the promo videos to highlight and we all need to do a better job of how how many uh scholarships our students are getting what type of universities they're getting into what type of careers that they're getting to if they're jumping right into the workforce and uh also the fact that they leave our system with uh some degrees that which uh greatly reduces their uh cost of college when they do go onto um um higher education and that's that's a great Point actually John that we we're not just looking at students to go to college right some kids want to go into trade so that's why some of our uh spots feature our C Chase programs and um work work opportunities career opportunities terrific thank you very much for all the hard work thank you thank you Mrs rubert thank you um and thank you to to my colleagues that brought up um success stories and um really making sure that we're trying to meet the needs of our employees there's um two things that I've mentioned uh before shared with um our um our superintendent the first one was uh past student success stories why I went to BCPS how am I doing now in this job I have several students um least that at least that keep in touch with me that have been former students and it's been a while since I've been in the classroom but they are on their second um major career Type move and same thing about people here at this building if you're not talking about listen first of all and then it's okay I love this guy his great um desire to move forward but he thinks he has to leave the district to do so no and you kind of gently ask what they're looking for and get them go into the right position or you know uh class do a tour um that's what we do and and I'm happy to say several of my students are working for us um right here in the building which is cool um so it's important that we remember that our employees um are they're they're a untapped potential let's just say that um same thing with uh substitutes need to get that out um okay let me see page nine and I think this has been answered before but I I can't think of it at what grade level are they are the families choosing to have their children leave um what grade what age um you know how where does that happen so we have some some information on that it's it's primarily in the transition grades from kindergarten to First in particular from uh 5ifth to 6th 8th to 9th gotcha so those transitional years are really critical that we're speaking to those families in particular and to your other point uh Mrs rert our our alumni our employees are best ambassadors at the end of the day so we do have to leverage them and give them the tools to to leverage right I mean there's nothing that's more powerful as when people are being honest and engaged and excited you know I had no idea and um you know and your two seconds of walking in the hallway sharing with somebody um that because you overheard what was you know what was going on in their life and that they were looking for something and they asked for help um and I I'm not sure who actually mentioned this but um our employees are recruiting I think it was Dr zimon um I've been out to dinner before and and I shared this story um a a former um admin at um stowman Douglas she was she was working um the tables like a pro and said that when she finds someone who's in the field chemistry biology whatever it may be they're looking another part is that they're looking at their age they've they've done whatever they wanted to do um but they want to give back so they're they're open to that so there's a lot of um entry points I think that we we miss and I think it's the important part that you know we look at everybody um as an an opportunity for us to help them you know I never go hey you're you're here doing this job you know why don't you um why don't you think about doing something else that's not what I'm talking about what I'm talking about is you have a conversation and then um you share what we have actually going for you so um I I'd say definitely getting the the numbers out um I'm the options out to our target audience which actually should include our employees um and I agree 1,000% with uh Dr Zeman and Miss Leonardi uh about that 0o to three you know which is one of the reasons I asked us to go forward with that and the board was very um very helpful but we haven't had any more movement we talked about the the child care situation and we're losing teachers you know and I just I think I just forwarded Dr uh heern uh the one lady who actually brought forward and she has twins twins and under three and she's a teacher and doesn't want to leave so let's let's once again reach a hand out Olive Branch because those are easy takes you know you're fixing somebody's desire and their problem by showing them an opportunity so that's all I got thanks that actually Mrs rert speaks to the whole point of this which is if they don't know they won't go right right and we have to keep remembering that folks we are our own salespeople we've got to be out there and and speaking of proudly about our experiences at BCPS and you're absolutely right employees are key to that so thank you thank you thank you Mrs alh thank you so amazing presentation we've really come such a long way thank you so much uh oh I'm clapping in the room sorry um but of course you know we can always improve so I'm going to give some suggestions U so my first thing is on our website you know one of the things I I keep thinking about is how do when someone goes to our website how do they access our schools schools should be a per like one of the main headings so right after about us it should be schools right now we have schools under directory and it's too many clicks to to get to that and we don't want people to become frustrated with our website when they're trying to access our schools okay my first agreed thank you um question is with our alumni do we have the ability to email our alumni I'd have to investigate but I don't believe so I believe that they are purged from the system I I don't know Mr Davis may have a but you usually probably the easiest way to get that information is from the the schools the principal okay so that Dr he I would think is a uh great opportunity we have if to to figure out all those emails and and then to be we could start perhaps coming up with a way how to start collecting them but we just have to work through all the issues of getting that type of information but I think we definitely can do it I mean even yesterday when the superintendent was doing his promo video for this campaign the uh newscaster that was interviewing him is actually was one of our students went Cy Spate graduating 2009 and it was a great interaction because he was um through the promo video talk about how he's a BCPS former Alum so we just got to do a better job of we know we have tremendous success stories out there we just got to figure out how to get them to Showcase us perfect um next I think that um we do some of this but I don't think we do enough student testimonials and it could be done at the the school level uh but then at the end of the student testmonial or maybe at the end of every one of our videos is that choose the best choose B CPS that you know 6C whatever that is at the end of it so there's some common uh video you know someone can see that but the the students are the influencers and and I don't think we're accessing them engaging them enough to to speak to you know what's going on at that school in that video and it doesn't have to be Beacon professional it could just be a cell phone video but I think we need to to train well the students probably can tell us better how to do train us right but how to hold the video right how to hold your camera for what angle for what platform how to do tagging I don't think we do a good enough job with tagging people we've got better thanks to you yes we've got better but we still forget and we don't tag enough and I don't know necessarily if the schools have that um training to to know how to tag or who I'm tagging and you know even to tag the superintendent or or school board members um that's how you're going to get that information out on on the so social media we definitely want to empower our school leaders um me and the superintendent we were at Riverside Riverside and uh I mean she had a brochure with a QR code you scanned a QR code you had the kids talking about the school I mean it was it was an amazing what she she did that on her own so but we want to we know our school leaders are extremely busy so that's why we want to make toolkits to your point so we Empower them to be able to do that because there's no way we can do that for 236 schools and to your point the students especially on social media are the greatest influencers and we know if they see our programs they're going to be nudging their parents to go to specific schools for specific programs so we completely agree we need to do a better job of Levering our students it's all about Word of Mouth also I think it's that's the number one one most priority Channel you in all honesty it's what people perceive and what they tell their friends and how they present the opportunity so um another another school that's done this really well is Piper High um Marie hodan did a great job creating a flyer a brochure trifold brochure that really sells Piper High and we heard from uh parents in the community how that one brochure influenced their decision to send their child to Piper as opposed to a charter for for example M so so I know I brought this up previously last year um as far as us getting verified on Instagram where are we with that I believe we are verified on Instagram no we're not we're not we have the oh that's the we have on on on X formerly Twitter um I'll get with uh our social media manager to see where we're at and do a followup we need to be thank you and then um also I've asked previously with all schools having social media you know X insta Facebook and that being on the homepage of their site because it is very frustrating most schools don't have social media so you can't tag them so if you go to the school you can't tag them um so where are we at with consistency with that so to your point we definitely need to do uh a better job of empowering our our school leaders to do that so I'll get with Deputy Fulton to see how we can do that the challenge is we have so much on our school leaders plate it's it's very hard to pull them out specifically for marketing but we're going to now we're in this environment that we must capture and retain students so I'll get with Dr fton perhaps we can do a breakout session specifically on marketing and um especially social media okay yeah and I um just to make another Point um for this issue with social media so many of the school leaders aren't that great with soci social media so again training but it we may have to do something that cost us cost us some money where a school leader will be able to post on one social media site and it will post to all the others so they don't have to manage three or four different social media sites I think that's one of the barriers for the for the uh leaders at the school is you know I have Twitter but gosh I don't do I have to do it on Facebook and Instagram and all this too and it's hard for them to manage that aspect so we'll find some tools there's some tools out there where you can just post on one and it'll post it on all the other platforms so it make cost us a little bit of money um but we'll find something that's more efficient and effective for the school leaders okay thank you I think another creative idea perhaps and maybe the teaching and learning folks can jump in if I'm mistaken um Empower our APS to be the that social media Ambassador for the principal um because again principal School leaders have so much on their plate and uh the aps typically are closer to uh my generation so they might be able to uh do social Med um okay and then as far as when Brower County Public Schools posts I don't think we all of us staff do a good good enough job with liking their posts commenting or re-sharing and when we have 30,000 employees that should be automatically happening so I don't know you know if it's we could just get it more in the mindset but we should be re-sharing our information cuz it's going on to our sites absolutely we agree my question is regard to the direct mail how much does is that going to cost so often Direct Mail obviously postage is expensive um you you want it to deliver so I've always been inclined to do first class so uh which guarantees delivery and address Corrections um it it's significant I I mean a direct mail piece with an envelope for example could cost $300 a thousand easily in the mail a postcard might be half of that so it's a matter of figuring out do are we reaching the right consumer the right target audience making sure that the list that we're sending it to is is up to date and clean number one so that the mail is delivered um and then it's just really a test uh of which one works better in terms of generating response okay I'll ask a different way how much money in the budget are we allocating for direct uh $250 $250,000 correct of the budget that we have currently yes right and it's later this year on on for for good reason it's there's a lot of seasonality involved and how do you are you going to put a QR code on there how are you going to know that you you know you got a student because of that direct mail so I will pull on my expertise in direct marketing which I've been doing for a long time but yes you have to tie it back to that specific envelope and that specific mailing um and that's where your your list becomes so critical that the fact that you have the universe of prospects are tied and that the information is clean you'll know where they come from through a QR code or through a specific source code that will be on the postcard or the direct mail piece okay correct and then um with all of our social media how come we don't have one of our beautiful new videos pinned at the top of every one of those social media handles we will now that's a good idea uh okay and then how are we using AI technology to help with the algorithms and what we're doing with our posting would you like to share Natasha yeah we we are using AI so we we leverage AI for a lot of the messaging especially when we're doing translations so that we're reaching our target audience um it helps assist us with video content um voiceovers and production on a lot of the social media platforms that we're using and we're looking for additional ways to to use that technology just at the beginning to be honest we we we're just exploring these things yeah because I and you know I think with us with that map that we had and we're trying to Target certain areas that we could use maybe the AI or um targeted ads for those specific areas to try to Target that location correct um love the customer service piece I think that is really taking off and I I have seen a difference at our schools a lot more positivity and communication that's wonderful and that's all I have thank you Dr holess thank you very much and happy New Year to everyone everyone who's listening everyone who's here so um I really appreciate it um uh it was a wonderful presentation and I appreciate the emphasis that we're placing on uh communication and marketing our schools um as a small business owner and I know quite a few small business owners we can only survive in our space if if three things are evident and that would be the product the product has to be great it has to be uh uh the place has to be clean aesthetically appealing and we have to have great customer service so what I see here today is our efforts for great customer service and advertising the great product that we have because we have a great product at BR County Schools um so I am I am very much appreciative of this um but what I will say is and I and I hope um uh Dr heurn regarding um uh the success of any business that I know that especially in the small business space equally important is the aesthetic appeal of the environment the cleanliness of the environment and so I do appreciate what we have here uh but I think cleanliness and aesthetic appeal is also a part of marketing right um so can you speak to and I know this is not a part of this PowerPoint presentation but can you speak to any efforts that we are going to have uh uh where we kind of place a great emphasis on each and every school in Broad County uh it's clean uh it's aesthetically appealing and what kind of um funding are we planning to put in that regards and it doesn't necessarily have to be anything major for example as a small business owner uh I have to make sure that my carpet looks good all the time when they when they walk in I have to make sure I don't have pencil marks all over my wall I have to make sure the windows are nice and clean when they they come in and so on and so forth so how do you plan to do the very simple but important things that when someone walk up to a school uh the lawn is cut the grass is cut the paint looks good the carpet is clean the lobby is nice what are we planning to do in that regards Dr heer yep great question um so this is a lot of backend work that we discuss all the time because that's very important and and I'm a very detailed person I always tell people if I'm visiting your school I should not be the one um bending over and picking up trash right if and if I have to we have a problem right um so the first thing is what's in the principal's control right the making sure the fence line is clean making sure there's no loose trash around your campus um as we had all principal meeting yesterday those some of the things that were discussed as we're going to be Fielding tours from all the inquiries that are coming from the commercials and other touch points um the second thing is Miss Paul and the facilities team has been going out and evaluating the cleans of schools U uh um in a sense evaluating what the facility staff that are assigned to that campus are doing and also assigning a grade to that school so they have a clear understanding um of the condition of their school and what needs to be done to get it up and running and cleaned um and then in U in addition to that what the school and their facilities team can accomplish the district facilities team will um come in and supplement that support just to make sure it gets clean and and and have the mechanism to make sure they can maintain it cuz I think um you know we always send support schools get clean but for some reason the the maintenance staff at the school can't maintain it um so working with them to make sure they're well trained to maintain it another thing too is I won't put the date out there cuz um I will put the date out there but we have the uh the team working on a community cleanup day that will be in the spring uh for all of our schools um to entice the community at Large to come out and participate our municipality Partners or for-profit and nonprofit Partners so we can create some ownership in owning our schools as a community and helping with the cleansiness and ongoing work that needs to happen at the school so those are the three things that we're doing I won't put the date out there because they're still working on to to Really finalize what the date's going to be but those are some of the things but that is one of the most important aspects about this campaign we don't talk about that because that's a lot of backend work just to make sure it happens and when people are coming to our schools is still a nice clean environment no matter what the age of the school is um we can make sure it looks beautiful for our visitors and for our current students and staff on campus very good and I I appreciate that Dr heurn because like I said the three things for me is customer service uh cleanliness right and do you have a great product you know because you can have a great product but you walk into a business and it's dirty it doesn't matter how well the product is you're not going to stay if the customer service is not great and the product is great you're still going to leave so those three things have to be on the aame at all times so for cleanliness and aesthetic appeal I I I appreciate what you said and I would like it to um to be consistent and high quality ongoing nonstop um it's not something we should talk about it today and principes hear all what they need to do and the staff and then we don't talk about it again then we go back we retract back to where we were you know so I'd like that's the emphasis for me as far as the appeal um I also have uh some more concerns or uh questions now regarding customer service um I know that when we're trying to attract new parents a and in my business I try to attract new parents as well right uh they're either going to make a phone call or they're going to come into your lobby right so they're going to call you or they're going to come to your lobby so when they come to your lobby whether it's a district or whether it's individual schools um and I hear that there will be emphasis on that but how are we going to ensure that continuous ongoing non-stop training because I can't I I'll say this that's one of the areas and we talk about it to Dr heurn is that when you walk into one of our lobbies the customer service can improve um the some of our schools have great customer service some of our schools do not it's not consistent so how do we ensure uniformity in customer service all across Ross the board in BR County Schools when they walk in because we they have choices if they go into a private school where they're trying to attract students because those students uh will pay a lot of money to go there those customer ser they're great so how do we ensure that we have this ongoing consistency in training in our front offices that when someone walks in you acknowledge them right away even if they have to wait because there are two three people ahead of them how do we put that all in a campaign yeah great question um and we've had some discussions about this cuz this um initiative around customer service is actually born out of some of my experiences um in visiting schools when I when I first started um and knowing how important it is um if you don't have great customer service you're not going back to that restaurant that store that school no no nothing no matter how great the product is absolutely um so two folds number one just giving everybody everybody a baseline training of what the expectations are which U um the team has been doing a good job in in doing that ongoing number three in number two I haven't gotten a three yet number two um instead of the traditional um lengthy survey that many school districts give in the spring it was a priority to say hey let's let's mimic what every other organization private and nonprofit whatever the case may um be when you actually have an engagement with anybody in in other organizations for profit whatever the case may be you have an opportunity to give your feedback right then and there and to utilize that feedback for continuous Improvement so that's why it was very important for for us to ensure that we have a survey where people can engage with immediately um at their school when they have an interaction with a department so we can get that information look at the feedback and continue to work with the people where they're actually have U um constituents are having negative experiences so we have a baseline training and then we have more intense support when we look at the data to say hey um based on the data we're continuously seeing about you know 70% 75% or below negative interactions with with folks who are um engaging with your department or engaging with your school and we have some additional support um and also high levels of accountability just to make sure you show Improvement quickly not you know link the time it needs to be quick because we're trying to engage with stakeholders to uh regain kids or retain our students very good and um regarding the phone calls the the the uh telephone calls I I um you know I believe that's an area that we can significantly improve on um in terms of not just the the quality of the the um the call but also um uh you know how we answer the phones right because sometimes the phone will ring and then you know someone comes on bro on schools please hold and right and you didn't ask for the person's name it takes only two or three more seconds y you know this is such and such uh may I have your name John I will call you back uh shortly um may I have your number even if you can't speak to that person so those very little things matter if you're going to attract people if I am a new parent and it says bur County Schools please hold and I'm on hold for 5 minutes I'm going down the road right because that says it all so um are we how is how are we going to differ in our approach to the phones and I'm glad the superintendent is going to be calling and also my second part of that question is uh besides the superintendent being a secret shopper who who else will and What's the magnitude of that how will that look well I I'll speak to um the phone calls or just greetings in general we're trying to standardize greetings across the board not just with people who are answering phones but when you're going to a school and your interactions with the um security guard that's at the gate um so just standardization across the board so we have similar greetings um it's it's it's a a tall task but it's a task that we can actually accomplish right we're the right training with the right expectations and we have our directors and Regional soups that visit schools um that can collect additional data with their interactions and and and making sure that um it's happening and also s of surveys um that we send out to parents um and other constituents and then the second part of the question if you want to take that away John sure I think uh how to expand the Seeker Shoppers right um so we have two options we've done in the past I believe um Miss Wilson back in 2023 perhaps and we utilized our APS to go through different areas uh hopefully they weren't recognized um or we would have to um hire a company to do that secret shopping um so we're looking at the different what the budget we have and the different uh methods that we can use but we haven't done a large uh scale secra Shopper we're really relying on the QR code like the superintendent said I think the QR code is important because it gives you not only accountability we showed the principles how to use this so they can go in they can see how their customers are interacting with their front office and more important has the contact information if they're provided us of the uh individual who who filled out the survey so we can always call them back apologize for their experience and you know see if there's anything else we can do and have that followup but I think the most important thing of the QR code is accountability and uh cabinet we have the ability to go in by school to see who's filled it out what's the result as Miss Wilson said the um what we have about 1500 or so um they've been positive which is kind of unusual cuz I'm sure most of you are like me I typically only respond to those when I'm mad not when I'm happy uh so the fact that we haven't had a lot of angry responses I think uh our schools are improving um I think before we didn't Empower our school leaders to have that information so with the Cur code that's important and also we haven't really empowered our employees by providing the training that Miss Wilson is now uh going uh providing those trainings I think she just did the North Region uh office managers so we're getting out there we're providing the training again to superintendent's point if we see that there's uh a high level of dissatisfaction at a specific department or school it's not really a gotcha but to tr understand what's going on and see if we can provide additional support before we move to you know we need need to make some kind of changes at that uh level of leadership if they continue to have U bad results got it and and John I appreciate you saying it's it's not an I got you type thing and I am a I am a fan of secret Shoppers I I think we can get a lot of information from that uh and this is not to to and I got you moment for any employee and I hope that this is not something that we're using to be consequential to any employee um it's just a mechanism to improve right so um John if you could um provide later uh what it would cost to have even some minimal level of secret shopping because that's uh I a fan of that I think that gives us uh substantial information to how we can improve and also I will reiterate that um this shouldn't be used as a consequence to any employee uh we know we have a problem and we're going to resolve it as a um Collective group um so I hope there's no significant reprimand for anyone who did not respond the way we wanted them to respond and my last comment is on the Google reviews um with regards to the Google reviews um you know I try to capture Google go reviews in different ways as a small business owner and um I had the honor of being one of the top Google reviews in my company for the franchise but um how do we plan to capture the Google reviews right um uh for example uh are we able to capture those if we have parent conferences within the schools and a parent is really happy what we're doing can we capture it then and there if we have phone calls where the parent is happy about something can we Capt it then and there how are we planning on campaigning and training to capture the reviews when we have good things being said about us right because if we just lay dormant and and wait for it to happen even when someone feels good they're not going to do it so if we know they feel good about us why not capture it then and there and what are the Target points to which we could capture those how are we planning to approach that so thank you for that question because Google reviews are kind of the bane of my exist they can really be negative um but you have to keep your your families engaged and and you need to give them those opportunities to weigh in um we are just starting really to focus on on that because the more recent the review the better the algorithm Works in our so um it is critical that we give that opportunity when the iron is hot if you will right um that's not to say that an opinion can't change but I think that if you're there when they're happy and you encourage them to fill out a Google review or send them directly to a Google link right um it's pretty straightforward to capture their positive energy the other place where we I think we could leverage this is with niche.com which creates School profiles um we we have an agreement with Niche that needs to be Revisited but the school profiles are driven largely by reviews from former students current students active parents former parents um and the community itself so we've got to Leverage those kinds of tools we are just now getting there um and I know that to to your earlier point about the phone I I wanted Farah to weigh in on that because I don't know if you're aware that our team manages a switchboard here at the for the district okay as well so I hope you're getting exceptional customer service from our amazing switchboard operators but it needs to expand beyond that right and that's why with the superintendent customer service initiative we wanted to start start small so with the ABCs it's the one two threes and the one is to greet with a smile the two is to have a standard greeting hello my name is Farah Wilson you have reached the marketing department how may I help you and the three is to respond within one business day not that you will resolve but that you will respond and the QR code and the survey that parents are completing just address those three points so we're looking at that as Baseline data and then we'll be able to see where we are and where we can improve but we do need to evolve how do we deescalate situation so customer service is bigger but we wanted to get everybody on the bus and not derail the initiative so what three points can we start with and see that everyone is greeting with a smile you have a standard greeting and you respond within one business day and if we can move the lever with those three targets that will improve our customer service mentally and then we move and expand the training from there great and and Jose I'm so sorry and then I'm done um chair um so for the Google reviews those are really important right because um most people will go to with any business you're going to look at what their reviews are and since if there's a a negative thing going on people are going to write a review if there's something positive they're not necessarily going to write a review you have to push them right so can we put something in place that every front desk every conference and so on and so forth that the staff is ready to provide the link for Google reviews when there's something positive and Dr heern and Dr fton I would love to see that in place right because if teachers are having a conference there's a great apparent it feels really good do those individuals have the link to say here you go and can we train our staff all over to make sure so our Google reviews can go up we'll take a look and see how we can Implement that before we commit to it just to make sure we're able to uh do it I will say uh in the existing C code through thought exchange I'm going to give a shout out to uh Driftwood um they actually have a third of all response because the principal was proactive and send a cure code to all his parents go which and students which was a great idea right so now we've uh uh Miss Wilson spoke to the principals yesterday so we want to ensure we're empowering them to do the same through Parent Link uh and through a template so we can get um positive or negative data so we can react to it got it thank you John appreciate many industries by the way are doing that at the end of the deal right at the end of the interaction they're saying will you please post a review on Google or go to this link correct and tell explain how your experience was and I think that goes a long way capture the positives resolv the negative right absolutely thank you very much chair appreciate it thank you Mrs Fam thank you I'm going to try to streamline this as much as I can first if I can direct a question to Dr Hein Dr he would you just clarified that the community service day we are going to give students community service award points for participating in that correct U so right now the team is working on all of the the logistics um as they settled on the final date so however that looks I don't know all the parameters that that counts towards community service for a student so if it does of course we'll grant them community service hours um so yes so work all the logistics and more to come that's music to many students ears um I want to thank Jose for this wonderful presentation really really great presentation I'm a big fan and my my biggest compliment that I can throw to you is that you and your team think outside the box you clearly do that you have perspective at um things that have been untouched and you're putting them within your reach and you're pulling them in for this school district to grow um two actually just three quick recommendations one is on our web page now with the Schoolboard members under the student advisors you have the emails listed but you don't have the emails for the board members would you just mind streamlining that if you would because you have to go to our biographies to get that and we got a lot of parents when they're upset or they have issues they don't care about our biography they just want to get to us as quickly as possible so I would make that recommendation there I would also make the recommendation that you have a list there or a quick Referral List where you have all board members that they can just tap into that list and it goes and then all board members including the superintendent just on that page quickly so they can expedite that um one of the things I I absolutely agree with is if we're going to capture more students I think the focus should be on early Learners um preschool and kindergarten absolutely it's much more easier to get someone in from the in reception rather than to break their pattern their comfort zone and have them make a change or switch it really is and you see that as adults as well as and children so one of the things that captured me with my daughter um when when looking at schools and and and enrolling her was preschools and and and kindergartens at certain schools had glass windows where in a little room where the parents could sit and observe their child especially when you're you're a new student a kindergarten and three-year-old they're scared and the parents are equally as scared they want to make sure that they're doing the right thing for their child so it was a comfort zone thing for many of us and I was a full-time practicing attorney but I would have a deposition cancel I would um have some time free and I would be in that area and I would stop by and just sit maybe for 10 15 minutes and observe my daughter and I could pick up on things that the teacher wasn't able to because she has many little children a lot of things going on and then it brought us closer I would say well I saw you were really sad about this and and my daughter would communicate back and forth and and we would work through it and I think if you provide things like that not only does it connect and it's includes parents in parenting and in education you're going to create a bond between the district and the parents which I think honestly that I see it's been broken in many aspects um during the past few years so if we are going to partner let's go all in let's go absolutely all in and uh you might have a time where where someone gets um overly involved but the majority of the time I think it's really going to be a benefit an absolute benefit and parents are going to be able to come in and say I see this going on with my daughter can you watch for this and I and I'm going to give you I'm going to give you a classic example of things that something that was observed with my daughter um she was on a swing and another little boy put a whole bucket of sand on her head and she didn't respond she did nothing she just shut down and luckily that teacher was observant and she came to me and said we have to teach her how to be assertive she should have been upset she should have been angry she should have spoke out she should at least said I don't like this so they put her in a group and at that point they they didn't have a specific group for that but they put in a group it was called U banana splits and it was for children that whose parents were going through a divorce and the children had to learn to vocalize their feelings and it really benefited her and that's all I have to say thank you so much for listening to me rample thank you uh Mrs Thompson good morning I'll be quick because I know we're behind um I think this presentation was fantastic so thank you guys all for your time I have a couple of questions uh a few comments so the first question is how are we making sure that all the Fantastic work you put in to the inquiries are actually getting addressed how are we tracking that and how are we supporting the schools I are getting so much traction from it that maybe they're feeling overwhelmed I think Miss Wilson's probably best suited to answer that but she's already emailed all the principles with the contact information for all the uh families that have uh filled out our inquiry form online right so working with it and with the SIM team they're creating a tracking database so we're taking the enrollment forms I'm communicating to the principal and it's all automated it's not me manually doing it that you have received an enrollment inquiry and then they are given next steps on how to close the deal um the teaching and learning division shared some school tour expectations and we've been providing support and assistance on the enrollment process we've been working closely with the school choice office and making sure that all of our processes are aligned for a streamlined approach to the enrollment process and then on the back end the principles will be able to give us data to substant iate was this a valid lead or did someone just complete the form just to see if it will work and then they will say what the results were um from that communication perfect thank you um I love changing our website because I think it's very frustrating I want us to also consider the mobile site because I think most people access our information on their phone and every time I try to not to make him about me every time I try to pay our after care thing 500 popups come and it takes takes me a substantially a amount of time to actually do it and it's not even me clicking something it's like I try to scroll and then it goes to code of conduct which is great but very frustrating um Miss Thompson just so you know that is part of this process that we will have a new mobile application as well and superintendent yesterday just told final site they better give us their best that's right during the virtual call perfect thank you um um the realtor partnership I think is really great um and then the only thing I want us to think about more and I know you mentioned it a little bit that we have such a small team but in-person events I think are really where we stand out because we are all so lovely and welcoming and that's where we're going to get community people to actually buy into our system and like when you go to Miami Zoo they have the schools that are closer to the school actually to the zoo actually table at those events and then Penbrook Pines whenever they have family events their charter schools are there tabling at those events and I know that it's a capacity issue but I think board members could step in and help table I think we could go not just putting on our School principles we could go to hoe meetings we could go do this because we all love our communities and we love our districts so let's pitch in as well and that oh Google review I think the thing of capturing them at that moment is really smart because when when I had my Pest Control person come he actually knocked on my door and was like could you please give a Google review I'm actually rid on what you do and I just did a QR code and he was like you can just say I was fast and efficient I was like perfect and I typed he was fast and efficient and then it was done so that's it thank you so much thank you Mrs McCarthy Bulman thank you um I'll keep it short too I am really impressed with the presentation I was so impressed going through it and listening to you guys today to see every part of the big picture that you're addressing and like um I think Miss fam said thinking outside the box as I was going through I was thinking oh what about this and then you guys were addressing it down the page so I mean it's amazing and having been frustrated as a parent for many years people not understanding how great our schools are I think this is just such a fantastic step in the right direction and to see it actually being implemented it is amazing so thank you so much um and I'm really in particular um excited to see the new websites cuz that's been a point of frustration I think that it's very difficult for parents it's the the easiest way to go to find out about the schools and what they offer and right now I think that's uh kind of a block to communicating so I'm very happy that we're moving in the right direction with that I can't wait to see that um and just a question about that is and I could could be wrong about this and you might have talked about it already but will there be support to make sure that those websites are constantly up to date because I think that that's been kind of put on someone in each school and then that's a you know everyone's very busy and occupied to make sure that we're doing that and to make sure that when we're looking at a particular school that you know to the point where you're talking about the valid dictorian the salutatorians where people are getting to school where people are getting jobs if that's like available for each website too because if you're looking at your local school you want to see the successes of what you're looking at in particular in a concentrated area so I mean I would as a user so let me just address something um I only spoke about the district website but in fact this process is happening for all school websites as well um they are being redesigned through final site and and it's a much more engaging experience um than we have today and I think success stories are a critical opportunity for us without a doubt so that will be part of it and we're working closely with it so we want to standardize as much as possible but also give the schools the ability to add the information uh as you said to celebrate success and there will be training for those individuals who are responsible with the new site okay and hopefully support for them so that they have time that and if I can add also like I'm hearing a lot of great ideas for feedback as far as some things the enhance the upcoming website so I directed the staff to go to the region advisory meetings which we know tons of parents attend those meetings so they can get feedback from parents to make sure that we have the right information at a one or two click minimum um so that parents can get get the information they need versus US kind of building it out and then pushing it out and then we have we're back to the same frustration so yeah I think that's a good idea I believe and Mr pres I know Mr Davis stepped out but maybe you correct me wrong I think our search function will be greatly improved as well within the new website um the search function will be greatly improved and we're also looking for vendors that can um provide artificial intelligence where it can actually answer questions um to um parents concerns um because it's a part of customer service as well if some of our departments are small or under staff and you have a simple question if you're able to type it in the chat bot we can get response to the in user quicker so we're um navigating and investigating how we can add that feature to the website as well so um well that sounds fantastic I I love the customer service um I love your approach that you're taking with that um I love that we're changing the narrative to in a positive direction um I think that's going to be great for us and you guys are doing a great job with that um and I guess the my last is issue is just about the direct mail I'm happy that you're doing it because I know that individual schools have done that with some success and it's really important to Target neighborhoods and zip codes like you're saying um it'll be interesting to see whether opening an envelope versus a postcard is um the better way to do it personally for me I have a very limited attention span so having something flashy a statistic something great just to like before you throw it out um is or recycle it of course but you know I think what is a is a great thing to think about and also cost effective so in general just so impress and keep up the good word thank you so much thank you thank you I have a couple of things to say and then we'll end it with Mrs Al had had one more thing that she wanted to add um just a couple of things so I I also really appreciate the customer service piece I wish there was a way though to get more Community input because when you look only 13 community members responded most of it was students and parents which are good um then a huge number was staff which makes you Ponder um what we're doing that caused staff to want to to jump in there whether it was good or bad um but I just would also like because we're also trying to attract people from the outside so maybe other places we could share the customer service um thing or make it we've been to a lot of schools and we see it but we kind of have to look for it before we know where it is um and I would also say in the secret shopper we as board members as we're going to schools we have a little sheet that Jessica and I made up to you know were they friendly did they ask for this did they and then I just contact the superintendent to give a little feedback so um we also could be part of of doing that um as a magnet coordinator we did do direct mail um and then the budget got cut and I'll have to tell you it affected tremendously the number of people who showed up to our open houses and if when we were doing Direct Mail someone their neighbor got it and they didn't they were calling me hey how come I didn't get a letter um and I would say the letters were more effective than the postcards just and you could do that information with the it just was more personal to them me you could put more pictures and stuff on the postcard but I think we got greater return on our investment by the letters um I agree with the number of people that said community events I was at a a concert and a lady found out I was a Schoolboard member so she started questioning me about things and I talked her into moving her third grader from a charter school to Brower County Public Schools so I think it's important you know yes one one at a time it's how you do it one at a time so and and to that it doesn't just have to be the principles it could be as we've all said when we went to things as again as a magnet coordinator I never talked I took my students with me they sold the program because they were part of it it was they were excited about it and it wasn't this old lady just telling them why they should be going to this high school so I think adding the students are advisories using the advisories that we have they they know the district well the different programs and it's a good way to build that partnership I have been actually talking about reers for a long time um and what I would Envision is that we hosted something for the realators to come to a school and show them so cheerleaders would be culinary would be providing them something Roc the debate program so that when they go and they're selling houses and they'll say Hey you know I was at the school and it was fantastic and they did blah blah blah blah blah um so I think bringing people into our schools so that then they can then magnify it out and the last thing I'll say along with that is um volunteering so I know that the superintendent has done a a great job of doing this new initiative that I've been asking for for four years um to get our own departments to go and volunteer in our schools now we need to open that up to the businesses let's start challenging them because when they come into our schools again they'll see the great things we're doing they'll tell their employees they'll tell the other business people and they'll know what's happening in our school and feel that partnership with us because if there's something missing they'll also I'm sure tell us hey why aren't you doing this or you could be doing this different um so I think it's important to on that page 33 you had some great ideas but to also include bringing people back in you know we're long past covid and we should be encouraging people to come and partner with us and just last thing the website thank you very much it has been an issue for a long time so we're looking forward to seeing um something that's much more user friendly and we will end this with Mrs alev thank you so I just want to just circle back with this whole secret shopper thing I just don't want the takeaway to be that we're going to be coming in and trying to be critical I think we need to make sure that the messaging is that we're being respectful and collaborative and we're partnering and we just want to improve the the schools I would not be for spending any additional money on that I think we already have uh our staff that is is doing are doing these things already proactively um and then just to Circle back to um something one of my colleagues said as far as the cleanliness in schools absolutely I agree with you we shouldn't be seeing garbage on the floor but it also goes back to the janitors because I remember and I I think that previously we have cut janitors from our schools and that's a problem so if we're going to say that we want our schools to be clean then we as a board need to properly fund it and also I think that depending on the number of students that you have in your schools should be there should be some type of reach itio than with the number of janitors that you have because obviously more students more the school needs to be cleaned thank you okay thank you so much and that is it for item number one thank you again for your fantastic presentation um and we appreciate all of the dialogue with everyone thank you so much okay so the next item up is the annual program governance orientation I will now turn it over to Steph for a very brief presentation we're going to need about 30 seconds set up here's a clicker are you going to invite them in you guys heard you have your elevator Madam chair are are you going going to invite in the city managers and the the people from the city that are out there I I don't think they need an invitation they're welcome to come in but that's the next item it isn't this it's it's item number three this one okay 21 H2 s that'll tell them good morning everybody Simone Hollings with Chief academic officer and I have with me Dr Lori canning our executive director of family and Community engagement and Miss Chiron de Bailey director of early childhood education and we have provided to you the annual program governments uh orientation for Head Start but we're ready to go right to uh questions and comments okay thank you so much um and thank you for giving a very comprehensive presentation that we were all able to look at before we came um I don't think we have any public speakers so we'll go directly to board discussion anybody have anything for discussion okay yes well that was easy thank you so very much and thank you for what you do um for the Head Start program so thank you okay so the next item up is educational mitigation agreements and I will now turn it over again to the staff for a brief presentation and after the presentation we will take public comments I'm GNA go I'd like to recess the meeting for five minutes thank you it's okay we are ready for your fairly brief presentation doesn't have to be short short but well you know uh we're so uh fortunate to be here to uh give the public an opportunity to understand uh educational mitigation agreements and what the related issues are concerning that my name is Wanda Paul um I'm the chief operations and Facilities officer I have Chris akabo here who is our director of uh facility planning and real estate and then of course we have uh Mr Allan Gabriel who is our outside Council and expert on uh mitigation agreements a brief history um this uh we want to address concerns expressed by the Broward County Commission and selected M municipalities uh regarding releasing Pur at uh municipalities from the currently executed Ed educational mitigation agreements we want to provide background on why these agreements exist and uh recent issues regarding the agreement uh what we hope to get from this from the board is uh a discussion and we want to be able to present the issues presented or present the issues and we would like to come away with a directive from the School Board uh to help us proceed with our next steps so the next slide talks to or speaks to educational mitigation agreements um the phases of development first phase of course oh sorry I have the power um first phase is the comprehensive plan uh it prescri prescribes the principles guidelines and standards for the development of a jurisdiction jur jurisdiction such as the county or municipality um land use uh the type of development that is per permitted by uh local government zoning laws um how to govern uh an area s whether it's single family housing town homes and so forth a plat which is a map uh depicting the division or subdivision or track or parcel of land the site plan which is a detailed plan uh which depicts and shows areas of improvement building permits which we're all familiar with uh granted by the government agency to construct specific projects on a specific site uh and certificate of occupancy uh which is the authorization given by a local mun municipality that allows a newly completed substantially completed structure to be uh inhab inhabited and as you know as we complete our projects on under uh the bond program those are very uh very desired to have a certificate of occupancies so the definitions which is very crucial in understanding uh mitigation agreements School impact fees and I know the board members have heard a lot about this but it's uh under the Florida statute that establishes uh the imposition of school impact fees the takeaway is is it's a one-time Capital charge that is levied against new development uh to fund new capacity capacity expansions which are like additions uh and uh related projects the next definition deals with the cost for student station and this applies to the construction of new schools the replacement and modernization of schools and classroom additions additional Authority uh deals with uh the Broward uh Land Development code that requires the payment of school impact fees uh in brow County and it's required of all proposed residential developments ex except as stipulated by code also per interlocal agreement between the school board and brow County Commission the county collects uh this fee on behalf of the school board and remits the fees collected quarterly to the school board and the payment of uh these fees was enabled and authorized by the interlocal agreements between the school board the Brower County Commission and the 26 municipalities uh back in uh 2003 spending so the way we can spend these fees are for acquiring new school sites constructing new schools constructing classroom additions and pay for addition to the core capacity such as the cafeteria or the core elements of a school and it's also uh more importantly used to pay off debt service on certificate of participations or our cops funds uh that helped us fund the uh additions spending uh to can be used for the following to mitigate and provide capacity at schools again uh impacted by proposed residential uh land use or zoning change uh acquire new school sites construct new schools construct classroom editions pay for additional core capacity acquire technology and pay off debt uh that are funded through cops so this is a brief history of how we got here the his iCal background and I'll let Mr aabo uh address those issues good morning board members Chris aabu director facility plan real estate um on slide number five just to be very quick uh just gives you um historical background um in 2002 the state passed the law which required every city and the county and the school board to enter into into local agreement specifically to address um development impact and public schools to enable joint efforts regarding the availability of capacity to address development impact and then an oversite committee process in 2003 thereabout um the school boards uh inter local agreement initially between the school board the county and 26 cities became effective uh pretty much some of the general components were into Lo of intergovernmental coordination element you know to pretty much address development coordination the cities here are required to have what you call a public school conc I mean public school facilities element which is a component of their comprehensive plan and then um also the county and the cities and for them to establish again the public school facilities element the agreement also established um a 15 member oversight committee the committee today comprises of five appointee by the school board 5o by the county and then 5o by the cities collectively through the legal cities on slide number six specifically to address the impact of development and at this point in time it was mainly at the land use and Zoning stage um so that agreement was done became effective the mitigation options is what you get on slide number six which is the transition to what's on the table today so those are the mitigation listed on on slide number six and this mitigation options were contained in the BR Land Development code and also uh one of the provision is that the mitigation cannot be lower than the impact fees the impact fee is a component because the cost perent station whether you're in a rural area urban area in all 67 school districts you must build to the cost per student station but the cost per student station includes impact Fe traditionally the cost of station is higher than the um imp factores on slide number seven um pretty much in 2003 again the interlocal agreement give the school board the ability of bran public schools to review all proposed land use changes and Zoning changes plat and S plan and the uh development includes the applicant could profer voluntary mitigation if we determined capacity wasn't available at that time capacity means the schools were Curr crowded approximately 120% over permanent capacity at that point also um enabled that they could prer that uh if we have permanent capacity addition was not planned at a school that's been impacted or contained within the first three years of dfp then that means that developer could um profer to be able to move forward that proferred voluntary mitigation has to be accepted by the school board and what happen once accepted when the district does a report development review report is contained in that report to say okay the Schoolboard has accepted the mitigation upon that process brow County Commission upon the approval again this is kind of how we got there will make it as a condition of the approval that you say we're going to do X and you have to do X and when you do X it has to be um it has to be legitimized by an executive agreement between the school board brow County and then the cities in the alternative if BR count uh if capacity doesn't exist and the municipality doesn't prer voluntary mitigation prior to the County Commission approval then BR County Public Schools could recommend that the development be denied again it was just a recommendation back then unlike today the school district didn't have the ability to say deny and deny stood just back then it was a voluntary mitigation on slide number 11 so from 2003 to 20 7 the slides I mean the cities listed on slide number 11 which we're going to go to later with the developments that are the cities that profile voluntary mitigation which we cost for station but just quickly so while we're going through this process from 2003 to 7 in 2008 the state now made an amendment to Statue which is quoted on slide number eight to pretty much mandate what you call Public School concurrency the word concurrency means when the the impact of a development is going to happen whether it's water sewer Road the capacity has to be available there has to be water there has to be school before you can move forward so in 2008 the state all of those other components were already in place so the school I mean the count I mean I'm sorry the state amended the statute and said moving forward concurrency has to be mandated given that took place and based on the bullets we have there you have to establish um again mandate concurrency you have to have a defined area where you have to measure whether you're meeting concurrency or not we decided in bar public schools and an inter loal agreement is going to be the School boundaries at the elementary Mill High School to determine what capacity is available you also have to adopt what you call a uniform level of service meaning High callala a level of overcrowded that you determine um you can measure concurrency that measurement has to be financially feasible meaning the five year 50 year of the dfp or the capit Improvement plan of a city you have to demonstrate that every school meets concurrency um concurrency again has to be implemented as a component of De development review process and then every local governments including the county and the cities have to amend their comprehensive plan to include um uh to amend their a comprehensive plan to include Public School concurrency and also include the public school facilities element in 200 there about in 20 8 February because the school board initiated um that first amendment Public School concurrency became effective in BR County um specifically again meaning that once the development is moving forward with concurrency now as opposed to the initial phase concurrency was been mentioned at the plat and side plan not at the land use or zoning so because you're getting closer to building permits so we pretty much measured whe they we have seats at the plant and the um s plan phase of development review um the rules um for public school concurrency and mitigation are similar if you look at the the um mitigation options listed you know prior to concurrency they're kind of similar on slide number nine so if you look at slide number nine and then slide number six those are the mitigation options so in the initial slide number six the mitigation option included student Station cost today it includes those categories listed on slide number nine is the same thing kind of because today since concurrency became effective BR and the public schools through the uh provisions of the inter local which we call a triler has not denied development why before you can deny if a capacity doesn't exist or if a school doesn't make Public School concurrency you have to go to the adjacent School a level it it has to be within the same what you call the same planning area and if capacity doesn't exist then you have to then look at do we have capacity plan in the first three years of the fiveyear plan and if those three things don't check out then we can recommend denial or the developer can look at those options and then select if they want to mitigate right now we call it as opposed to before voluntary mitigation it's called proportionate share mitigation which is what's in law Bry um I'm sorry the the tri party right so those are the mitigation OB so it's similar again we haven't denied because we have excess capacity on slide number 10 um so after concurrency became effective all of the um voluntary mitigation that are listed on that table were vested from public school concurrency because indirectly they've pretty much satisfied their mitigation to um impact anticipated from the land use or zoning and what has happened through that time was as we move forward some of these developments because they established this boundary called local Activity Center or Regional Activity Center to enable mixed use development some of those units are changed as demand if a demand for townhouse is normal prevalent and high-rise so we work with them and Mr G is going to speak to that to amend the agreement but pretty much regardless of what you do they were still subject to the voluntary mitigation cost per stent station we just adjusted the numbers so after Public School concurrency became effective again those prior uh Vol mitigation was grandfathered in and um BR reviewed all revisions to the um the process was any amendment to those existing agreement we will review them we we coordinated that review through Mr Gabriel with the county and then once with the county then with the city so it was a comprehensive and collaborative effort pretty much during that time frame like I said you know additional units may be added they may change the um the unit mix maybe rather than three bedroom so many three bedrooms it becomes so many uh two bedrooms um but it's still within the boundary the boundary doesn't change now some cities added um like I remember I think it was Denny Beach added additional boundary but again those existing Agreements are amended through a process which Mr gber will speak to what happened like I said the city would propose those amendments they will send it to our to to braen and public schools we will review them discuss with Mr Gabriel Mr gabra will interact with the city interact with the county then once we all on the same page then the city goes first to pretty much take action to pretty much um amend the agreement then once they do that the Schoolboard does next and then the county um subsequently maybe you call it slide number 11 so those cities listed are the cities that proferred voluntary mitigation all of them based on C student station um some of the cities like pemr Pines marimar they have and and I think T um yeah marar they have more than two categories of their laes and in this case called Regional Activity Center so like we said c student station is a schedule that is published by the state of Florida Florida Department of Education is published periodically the current cost per student station schedule is August so if you look at cost per student station the current schedule goes all the way to 2029 so every single month it changes so if we're building a school depends on what that cost is that's the cost we're going to use what we gave you in this table even though just to let the board know we had um a glitch so for example on slide number 12 there's a a number there that today um it came out to 23 million but in actuality the difference between 1.6 million and 74400 725 is approximately $895,000 Z6 so when you did that my dad sale for some reason didn't populate the actual for October it's the point in time it's not 23 million it's going to be 24 million 231 506 again for October now just because we're having this meeting today again C student station the schedule goes from month to month so we wanted to give you a point in time cuz when we sent you the mem we quoted the same number but in January today the cost per student station if I calculated that today because we're trying to um align it with school impact fees that's due and our units may have been pulled so we didn't want to give you like a fiveyear data for the January numbers just to put it again um as a notation today in January using the cost per student station the actual cost per student station is 35 million 688 876 so I'm going to repeat the numbers in October cost per stent station calculation the actual number if the Schoolboard leaves that money on the table is24 million 23156 in January using the same cost per student station is 35 million 688 876 so if in October the school board says I am agreeable that the cities will only pay school impact fees then for cost per student station including impact fees you're losing $4 million what I just quoted if the school board agrees they only paying pack fees then in actuality what you're losing is 12,334 705 that's if they only pay school impact fees in October numbers in January numbers again cost per student station just as a number including impa fee is the 35 million but then if they only pay Ina fees then you losing you only going to be getting you're going to be losing 12 million 829 731 why because now the only paying impact fee minor difference so I just wanted to make that point the key word again cost per student station is published by the state of Florida it's month to month it's a schedule so we just gave you points in time so these numbers are going to keep increasing School District doesn't have anything to do with the schedule it's a number that the state publishes and we just did the calculation so I'm going to go to the next slide real quick uh which is slide number 12 and Mr shim is's going to speak to that good morning uh Omar shim director of capital budget yes uh so this slide shows that the district has outstanding annual debt of $ 63.5 million um that's related to building capacity um the average annual impact of impact impact fee collection and mitigations is about $16 million so the rest of the debt uh for the grow growth uh that we built is being paid for mostly by Capital millage uh the the capacity this capacity was uh built in expectation of growth um and it relied on future Capital revenues uh including School impact fees and mitigation fees so that's what this slide basically shows um now it it this is only for the capacity addition portion our overall debt for things that are not capacity related is about $165 million annually um so this portion of it would include things like Beachside monstory West Broward high school heren Heights those are the new schools that that that were financed um some classroom editions would include Hollywood Hills High School Fort lale and terella high school and kitchen cafeteria and core expansions would would include Northeast High School Cyprus Elementary and Dania Elementary and those are just examples of the sort of things that are be that capacity expansions that were um finance that this would go towards so that's thank you um to continue on slide number 13 we just gave you I think the school board um you have BR County pass resolution to 24466 and the City of L Hill seat of Plantation seat of AEL and those resolutions by understanding they were sent directly to Schoolboard members however um I think um the board um Administration sent a memo to the board um specifically providing those um same resolutions so you have them all of them are pretty much saying the same thing release all nine cities from the education mitigation agreement and then for those cities again listed on that table for them to only pay impact fees and not pay the cost for sensation so on slide number 14 again just to repeat the concern is or narrative is the continued imposition of preu school concurrency cost per student station which is pre now we're post and which was requiring student Station cost is detrimental to affordable housing is hiding to the cost of housing that's what we've been hearing um staff is saying the proposed administrative position and after this I'm going to let Mr Gabriel talk about some of the legal um implications BR County Public Schools since 1987 to my knowledge has supported affordable housing the school board waves impact fees and um brow County school board has waved over 6 million in Impact fees since 987 to now approximately is 6, 67449 brow County Public Schools today has a resolution which established a um pull of money every fisical year 450,000 for come for serve 50,000 maximum per project and for very low low moderate income but if it's low very low moderate income is $75,000 per project for comfor served the Schoolboard policy 1161 requires we provide the school board with a B anual memo to indicate how much the Schoolboard has weigh in Impact fees so I'm just making this point that BR and public schools has supported affordable housing from time so to align with this issue BR and Public Schools administration is saying and we try to profer this in some of the to the cities if you have units in this defined boundaries local Activity Center Regional activity center and you really doing affordable housing pretend you have a th000 units if 500 units 100 units is affordable housing we saying go through the process brow county has a certification process whereby the projects are certified that's how we weave the fees they will lock in that certification that those units will be affordable for a time frame maybe 30 years maybe 40 years and then Brock County Administration will agree that impact fee can be paid in Lo of the student Station cost so that was what was offered as a Middle Road when these issues have been going on um I'm going to stop right now so maybe Mr gber can speak to that well good morning morning everyone U Alan Gabriel with wi Roa hman I have been your special counsel for concurrency since um probably 1988 89 uh so I've been here a long time I've been doing this and understand this process and having dealt with it from the beginning and help create the process and um documents that you all are working with um whether it be the county the district or the U municipalities how did we get where we are today you basically heard the history but what is does it mean as it applies to the school district today with the current situation that you face yourself with with regard to capacity issues and the cities and what they're trying to accomplish and what they're objecting to and why they're objecting so I'm one of those in the weeds people who tries to just get down to the bottom line to figure out what the heck you need to do because I'm looking for you to tell us what's the next best steps and frankly the cities don't understand nor do I believe they realize the implications of what they're asking but that's what we're going to talk about and I this is the first opportunity since none of the cities have asked us to participate in their discussions to have that conversation that they may or may not hear today but you will hear it so in 20032 2008 as we were do developing uh School concurrency and the agreements um that we had lots of overcrowding we had no capacity we had all kinds of issues about how to build um it's changed of course today you now have apparent excess capacity and no need for the as the cities May uh think no need for the monies that you are asking for in trying to still collect uh you heard the that what might be the detrimental issues to the school district if in fact the monies are not coming forward U but from my perspective that's not my issue my issue is how to uh keep the program going and not let it U falter uh so that everyone is negatively impacted because what we haven't heard and I'll get into this in a minute those vested rights that are um all per those agreements that exist today are vested rights to property owners and developers who have the authority and ability to build your your um District are calculating those vested rights for all of the capacity and what's there whether they get built or not but they're all being allow to continue and will be allowed to to continue whether today you have capacity or tomorrow you find out that through whatever action you take or don't take that you don't have capacity they will still be able to build by just paying what would be either the student station fee or the uh impact fee student station fee is the issue that causes the most grief I believe to to the municipalities and to the developers today and the reason for that is because as you heard from Mr akabo it's larger than than impact fees under County regulations a developer a project owner must pay at the minimum impact fees they cannot pay cannot walk away from paying something and impact fees is what they are required to pay you just adopted New Impact fee um project or proposal and it's going forward it might not have changed the numbers for you but it uh it is in effect for another couple of years it will be that way uh so that will be standing I say it that way because all of the documents interplay with each other whether it be the inter local agreement that everybody signed and everybody I'm talking about the 26 municipalities the county and and the school district we're all we're all part of that agreement and the requirements under that agreement if you change something you have to amend that agreement otherwise we're defaulting in that agreement the cities are defaulting the county would be defaulting the school district will be defaulting if you don't deal with that agreement then you might as well just disregard that agreement and throw it away but I don't think that that would make sense because we are obligated by the state to do certain things for concurrency purposes we would start over that's the first thing the trip party agreements that we've entered into with the cities they're all obligated contractually to abide by the requirements of the interlocal agreement and the payments and those developments that they have agreed to and set forth with us for development purposes and the dollars that that a developer is required to pay it's a lot of money obviously this is a money issue and you're familiar with having to deal with that but that's the bottom line for the problem when we go past all of that one of the things that we attempted to do as a district that Chris and I attempted to do was as new development was coming forward or modifications to that development was coming through or a city or or government wanted to do or developer wanted to to do something different affordable housing for example the way that we worked around that was and a way we worked through it was to allow the amendment of those existing mitigation agreements the mitigation Agreements are the individual agreements that relate to the the municipality the county and the and the um districts I'm sorry and the school district those are the three we would work through the Amendments of that agreement and we would modernize that agreement because again those all started in 2008 we would bring It Forward into today's requirements and we would do the recalculations of what today's monies would be and what they were and that's what was actually asked by certain of the cities that have come forward objecting to you today or have objected we asked them to come back through tell us what they want to do and how they want to modernize or change what's being proposed and give us the opportunity to the agreement and we went through gyration attempting to do that but it was unacceptable for whatever the reasons which you'll probably hear about today and I'm interested to hear it myself that would have correct that would have brought us forward in every instance because the parties would have come to an agreement and you as a board would have had to agree as well with the county and the municipalities for that purpose to be clear other cities that have Chris gave you the list of the number of mitigation agreements we had I don't remember what the total toal number was because I don't pay attention to that necessarily but I can tell you that we had other cities recently through the years since we have effectively created the this program come forward and and ask for amendments successfully and they have been approved by all of the entities that were required to and those existing are Coconut Creek daa Beach and pepper Pines just as a me my memory allows me to do there's a way to work around this and make it work readily and easy if some of the cities that were objecting to you today are going to hear from had agreed or allowed us to follow through the process we would have come to some resolution that would have addressed what we understood to be the issues that were being were being asked to look at at that time I'm not sure what you know cancelling cancelling the mitigation agreement has a great impact first of all it wipes out everything that we're that I've been talking about it no longer vests any of the development that may occur in those um project areas that are within the cities or County or whatever they may be developers who have the right to come forward today it's not an issue to the developer because he's believes you have capacity but when that capacity is is removed for whatever reason because we know that the capacity numbers fluctuate up and down uh just depends on what time we're looking at just like in 2003 2008 you had no capacity and action is taken to address it just like today you're taking action to try and figure out how to deal with the excess capacity whatever you choose to do is what you'll choose but it will implicate it will change what we're talking about today in all probability that's the issues that we're facing and that's what you're going to be I'm going to sit here with you and I'm going to be happy to hear what they have to say and I'm looking forward to having the questions that you must have because this is a complicated issue and it has lots of pieces to it thank you to close out the presentation very quickly on slide number 15 so that's the staff's recommendation just to reate and like Mr G said this approach that's been presented to you as a solution was presented to one of the cities and actually discussed with BR County we St to making roads but we met with a no which is all of the cities that are you know um listed right now the resolutions have been passed said release all from the commitment to P to Station cost to just pay school impact fees you just heard what Mr Gabriel said so the recommendation is if the school board allows to revise all of the current executed agreements to include language that which allows for brow County review brow County not BR and public schools review and certification of residential units proposed as affordable housing within those particular boundaries which are local activity centers or Regional activity centers actually Within the residential units that are certified again they've gone through the process BR Cy has logged them in maybe those houses will be affordable for a time frame which is typically from 40 years and onward Administration is saying will agree you pay impact fees like I said before bar County public school has supported affordable housing since 1987 over 6 something million so you're still doing the same thing right impact fee are due per bar and landine development code so we'll agree so the issue is affected affordable housing really if they affordable housing they're certified so we all in agreement it's going to even help the district once that is done the municipalities of the developer has the opportunity to get additional discount because bran public school today you've passed a resolution $450,000 every physical year for com for serve they get 100% waiver once is very low low income moderate income up to 50,000 very low income low income mod income up to 75,000 so additionally they may get a discount again supporting affordable housing um last thing is but then we feel that still has to be obligation to pay the student Station cost for those units that are not supposed to be affordable housing so that's st's presentation and that's st's recommendation and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to make this presentation okay thank you so much we will now go to public comment and first up is Susan Leon good morning uh my name is Susan Leon I'm the chief education officer at the city of Fort Lauderdale and I'm giving my time to acting city manager Susan Grant City of Fort lauderale thank you I also forgot to mention because we have 24 people signed up we're going to reduce the time to 1 minute um but we'll do two since she's giving you your time thank you and I will try to speak fast Susan Grant I'm the acting city manager with the city of Fort Lauderdale um the city passed a resolution in November urging the school board to release all cities subject to the trip party educational mitigation agreements we've also filed some written comments on your website um we all know that the enrollment landscape is much different today um than it was when these agreements were put in place and we would ask that the existing agreements be terminated and a working group um with City County Schoolboard representatives and representatives of the development community be formed to develop a more Equitable solution that meets Community needs and and when we talk about equity and equitability um I was listening to the examples of some of the projects that were subject to Debt Service that these fees were paying um and many of you might know I worked in Coral Springs for many years and I heard Tavella on the list and heren Heights on the list but none of those communities parklander Coral Springs are you subject to these agreements again not that I want to impose additional fees on those folks but again one of our issues that we're talking about is equity the other one was the process described where individual cities can go and cut a separate deal per se um for theirs again that creates the equity and you know for us in Fort Lauderdale it's our downtown Regional Activity Center so a development that's inside of that will be subject to this and something across the street will not student impact is the same so again we'd like to see something that is reflective of our countywide school system and also that's just Equitable from City to City so thank you very much for your consideration thank you very much next is David Herbert he Heber thank you board thank you board chair my name is David abar I'm the city manager of Oakland Park and I believe that near shashani who's also on your sheet is going to De defer his one minute time frame to me and Miss Anna Alvarez as well so can only do one person and they have to come up and and actually give the time so but it can't be two people it just has to be it can only be one person thank you board chair yes chair my name is n Shani and I defer my minute to uh David Heber okay thank you so we'll put two minutes on the clock for you so you've heard at length from Mr Gabriel and Mr aabo and as I've listened to both of them on numerous occasions over the last two years I am fascinated by the depth of their knowledge and the intricacies of what they've developed here the challenge I believe for you and for all public servants who are policy makers is to ask yourselves a very critical question and that is when it comes to ra raising revenue are we doing that in a fair and Equitable and transparent way and even more importantly are we taking into consideration the income levels and the community needs of the areas that are being impacted there are only nine cities in this entire County that are subject to these mitigation fees and not even the entire city is subject only selected areas that means a development that is built across the street from the exact same development has an unequal burden to bear there are many things I can take exception to in your staff report but in 2 minutes that's impossible let me say just one thing if money is your driving concern then we will work with you because the reality is your staff report nowhere talks about the projected advm income that you and the county and the cities will receive because development takes place nowhere in that report so they're not taking into account at all the development that's not happening because of these fees and I assure you that is the case in Oakland Park thank you for your time thank you very much next is Renee Miller okay okay then we'll move to Joe CES do dona sorry good morning Jose sodia I'm the director of planning at brow County the urban planning division collects the impact fees on behalf of the school board so I'm very familiar with this issue and I want to draw the board's attention to the fact that last September the County Commission adopted resolution 2024 446 which I believe you've received a copy of supporting the release of these trip party educational mitigation agreements student station costs have always been higher than student impact fees but today they are significantly higher for example in the Miramar Activity Center a two-bedroom midrise unit is paying over $5,000 which is more than three times the impact fee assessed elsewhere in the county and assessed elsewhere in the city of Miramar the trip party agreements have created a disincentive to redevelop the very locations that are most suitable for new housing our activities centers through resolution 2024 446 the County Commission supports release of the tri party agreements thank you for your time thank you ignasio Mar Marquez no Jack Doran I will defer my time to him my name is Anna Alvarez thank you good morning my name is Dr Jack Doran I'm here as a citizen uh volunteer I'm not getting paid I never have been paid I originally got involved with the city of Oakland Park which I deeply love uh especially the Renaissance that's going on there uh 20 years ago when I became became chair of our neighborhood association I then have been chair of the planning zoning board for 10 years and currently am chair uh I look at the bottom line I look at what why this agreement originally started it originally started because there was overc capacity and the school board understandably needed for there to be some additional funding and this was agreed the cities voluntarily agreed to this agreement and to pay the additional fees that is no longer the case if that's no longer the case and the rationale for this agreement is no longer the case I would think then the the agreement itself should be relooked at in its entirety I don't say just totally throw it out I say it needs to be revised you might want to uh create some kind of committee to to to make recommendations to you all that would involve the City like David AAR has said um but something would need to be done uh additionally um it's in the school board's best interest to not squelch new development first of all new development creates additional housing including affordable housing and if this is becomes onerous for developers it's not going to happen and therefore the theorum taxes aren't going to happen and the school board words income will therefore be decreased um so something needs to be uh done more fairly um there's no sunset provision in this agreement this is this is set to go on in perpetuity thank you so much so I recommend that you consider uh next is Daniel Roseman thank you thank you Daniel Roseman okay Tim lerin good morning Tim Lan mayor of oan Park thank you for your compassion dedication and service to the children of Oakland Park in Broward County just like you we love our students and staff and we're proud of their accomplishments by now you've had conversations received emails texts and read all the feedback posted on the website discussing explaining and justifying our strong opposition to agenda item three you've received staff's education most factual some not accurate or Fair approximately 20 years ago Oakland Park and nine other cities helped to solve a problem regarding over enrollment for the Broward Public Schools over enrollment is no longer a problem I ask that you please help us by making the right decision to eliminate this burdensome and no longer justifiable mitigation agreement this change will encourage favorable private Investments create affordable housing where it's urgently needed in disadvantaged and distressed areas the problem is it goes on and it escalates um I urge you to do that and sit with the other cities all cities together and find a solution thank you thank you very much next is Zach Davis Walker good morning Zach Davis Walker operations administrator city of Lauder Hill uh I echo my colleagues that the affordable housing and the housing issue overall is very nuanced and the existing by party agreements do not address that nor does the solution that was offered by Brower County uh Public Schools administration specifically in the case of Lauder hill our TRC or to corresponds to the city CRA within that area there is a very high inventory of affordable or excuse me very lowincome housing the Redevelopment plan for this Corridor specifically speaks to increasing the inventory of Workforce as well as market rate uh units so I would hope that there' be some reconsideration to the triar agreement specifically a release and um whatever you know if you guys opt to have a committee to discuss a different structure uh we would obviously be in support of that but otherwise we hope that you consider the Nuance that's associated with housing and the fact that it's jurisdictional and it's not a one-sized fits all thank you thank you very much next is Leticia nuol I will def this is Justin profit I defer my time to commissioner ltia newal thank thank you good morning board chair superintendent school board members staff each and everyone that's in the room last September as a member of the brow County Planning Council I join my fellow members in voting unanimously to recommend that the County Commission seek release from these outdated mitigation agreements the following month the County Commission acted on this recommendation passing a resolution with a 7 to1 vote with these agreements generate while these agreements generate substantial revenue for public schools they do so at a significant cost to our residents and our community future it is imperative that these agreements be reconsidered not every city or area within the participating cities is subject to these agreements the cities and areas impacted were included simply because they requested an alloc allocation of new units During the period when these agreements were implemented if the same requests have been made before or after the requirement was in place no mitigation cost would have been imposed on new residential units as a result cities issuing much needed development today are not subject to these additional fees this inconsistency makes these agreements inherent unfair and inequitable I urge the board to explore alternative approaches ones that do not impose such disproportionate and outdated burdens on our residents and communities I appreciate you listening to me and hearing hearing from me and um thank you for your consideration thank you very much next is Christopher Nelson good afternoon uh my name is Christopher Nelson I live in Fort lale Florida I was the 2019 valid brard County volunteer of the year I'm here on behalf of the sky building project in Oakland Park to give a real life example of how these mitigation fees are patently unfair our project was 136 unit project which would have had an impact fee of $86,900 under the student mitigation agreements we had to pay an impact fee of almost $1.1 million which was a difference between $633 a year unit to $88,000 over $8,000 a unit the Florida I believe personally as an attorney that that these as applied in this case was was not lawful because the Florida law requires that every impact fee that is collected is supposed to be proportionate to the impact of that particular project and the impact fee that's paid is supposed to come back and provide a benefit to that particular project not on a countywide basis to my knowledge since 2003 there have been no new schools built built in Oakland Park and it's not reasonably fair to impose impact fee thank very much Sierra Mar Marino sorry good morning I'm Charing Montgomery I want to yield my time to Sierra morero thank you we'll give you two minutes thank you Sierra morero director of engineering and Community Development for the city of Oakland Park I wanted to address quite a few things that I heard in the staff presentation today but first there's one issue since I don't have a lot of time that I did want to address because you heard a lot of uh talk about the uh Equity or how we can make amendments to our agreements and one of the items that was used as an example in the presentation was the unit mixes that could be changed or amended in these agreements so I'm going to give you two real world examples of what the city of Oakland Park is dealing with because of these agreements in one of our two active agreements there are currently two development projects in orang Grove in the orang Grove area which exemplify the harm that is being created and the lap of lack of cooperation to amend these agreements uh the first property involves an owner who has been unable to proceed with building a single family home because the development mandates a town home construction for over 20 years no homes have been built and the property has changed hands multiple times and no progress regardless of the negotiation attempts with the school board uh this outdated requirement makes development impossible and has left the property owner frustrated and without a path forward the second property also is in the orange grob development and it has been completely halted by the same terms of this agreement the developers face repeated delays and financial burdens unable to move forward despite their extensive efforts to comply with these requirements no option for an amendment to our agreement has been provided for these um these agreements create barriers that discourage in uh investment and make housing even affordable housing impossible and to add to these challenges I would like to point out that these Agreements are enforced without uniformity or consistency this can be seen in this Orange Grove that I just used as an example when you compare to the sky building uh as the prior speaker and in the sky building scenario we did not have mid-use units mid-rise units in that agre rements and we were still allowed to proceed at a higher rate thank you very much next is Fitz budo fit buo City Commissioner of Oakland Park a year ago I was here you granted me money to build Rick's middle school now I'm back I need this agreement to be terminated this is a public policy initiative right now yes in my PRI in my citizen dad uh time I was a board member I am a board member of South Florida Community Land chars we deal in affordable housing we come all the time and trying to develop all across BR and South Florida in day County affordable housing to get more teachers more family more Public Service uh Professionals in areas where they can live and take their kids to school now I can build anything new now and I have a new school coming up at the end of the year and looking forward to Celebration with all nine of you there at records where the teachers all right the staff rep they can afford to live in our areas now because no affordability because of these enormous impact fees okay so we need to go ahead and uh redo this agreement and te for take over and be able to give bill for our residents and families thank you thank you very much uh next is Nixon LeBron good afternoon my name is Nixon LeBron I'm the building Planning and Zoning director for the city of myamar uh which has always been a strong advocate for public schools and then U and as you know director joia mentioned earlier we are one of the impacted cities and then more than any other cities we are impacted by those outdated agreements and then I I listened to the presentation by staff and then the only thing I can agree with that is that is a wicked problem and then this is why we in front of this board today this is a policy issue so 2003 20 years ago us and the other the city of myar and the other eight municipalities we stepped up to address that issue we're not a bunch of w cities trying no we always been strong advocate of public schools so what are we trying to do here is addressing a situation that has become inequitable so this is why we here and we asking for this board to consider will single cities we can come back we are part of Thea which is on his third iteration we've always been part of that so thank you thank you next is Deon Campbell uh good morning de Bon Campbell uh development and intergovernmental Affairs officer for the city of Maramar this agreement is not aligned with current needs the financial assumptions behind it no longer hold true to declining student enrollment while this city is deeply committed to our Public Schools the current required payments are significantly higher than typical impact fees this creates a necessary financial burden on the city and presents challenges to Redevelopment efforts and affordable housing opportunities the city of Maramar supports releasing municipalities from these outdated agreements to create a more balanced approach to school funding while also fostering economic growth and improving housing affordability for our community with that members on behalf of city manager Dr Ro virgin I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be here and present to you thank you thank you very much next is Rick Buckeye yes I'm Rick Buckeye City of Oak Park I'm going to yield my time to Mr skate Jernigan okay so I'll put two minutes on the clock thank you very much still good morning um I'm here today uh representing the city of Oakland Park to talk about uh these mitigation agreements uh they're they're out you've heard you've heard everything that I really need to say um they're outdated they're not serving their intended uh purpose uh they make winners and losers out of the de velopment process um the county has recognized and the Broward County Planning Council uh has recognized that they are all of those things and that they should be abandoned your staff gave you a report that made it sound like that it was just absolutely impossible to do that that everything in the world would have to change if you decided to abandon these agreements that's not true it's a contract it's a trip party contract between you the county and the cities that contract can be changed when you the county and the cities decide to change it and whatever rolling effects might take place can be done by you the counties and the cities as well the big problem here is of course the cost now we're sympathetic I'm sympathetic personally I'm sympathetic professionally to the needs of the school board and your needs for money but it's not right to take money from people for purposes that you're not providing them only recently has it become policy to use impact fees or these fees to pay debt service you've had a declining Ro enrollment for years this was intended to provide capacity you're not doing that you're paying off old debt that old citizens paid from their taxes I want to thank you and ask you to to put together a committee where the affected parties can participate in a discussion to find real solutions thank you for your time thank you next is Robert lochry good morning to the chair members of the board my name is Robert lochry I'm a land use attorney I'm not here today on behalf of any particular client or city though first I do want to thank your staff very uh quickly for the diligent work they work with the development Community to ensure that when new projects are coming in we understand the impacts um of that new development and one of the things about going a little bit later as everyone's kind of said the basics but let me give you the kind of the contrast from the developers perspective at the way we approach this um the way developers look at it if the school school board imposes a legal impact fee they're going to pay that fee the complication becomes in a place like this where you have a patchwork of different agreements where folks are paying different things in different places which you heard a little bit about out but the reality is the unintended consequence of this agreement is the very places that City the county and frankly the school board I'm sure as well want to encourage Redevelopment in the urban centers rather than in the outlying neighborhoods is disadvantaged with these agreements our clients all things being equal want to pay less they pay a lot less paying outside of where these Agreements are thank you thank you and we will complete public speaking with Jenny Morgan good afternoon Madam chair members of the board Jenny Mone president and CEO of the Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority similarly we have passed a resolution last year supporting the release of the mitigation agreement and to add just a bit of color to what Mr lochry was just describing I thought I could wrap up with a few data points um it's important to note every year every so often Broward County releases the population model projection report reports the pfam and as we all know Broward County's growth is slowing at its lowest rates in 50 years only expecting to add about 13,000 new residents through 2030 however with that growth 60% will be along these Coastal communities these communities that are subject to the mitigation fees of that um almost 20% of all of that population growth between now and 2025 is anticipated in the downtown core why do I bring this up because we want to continue to encourage Redevelopment Housing options to continue to attract our Workforce and talent base and also to realize that property value impact that comes back to the schools in the community thank you thank you so much uh next we will go to board discussion Dr Zeman thanks chair and um I think uh these things are uh fascinating topics I'm our rep to the Broward planning Council I participated with the County Commission and the bar County uh uh planning Council to uh think through this issue and it's and it's a legit issue this is not uh in my experience on this issue a real case of people not wanting to pay and people wanting to collect that's kind of classic policy debate where are we going to get the money to build schools or where can we get the money to pay for the debt for the schools that we built um uh back uh back in the day uh this is really an issue of um kind of unintended secondary consequences um as a community we would love for these areas to be developed and to develop quickly uh we need affordable housing we need moderate price housing we just need housing uh and that is the limiting factor on Broward County and we want to talk about a wraparound effect uh there's two big ones uh one is when more people move here they can buy affordable housing they bring kids or they have kids and so population growth is very good for the total number of people uh that would be going to our schools the second thing which I think is going to be a big big hairy issue for us in the next couple years is at some point bar County Schools is going to want to go out for another bond issue and when we do that we're going to want to have municipalities that are partners with us who recognize that when they're suffering we're suffering and so the idea of putting together a group to kind of come up with alternative ways of funding in my mind it would have to be Revenue neutral so instead of saying uh we want these nine specific little tiny sub sub zip codes to pay disproportionate fees for development uh we might want to say what do we need to do to uh collect the same amount of Revenue but not have this kind of outsize disproportionate uh effect of the uh student uh seat fees rather than the impact fees um so I'm sympathetic to this argument I've I've watched it at the County commission level I've watched it with the Brower planning Council um and I was originally impressed by this being municipalities and developers not wanting to pay their fair share of the money uh in reality this is a real kind of Patchwork uh agreement uh it was critical a long time ago and I just want to ask one question which I've never understood um why were these nine particular Geographic areas picked back in 2003 uh to be impacted subject to this uh Tri party agreement Dr heer Mr aabus Dr Zim and Chris aabus again director F plan real estate the cities based on the den inter local agreement proposed to create these development boundaries so they created it and submitted their land use plan amendments to the county to plan councils of County and once they've established then the process continues so they created it school district didn't create it sir can I appreciate that I just wanted to make sure that we are being completely honest with the audience today uh this happened at a time where the county the school district and the cities had to come together was a lot of people I think about things like our school resource officer negotiations and some of our other things it's there's just 31 municipalities in Broward County and anytime you can get to uh that group together to work positively uh there's there's uh a lot of uh compromise and a lot of work that goes into that uh I think this issue is worthy of additional uh work I think we should think a little bit about uh in a revenue neutral way how do we make sure that we're not disproportionately injuring these very very small areas um I know as an economist that if you put a tax on a piece of property uh or in some cases you just prohibit an owner from redeveloping uh in the way that they want that depresses land value and U you know that is not what we're about at Brower County Schools um so in my mind I don't know what the right answer is going to be but I would love uh for as a team uh I don't know what part of our policy group uh policymaking School Board should be involved directly in this but I think we ought to open up the door to explore kind of how to do this Revenue neutral in a way that uh doesn't disproportionately hurt these tiny areas of Broward County um so that we can uh move forward and continue to grow Broward County so that we can grow our school district as well I also think it's just critical that all county level governments and Municipal governments figure out ways to get together to pursue our common Pursuits we're all here to build a great community and and we've got to figure out a way to do that in a way that that is useful I also want to thank the other Chris Nelson uh from presenting thank you lawyer Chris Nelson uh for sharing your thoughts to me it was very um clear when you think about a developer not being able to develop land in a way that's best for the community in that urban area of Oakland Park um it makes it very clear that disproportionate impact that we're having uh on a small group of land owners and and potential residents that would love to come here thank future thank you Dr holess thank you madam chair so um and thank you Mr akabo and your team Miss Paul and the rest of you um so it appears from the public comments that um the concern that I'm hearing is that the schools are no longer um over enrolled they're under enrolled and that there are no new schools um in the near future to be built and that this will um this is impacting affordable housing so releasing the cities from the Tri County Tri party agreement um is being advocated on that basis so with that being said and listening to the the uh District staff um that the rational for the cities in being released from the tribe party um but based upon your comments Mr arabo so you're um it appears you're indicating that we still need um to be able to function by collecting the student Station cost and the impact fees so I would like your input on why do we still need the student Station cost in a very layman term so everyone can understand and the impact fees even though the schools are no longer over enrolled even though we don't we're not looking to build new schools and also if you could uh comment again even it's re if it's reiterating on whether or not uh collecting these fees are impacting affordable housing thank you Dr olness the first thing is again um and Mr shim may add to what I'm going to say the capacity that was built we have to build student station to the student Station cost so whatever student station was built because that's state law we have to build not more than the student Station cost um that's number one number two again the student Station cost because impact fee started in BR County there about in 1979 it was ordinance 791 so impact fee um is a component of student Station cost so at this point in time we're still collecting first of all the capacity that was built was stud Station cost impact is included we collect impact fees today post concurrency when we have capacity so pretty much that's what it is again not to say there a disproportion these boundaries we established to increase density for housing that was going to be done and what happened back then was the cities into local agreed to draw to agree to student Station cost by do two public hearings and agreeing to that so we're just abiding by what's in place today and omim may okay and I would also like uh comments on the student Station cost which is different from the impact fees correct yes the student Station cost historically is higher because as the cost you have to build um a school to the impact Fe a derive here study and the form is different we don't the school districts don't do the uh student Station cost the state comes up with those numbers this Collective TR into local agreement the student the impact Fe are derive here study okay so if we don't have if we have under enrolled schools and we are not planning on building new schools can you tell us in a very concise way why do we still need Student Station cost Omar shim director of capital budget yes uh when we built this Capac capacity it was in anticipation of growth that these very developments would address um so the the capacity is already built as you as you say but we don't own the capacity in term it's what we do is we Finance it you leveraging future revenues just like you would a mortgage so if you have a mortgage and you depend on future income which includes mitigation and impact fees as well as other Revenue then that is why this income is important to the district okay so when we're if we continue to collect these fees what are we using the funds for at this time the funds are being well let me be specific the the uh impact fee zones are divided throughout the district okay so if a development comes on in a specific impact fee Zone um which there's seven we don't spend that money on The Debt Service in another area we spend it specifically to service that zone okay so when the funds come in and Miss Paul it looks like you want to make a comment so so I guess the big comment I want to make is that we still have debt uh in the slide is 63.5 of the schools that we built because of growth and so the money the revenue that we have coming in goes to pay that debt in addition um one of the considerations too is that we are we have uh we can use that money for core capacity so we have schools that have smaller cafeterias than they need uh we have a lot of needs um in our dfp that speak to uh those projects so to to not have this Revenue uh to continue come in in to pay off debt and to pay off uh additional uh things that we need as a school district uh is detrimental okay so so miss Paul based on what you're and that's what I wanted to hear um based on what you're saying the money that comes in we use it to address issues including core capacity uh the debt and so on and so forth and if we don't have that money as a school district it's going to uh significantly negatively imp impact being able to handle those areas correct yes sir correct okay and and uh here's my next question um are we within the guidelines any sort of legal guidelines in terms of this money and the agreement that we have to be able to spend it in this regards in light of the city's saying there are no new schools uh we are under enrolled and that's what the money was supposed to be used for now we're saying using it for core capacity uh taking care of debt and so on are We within guidelines of the agreement and any uh legal guidelines to be able to spend the money in this regard I I think what you're asking is if we're doing a switch and bait so in L terms so I'll have uh Mr uh Gabriel address those specific issues thank you Alan Gabriel uh so as I mentioned all of these developments that are coming forward are vested developments they are vested because it was expected that they would be paying their fair share to come in and that they would be paying for the debt that has the capacity that that you created for them to come and be able to utilize the school system uh one of the things that that's happening simply is that uh the money is being utilized as expected as it comes in um and they're paying off for the for the fact that they're able to do that if you chose to not do that they wouldn't have capacity they have to they would had to go a different direction at this point in time you be building more schools but who would know that who would know where we were today and how we are but your debt still exists because you're carrying that morgage like any any homeowner would carry that mortgage and you still have to pay it okay so I just have two more questions and um so with regards if this money stopped coming in and and Miss Paul you mentioned that it would be uh negatively impactful um how would we then support the funding required for debt and core capacity if we don't have this money to do so okay the funding would have to come from other capitals such as our millage so that's where it would come from okay and um it was mentioned that there may there's an impact on affordable housing based upon uh the comments from the public public uh can you speak to that again Alan Gabriel I can speak to the idea that there's a process in place to be able to get credits or ask for forgiveness or reduction of those costs uh if you wish to to start the process and do that um just because you claim to be developing affordable housing and not going through the the procedure to certify that doesn't mean you're going to build affordable housing which is the process you must go to be able to get the credit that comes before the board for you to approve it so that they can have that opportunity for affordable housing they can talk about it they being developers or Community can talk about all they want but if they're not following the procedure that is in place to accomplish that and and make it illegal affordable housing project it doesn't get the credit okay so lastly there were concerns I heard regarding Equity um and um as far as paying different in different places um I'd like your feedback on that because that kind of raised the red flag for me thank you so let's understand how these eight developments really are these eight areas these were single these were areas that were basically single family residential Community areas that the cities decided that they were going to put in multif family big building high-rise development I mean all we need to know is look back to what city of Fort lorda was you know 20 years ago of course it wasn't these high-risers that we have right those those buildings came in and they created density it's the density that they created that they created the project boundaries that were then part of these agreements and those the higher densities were anticipated to create new student requirements and that's why you have these eight because those are the communities that decided to do that okay you if you had more if you had other cities that wished to do it you would we would have done the same thing they were all done exactly the same way with no no change the only changes that may exist is because over time the agreements may have been amended there may have been changed as I indicated earlier that amendments happened there would been amendments for type of change of use type of facility or what it might have been which when we we calculated and whatever those costs and expenses would have been at that time of the amendment it would have changed them so they're not exactly the same if they all came together at the same point in time they would have all been the same numbers and we would have used the same formulas okay so there there is um no inequity concern you would say uh that's intentional in any way I would only say this we would have been in a lot of lawsuits if there were okay thank you Mrs Al thank you so with our our cities you know they are our our partners and I feel today like we I know we're workshopping this but we're just kind of scratching the surface you know I really enjoyed hearing from everybody that came and spoke today but they only got one minute to speak and and that's not really an entire conversation so I know one of the public speakers spoke to making a committee so that committee can then make recommendations to this board so I support that I think that's a a great idea because again this can be hours of a conversation and not just you know one hour and and and I didn't feel I got enough to hear from the community members that came today so that would be my recommendation you know as we are trying to redefine Broward County Public Schools it is a collaborative conversation with our city Partners we are counting on that relationship to bring kids back to Broward County Public Schools and it is very expensive to live in Broward County so if there is housing that's more affordable for our families right then they're going to move to our cities and then go to Brower County Public Schools so it's a revolving process and and I just think that it's just we're just scratching the surface here and we need to have that more collaborative conversation within this committee thank you thank you Mrs Leonardi thank you um and first I want to thank everyone who came to speak today uh I think you all provide important context in history um and I know you all care very much about our Public Schools so thank you um I have a lot of questions for staff um first I I just and I think Dr holness got to this a little bit for the the mitigation fees um or the student station fees we built buildings correct and now we are currently paying the debt that it or we are paying that off like a mortgage is is the term that I heard is that correct correct okay um so I I think that's a helpful under you know way to look at this um starting out now I want to go back to page four of the presentation um um and I want to focus particularly on the student station fees so where it says um spending says we can use it or can be used for the following to mitigate and provide capacity at schools impacted by proposed residential land Lo land user zoning change to acquire new school sites that's not currently applicable to us construct new schools and I have a question well actually I'll just ask it right now would that apply to um so like Ricker's middle school is going to be a new school is that that's not what this language here means though right because it's not an additional school it's a school replacement Dr heer Miss Paul or M missuso so as I understanded uh acquire uh or to construct a new school um not for the situation like in records got it so then it says construct classroom additions and so one I uh one building that comes to mind is the new addition at Northeast High School that we you know opened up uh last week or last year sorry um would that apply in this situation Dr hurn go ahead missim uh yes I believe we did Issue cop cops for that and and some other uh things I think Stranahan High School was one of them the the the uh cafeteria ceria okay um and then also pay off debt service on cops that funded capacity additions um in my understanding correctly I thought that we are we did cops for Rickards as well is that correct Dr heer Mr shim yes that's correct Okay so so now I want to go back to a question that was asked earlier um because I think it's important to reiterate and drill drill down on the student station fees are they being used to to these purposes as identified on slide four to pay off debt service for buildings that we built when we needed that capacity um and also you know I'm curious are we able to use this money to pay the the cops um for rickords mid School uh for the Northeast High School Edition for the Stranahan cafeteria Dr heer Mr sh we follow the agreement so whatever is outlined in the agreement and the typical agreement basically uh benefits these agreement or outlined in terms of the specific area and then the areas surrounding it so if the if the development feed are collected in a in a certain area um if there are classrooms capacity additions in that area serviced by the cops we would utilize it for that or any surrounding areas that impact that zone okay can I add to that the key word in Impact fees and by default s station costes this thing called rational Nexus so when you collect the money whoever pays that money there has to a link that is benefiting the P so in this particular situation we've developed something BR County whereby they cly send money colle uh collected to the capital budget we provide the schools that were affected by that development in an Excel document provid them to Mr shim so that when they spend the money they make sure there's that connectivity which is a rational Nexus got it point Thank you and I I also want to point out something else on slide for under cost per student station fees um it says specifically the fs applies to the construction of new schools the replacement and modernization of schools and classroom additions and I I think it's important to reiterate that point because in my conversations with City elected officials and and um people at different municipalities a common concern that's raised and also just talking to parents and employees a common issue that is raised is the issue of our aging facilities and the need for modernization especially on the east side where we have a lot of older facilities so while we may not be meeting meing building new schools you know you know um you know a brand new school as opposed to a replacement you know I am aware of several projects in District 3 on the east side that um that do benefit from this um you know a point has been raised about affordable housing in Broward County and I recognize that this is a crisis um and that's why I supported not increasing our impact fees um when we we that was up for a vote over the summer um it's my understanding and I have a few more questions about the negotiations that have happened that staff's proposal seems to be or attempts to be a compromise meant to address the affordable housing concerns and I I looking at it and listening to the discussion today it seems like to me it is a fair proposal a fair compromise um I did have a few more questions one of the public speakers spoke to projected adum income can staff speak to that at all since that wasn't in the presentation Mr sh yes the District does benefit from growth um in terms of development new development and that that would positively impact our advore our millage okay um and I I hope that we can dive down into that a little bit more and I I think that U Miss alf's suggestion about a committee um that you know we heard from the public speakers would be beneficial because this is a very as you know one of the public speakers said a very nuanced issue issue um but I I think that is very important for us to look at is the the projected income from that um and the way it's been raised to me in conversations uh with you know City officials and developers is um you know if we if we maintain these student station fees that we are um not looking forward enough and that we're going to be losing this projected income um because these development won't be built um I don't know that it's such a black and white issue but I'm curious to see you know if we do start a committee to see th those discussions happen um it's my understanding based on what I heard from our staff uh that staff has tried to negotiate it with the impacted cities and the county regarding the the mitigation fees can someone delve into that a little bit more Dr H Mr kabusa yes we have a process whereby any City for example Oakland Park when it initially started with its units was 1,181 town house and then six Garden Apartments right so there about uh maybe two years ago the city wanted to then convert everything into midrise which is a different housing type so when you are trying to make it doesn't prevent any entity to change the unit type because of demand for that unit type we have a process the city will through the maybe legal council make amendments or proposals have you know discussions we all agree we go through the process once that is done Mr Gabriel gets involved we interact with the county and then we will always then go back what is the new students and then the mitigation still stands which is cost for student station so those are the kind of things that took place and then um what's been stated in the recommendation was also an attempt when the concerns were coming up that these fees we making the units higher we said okay because they kept saying they're doing attainable housing so you have affordable housing you have Workforce housing you have attainable well we said okay if you are doing work force housing affordable housing go through the certification process but that then that wasn't received um and that's what we meant trying to stay within the guidelines and we pretty much work with the cities okay so um I want to know more generally have we sat down with the impacted cities to say you know let's work this out like I I know you guys want us uh to release you from the the mitigation fee or the student station fee um we don't necessarily that's not necessarily our position how can we sit down and com make come to a compromise about this have we done that Dr heer Mr Gabriel yes thank you adium I only say it that way because in certain circumstances we were advised that this is the what we want to do I made a number of um proposed um R um variations of an agree an amendment that would have addressed that and submitted it to a particular City then I'm told that no that's not what we want to do we want to do something different what would you like to do we then sat down again and made an attempt to satisfy the issue and again it was we were told that's not acceptable U with regard to the issue of uh the gentleman who came forward and talked about the development in Oakland Park uh if they had at that very point they had asked us to do an amendment it would have automatically reduced those fees if they had come forward and gone through the amendment process dramatically I Mr akabu has the numbers he could tell you what the numbers were initially and what they would have been as we proposed them but it wasn't acceptable so the answer is yes we make every effort to come into a real to create a reality that works for both the the development Community the city uh whatever that might be and the district and bring it to the parties for acceptance it never got passed in this case in that case in particular the city that was involved never got past that original drafting okay um so let me ask the question in a little bit of a different way have we as a district sat down with the city of myamar the city of Lauderhill the city of Fort Lauderdale the city of Oakland Park put everyone at the table and had a conversation about this if I can elaborate Mr Gabriel said we've had successful amendments to a bunch of the nine not all of them right like lot Hill lot of lakes um maybe Plantation L Alex lot of Hill none of those units have been built so we only make amendments to the agreements when the cities show up but we didn't call all nine cities say you know what let's make a change because nobody said there's a problem right so Oakland Park was the one that spearheaded stuff because of what they were trying to do with every city that comes forward we don't you know every city that comes forward we tailor potential amendments to that City but not every city until this recent concerns has come and say we all collectively have a problem we've successfully amended agreements based on what the cities were trying to do changing the use but in terms of proactively say you know what there's a problem because there was no problem except when you want to amend and then city of Oakland Park was staring to have an issue but so that's pretty much what has happened okay so what I am hearing or I I'll push back on that a little bit um because as a board member I'm hearing from a lot of people that there is a problem like you know you have cities in the county um you know passing resolutions in opposition to this and you have the planning Council um you know pushing a vote on this so I think to say that no one said there's a problem is not um is not certainly not my perspective as a board member um I which again brings me back to I think it would be uh valuable for us to sit down you know form a committee of of people from development to the cities to the school district uh to try to come up with a more nuanced solution um I am not I do not believe that if we just released all the cities from the agreement and then came back to the table that that would be wise cuz I don't see that working out in anyone's favor um so that's not my position but I do think we need to make a concerted effort to bring all of the impacted parties together and have have these discussions and try to come up with a solution that is not just releasing people from an agreement that is helping us pay off something that you know happened 20 years ago like you know when I you know have a mortgage I'm I promise to to pay off that money right um so those those are my thoughts thank you B chair um let me just elaborate real quick as a clarification the affordable housing piece when o when the issue popped to Oakland Park we communicated through what we call the staff working group which is the body technical body that works on the interlocal agreement and also the oversight committee so we said collectively if we make this proposal we're open to making the same offer which is a recommendation to all of the agreements so technically that was um put out there as a potential solution to anybody who has a problem so wanted to clarify my response got it thank you and sorry I had one more um question um help me understand how we Brower County public schools are preventing single family homes from being built specifically um you know one public speaker spoke to or the the Orange Grove area in Okland park or the Orange Grove development so that's the second um I think it's a local Activity Center in for lot I mean I'm sorry in Oakland Park again that was one of the issues and Mr G can speak to that the cities drew the boundary right so we said to the city one of the solution you can easily carve out these two houses from this boundary because right now the city hasn't officially come forward to amend that Tri party they haven't I actually spoke to one of the homeowners but the city can easily take action proposed to redraw the boundary and C out those two so it wasn't a problem we created okay thank you for clarifying that thank you Mrs rert thank you um I don't really want to keep going down this this path at this moment I mean I've never seen two different understandings that are so far apart it's uh it's jarring to tell you the truth so I am 100% um in and positive that we need to do a a committee because we cannot get this done in an hour we can't get it done in a day so um I don't want to take up more time because we're behind and I I I appreciate everybody's um commitment to to being here but um yeah there's there's no way we can get together at this moment if we we even had a a um a day that we could vote on something it would be impossible so there needs to be I mean our we're in the business of education and right now we need an education on what is going down so that's my point so yes for the committee thank you Miss McCarthy Bowman um I agree with Miss rert I think um i' absolutely support sitting down because there's clearly a lot of issues that um you know we have two sides that are seeing totally different uh position taking totally different positions and feeling unduly burdened and I think that um to miss alu's uh Point earlier you know we We Are One community and we need to work together to make sure that everything is functioning properly and that everyone is getting what they need and so um to have a committee where we can have a better clear understanding of all the moving Parts here and try to figure something out um in a time period that is LS for that I think is very important so I fully support that thanks thank you I'm gonna I'll go back for a quick Short Round but since it's come up a number of times I think we should do a consensus as to whether our um expectation is to have I'll call it a work group as opposed to a committee um to be able to bring everybody to the table because there are we're looking at you and seeing the people behind you and you're talking and they're all shaking their heads so um clearly there was a disconnect and and we do want to be um cognizant and good partners with our cities we need them they they need us it should be a good partnership and I think that's really what they were coming here today to ask for was let's look at this let's work together not in individual pieces but as one big group however that might work as a work group um so I'd like to just take a consensus with the board if that's the direction we're going to give um staff and then we'll finish up with a couple other chair before you do that I just I have a pertinent point about what you're going to ask about can I just have 10 seconds sure thank you chair the Broward planning Council may be the right group for us to ask to do this and my suggestion is we're one of the three parties if we form a working group we got our perspective right the blow brow planning council is designated by the county who does our land use policy we don't do it they do it um and it has City reps it has um individuals that represent development communities that sit on that uh they have a school board rep uh mayors of cities City commissioners some of them are here today uh but they live in the land use world that's their job and they might be the right group to say would you look at this and see if you can come up with a revenue neutral solution that mitigates some of their issues so that's just uh just another idea so well I I would just say I think staff really could look at with the group and figure out who that work group is I don't know if we want to direct who the work group is I just want to consensus if we all agree that we're looking for get to give direction to go in that way and then we can decide what that looks like although I don't think we should be deciding that per se but I just want to get a consensus before we go forward so Mrs fam work group yes or no I hadn't had a time to voice my opinion yet so I I am an absolute no then since I wasn't given that opportunity and other people were given a second opportunity to speak no you didn't raise your hands you're not on my list I had my microphone clicked for next we don't we don't you have to raise your hand so I know I'm making a list that you weren't skipped on purpose so well based on the fact that I wasn't asked to to chime in it's an absolutely no I don't think this the school district would have the capability this has been ongoing for years this battle and I think it's just a waste of everyone's time and they have done their due diligence they paid for 20 years for students to come through that we said we had an um we're overcrowded School District they paid their District it's not their obligation to float us it's not at all and um the question was just about a work Group which they came to ask yep no I I I don't think this District time but let's just finish this Mrs Thompson yes or no that's all I need right now yes okay Dr Zan yes Mrs Leonardi yes I'm a yes yes Robert yes okay so yes we're going to work on a work a work group that includes all three groups that are in the agreement so the city um the county and the school board and and maybe the um planning committee is the right place I don't know if it is or not I think we could let you figure out what that work group looks like okay um okay Mrs fam um go ahead sorry a little too late thank you well I just moving forward it's really important that you raise your hand because there's nothing on here that indicates to me you want to speak so ma'am I've done that I've raised my hand before and you've overlooked me I just continued so this is this is something that's ongoing so I I will definitely make a scene each time it happens I think that's the best thing to do maybe that will Gander some attention thank you okay uh Dr Seaman thanks so much chair I wonder um there seems to be one like critical boundary condition for the working group which is um the developers the municipalities um are are talking about how much much they have to pay right and so either we ask a group uh whomever that might be uh to sit down and come up with um some kind of solution for going forward but to me there's a big deal about whether it's Revenue neutral or whether or not they're allowed to bring us Solutions in which there's less money paid from developers and through municipalities to uh based on the trilateral agreement so do we want to ask the working group just to come up with a universe of IDE or do we want them to come up with ideas that are that that may change who pays but be Revenue neutral to Broward County Schools um I I mean I think we would all agree we want it to be revenue revenue revenue neutral because we all understand what staff is saying I mean based on the conversations we've had that we can't just say we don't need this money we clearly have things we need it for um so it's not to get out of that it's to see what is a more Equitable way to be collecting These funds and chair I feel the same I just wonder if it makes sense to get consensus of the board so that we give the the whatever group forms to put this together or groups form to work on this that they understand what we think uh a limit is which is bring us ideas but we still think we need to pay off the debt uh for what we bought okay so we go back around Dr holness do you agree that the whatever idea they bring back would be Revenue neutral that we would still be receiving funds can can I inter yes Dr heer I just want to give opportunity for staff to kind of weigh in to kind of help support the conversation about some of the the ask to bring right back thank you I think um because of the complexity of the situation I think that we'll need to come back to the board with the various stages of uh ideas and forming the working group and what's on the table uh because this is an education for the community as well in terms of you know we you know the big looming thing for us is we still have this debt and the assumption that we can make it Revenue neutral is is a is a very uh bold leap because if the city doesn't pay this debt or continue to pay us we will have to pay it as a school district so I think it's very important that you know uh this we don't leap too quickly into coming up with an answer uh because of the complexity of it and that we listen to the cities we listen to the county uh to kind of put an agreement in place that will be um flexible over the next 10 years 15 years so is it safe to say you have a general idea moving forward do you need any more direction from us uh no okay I do not then we'll leave it at that um Miss Thompson um you didn't have a chance to speak yet so go ahead that's okay um I just want to make sure in the work group that we're incorporating um homelessness nonprofits or actual affordable housing I hear what the city's said I think affordable housing is a much more complex issue I also feel like this might benefit Developers that promise affordable housing and it doesn't actually come through so I hear the concerns that the city officials brought however affordable housing is more than just lines there are policies that go with it there are making sure that the people in the community can actually um qualify for this housing and so for us to come in and just be like oh you can have the money back is is I think a very dangerous thing and I would support staff's recommendations um and I really appreciate your efforts and I support the work group that's it thank you thank you and we'll finish up with Mrs leonardy thank you um and I was going to say I I don't know that we need to necessarily get into specific asks uh just because it doesn't appear that we can agree on like entral set of facts so I think you know having um an agreement on like the the ground that we're all standing on is important uh first and foremost and I I do not think that the planning council is the appropriate place to do this um it seems you know they've already been involved in discussions um but I think it's important that our staff is a part of this because our staff is are are the people who are bringing us proposals and and trying to change policy um so I I want to reiterate I think it's important that we involve the municipalities the county um our School District staff as well as developers um and the one piece I I wanted to speak to earlier that I I skipped over in my notes um was something that the city manager from Fort Lauderdale brought up is that you know a lot of these new buildings were built out west um like in Parkland and Coral Springs and they are not uh subject to these fees um which if I am Fort Lauderdale or Oakland Park or Lauder Hill that is very annoying um to to to see so I'm wondering if there is a way to be more Equitable about that um so that's something I would like the the work group to consider thank you okay thank you so much it was a great discussion thank you everyone that came to speak on behalf of the different municipalities and I hope you all have a great day um at this time we will now move into a closed door session that shall last for 45 minutes all persons not scheduled to attend the closed door session please exit the room at this time and Mr way he yeah yeah yeah 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 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 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 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 3 thank you welcome back the next item is Rule development policy 1020 school board meetings in Rule of Order I now turn it over to staff for a very brief presentation Mr Sullivan I'm up all right uh again John Sullivan Chief communication legislative affairs officer and I will be assisted um more likely by uh Mr Hill and also uh Miss Batista our fabulous general counsel um this policy is make sure I have my numbers right sorry 10 1020 and I'm not going to go over every single line item just the main um areas so it's moving the public comments limiting them from 15 to 10 minutes um it's moving uh five of those minutes within prior to the board uh discussing the um consent items and then the additional five minutes would be for the open items um if they don't utilize any of those 10 minutes they're allowed to use the leftover towards amendments uh so that's the biggest change as it relates to public comment um also committee reports would be moved to workshops uh move it'll be moved away from uh the board meeting to a workshop uh the rationale behind that is to allow the board uh greater opportunity to discuss uh those reports and recommendations that those committees may have at that point if this were to pass the board could decide whether to ask or direct a superintendent through consensus or follow up with a B item at a later board meeting um then there's some changes that relates to some um legal opinions that have come out as it relates to public comment I know Batista if you wanted to highlight some of those but those changes were made to sure that we're more in lined with those uh opinions that have uh been released since the last time we did this policy and I believe those are the major changes there's also oh let me uh highlight some of uh we attach um attachment a and attachment B and that is uh so uh the our uh advisory committees are utilizing a mechanism to capture their reports and also um their uh recommendations um we're also asking that the Committees uh submit a one-pager with their recommendations so the board has more um backup material for their recommendations and unless Miss Batista Mr Hill want to add that is a general overview of uh the policy changes just one short okay Miss Batista sure so um re given the fact that there was an a decision last year um in the case of moms for Liberty versus bravar County we made some changes related to that decision and the decorum at board meetings the uh major change is that speakers are able to use names of uh individuals which some you know in the past uh they were not um defamatory or abusive remarks are still not allowed uh because they have nothing to do with the education um process unless you're talking about trying to um give a criticism you know constructive criticism or um you know say that somebody did something well um that's also allowed um as being pertaining to the education process of the district otherwise it's outside those parameters and it would not it would be prohibited and uh the only other major change um that I'm just talking in general but is the quorum would be page page 10 page 13 so yes the Corum is on page 13 um there is also a designated spokesperson um section so when there is a large group of IND individuals with a common goal um they are urged to uh choose one person to speak for the whole group as opposed to have um multiple comments that are potentially repetitive and that's found on page 10 those are the two legal changes made and then the only thing I wanted to um I forgot to mention although the policy is uh suggesting a reduction in in the from the 15 to the 10 minutes it's actually allowing the public to comment on every single item within that time right now they're limited to five items so although their time is being reduced it still gives them greater ability to speak on multiple items beyond the five items that they're currently allowed to speak to okay is that the end of the presentation okay so we'll go to public comments so first up we have Jack good morning Jackie luskin Carl Springs um overall I respect any effort to make board meetings and the Public's ability to contribute to them more eff uh effective and efficient uh what a number of these new proposals do however in my humble opinion is convey that you want to hear less from your community and your stakeholders I would rather the board be spending this time working on any of the Myriad issues of concern we've brought you rather than on figuring out how to hear less of them it's a weird irony to being here speaking to an item that's all about us having uh about having us speak less um and the fact that you prioritize time for it feels to me disappointing um on page seven um I think people don't know the difference between consent and open Agenda items that's bureaucratic lingo a topic is a topic and if they want to speak to it at the start of a meeting regardless of whether it's consent or open please let folks do so page eight verbal committee reports it says should represent an account of the committee's respective meeting minutes and then we you want to add the language and must include the specifications referenced in attachment a I urge you to reject those proposals you can already and already should be uh reading our meeting minutes you should be sending your appointees to our meetings and having regular check-ins with them to discuss what came up at those meetings so while having us speak to the minutes when we report before you here once a month creates a third lay layer of redundancy please know that we want to also use that time in our reports for all that stuff we do between meetings in my case personally is the predominance of the work I do ESC advisory meetings are once a month for 2.5 hours plus we have committees I volunteer 20 to 30 hours minimum a week for ese duties and a lot of that is helping parents who are lost in a lot of cases or feel they've exhausted efforts to get help from BCPS or even from you folks parents will often complain that they emailed their board member and got no reply or their complaint just got referred back to the very parties they're complaining about many are parents who've been given wrong information by BCPS or don't know their rights or being spun in circles or even retaliated against for their persistence other work we do out here routing parents to help providing resources helping them make connections ensuring their fix is through communication and collaboration with departments holding dialogue with staff in The Wider community and so on you are effectively saying you don't want to hear all that or misunderstanding what we do please let us report on it um you should want to hear from us if committee chairs want to provide written reports let's let them do so but please don't mandate them don't want one more thing us we are volunteers we do enough and more um we also says committee reports May uh may present committee reports sorry committee Representatives May present committee reports at workshops is that a must uh that needs Clarity but I would suggest please retaining them at regular board meetings would be the place um there's much more but in summary I just hope that these proposals can be tuned for the better of our students thank you thank you next up is Trudy javanovich my name is Dr Trudy gerovich uh regarding this um rural development I assume you would be requiring the looping process for these changes I was glad to see that this the morning speakers had also submitted written contact comments sometimes I've been told that um if if I did a written comment I wasn't supposed to be able to speak I don't know whether that was official or not but and I didn't see it in here but I don't think that's a good way to do things on page seven um A1 one I object strongly to the proposed changes uh they appear to be so confusing as to Simply restrict public comment on each item they would be honorous for staff to manage during a meeting it also makes everyone attend the meeting early in the morning when many parents are making sure their children are safely in school please go back to the original wording which is similar to how it's been for over 15 years uh that I've been speaking on the board uh the following proposed changes one member of the public may speak for no no more than 10 minutes during a single meeting including and then it should be 15 minutes anyway go back to that including that person's general public comments within this total speakers are allowed up to five minutes to address items on the consent agenda and an additional five minutes to address any open items on the agenda I'm sorry is there anybody in the public that's going to understand what I just read no they're not do not do this what you've got is is a real mess I agree with Jackie that you need to have the committee reports during uh public meetings and people don't work the don't care about the workshops unless they're directly affected by them that's why there's nobody here this morning there was because they knew about an issue and whether it was a workshop or not they would have listened you need to have this public comment when the public is watching you also do not make BTU or other employee groups turn in a written report why would you make your employee or your your volunteers do something like that that's like they do to teachers all the time put this objective on the board so we can walk in and see whether you're on topic boy it burns people and the same thing will go with this kind of change don't change it thank you any other public comment okay um normally I go last but I'm going to go first because I have a couple of things and some of this came about because of um the suggest suggestions I had made early on so I want to go to something that's not actually on here um but we I do think it ties in with school board meetings and Rules of Order so earlier today um there was a video that a school board member selected a charter school to do the pledge for today and although I didn't agree with it um I didn't want to make a unilateral decision I really wanted to have a discussion with all of you about how you felt about highlighting Charter Schools when we do our pledge we've traditionally only asked um our Broward County Public School students to do that and so we put it on hold for today to see what the consensus would be um also to see if we wanted to add it into the policy whatever it is we come up with so I'd like to um have a brief discussion with all of you on that before we move forward on how you feel about having um someone Bes anyone besides Broward County Public School students say the Pledge and be highlighted so is there anybody that would like to weigh in on that Mrs Al thank you so we have our Brower County Public Schools traditional public schools and then we have our charter schools that are also public schools and are within our district and I respect all of the schools you know however the charter schools are our direct competition to our traditional Public Schools we are losing our kids to to Charter Schools so I think that this is a very small period of time that we have to highlight our traditional Public Schools so I would want to see that go going to our Broward County Public Schools uh during that time to do the pledge or if they're highlighting something very special and amazing that they're doing at Brower County Public Schools okay thank you anybody else want to weigh in and if you think it needs to be in policy because we we've done it by practice but just to be clear moving forward so that we're all in the same understanding Dr holes okay so um Madam chair were you referring to Charter School specifically When you mention anyone else besides our students or what came up was a charter school but I just it could go different places so in general or more specifically would we want to make a statement whether it's in policy or in in procedure and practice that moving moving forward we would only be allowing Broward County Public School students to do the pledge that's what I'm asking okay so I am in agreement with um board member alhf regarding the charter schools they are we are losing students to Charter Schools I think we have board meetings uh and workshops maybe three or four times maximum it's a very limited time we have uh a lot of schools uh and I think it's important that we use that space to highlight our traditional public schools now if you're speaking about outside of Charter Schools additional stakeholders uh that are relevant to the district then I can entertain that but certainly not Charter Schools thank you um m m McCarthy Bowman thank you for the formality um I agree with Dr holess and Miss Alida um I think that you know we watched this amazing presentation for our marketing and everything even you know in consideration these are very small little Clips where we have the ability to you to highlight our schools um and I think that we should capitalize on that for our traditional public schools and you know charter schools have their own forums where they can be highlighted they're highlighted by municipalities where they lie I see that all the time so I would like to keep it to our traditional Public Schools thank you um Mrs rert I'm a little torn um I know economically what it means for us but um we certainly share in we count the students when it comes to um enrollment or do we not so they're not part of our enrollment figure um as far as um enrollment we look at enrollment two ways um it's District operated schools which is roughly give or take 200,000 students and then we say 50,000 students for a charter and then the rest is home school private and all that if you're talking about enrollment numbers okay so were we you know we have our our our figures that we share publicly about um what our enrollment is doing at the time so I think there's a little confusion um I it seems like we have a different number and maybe I'm just not following the the the process here understanding this um because I go to Charter School graduations because they're in public school yes it's our competition but um if it if it doesn't conflict with any of my U District Schools um then I do it you know it's an e their their students are our students and and they are our kids um yes do we want to get them back in our school and recoup that money yes um so I like I said I'm torn um I would say when we talk about going forward in this District economically it makes it simple enough um that it would be um not not allowing it thank you Sarah I'm sorry Mrs leonardy you can call me Sarah um I I think you know it should stick to traditional Public Schools I don't necessarily think that um we need to put it put that in policy but I'm not opposed to it thank you Dr Zan thank you as the offending board member I want to take a couple minutes and describe uh how this happened and why it happened public charter schools are often considered private schools by a lot of people in Broward County um and I think it's important for people to understand that public charter schools are part of the public school system we had a public charter school that won some distinctions and um the people who manage charter schools are of often reflecting back to us that they get treated like third class citizens in briard county and yet they're educating our students in the same way we are private schools also educate our students as do homeschoolers and I think it's very important as a Broward County Schoolboard member to uh represent the education of our community not just those that um attend traditional public education I was also motivated by some opportunities we have to partner with public charter schools um I've been trying to get uh people here and in other counties to Rally around asking for more money like dramatic improvements in public funding for education in Florida I think it's the right thing for Broward County it's the right thing for large Municipal counties and it's the right thing for the State of Florida uh Charter Schools as part of the beneficiaries of FTE funding uh have partnered uh in that effort and they want to ask for more money in heroic amounts $1,000 per FTE per year it's probably the most exciting legislative thing that we could possibly work on public charter schools also partner with us in a variety of other ways whether it's School psychologists or therapists or training that we provide to uh teachers there they are our competitors in a sense but the failure of Broward County traditional public education system going back years decades is what created the charters that we have today and so we allowed them to grow the law allows them to exist and now we're competing because we'd like to win back those students but it doesn't deny the fact that we ask them to partner with us all the time we ask them to have we all have access to those schools as Schoolboard members we can walk in and Flash our badge and go and look at Charter Schools every year we accredit the charter schools uh that come here uh we look at their books to make sure that they're still viable um but they keep telling me the people that manage charter schools that they feel um um resentful because we treat them like third class citizens so I asked what kind of symbolic measure could we do to just let them do something that has no impact on our budget or our policy uh I don't feel like we're bragging about a public charter school to let their students come and say the Pledge I would let homeschool uh kids come say a pledge I would let private school kids come say the Pledge they're all our kids and uh I was attempting to make a symbolic measure that everybody uh in in that group in our group is the same I brought this up to the superintendent I wanted to make sure that I wasn't violating any uh good order and discipline um and that's why I invited them to say the Pledge today I like Miss Leonardi don't think we need any big policy move it's the will of the board not to do this that's fine uh I believe it's uh the prerogative of Schoolboard members to invite groups to come and say the Pledge it's a statement that we can make uh about something that's important whether we're highlighting a school in one of our single member districts or a school that just won a state tournament uh I don't want to make this u a repeated thing but I wanted charter schools to know that we care about their kids that their teachers uh belong to our community as well and what they're doing is important to Broward County which I represent and so that's why I invited this one Public Charter School to come give the pledge um and uh I just wanted my colleagues to understand that and the public to understand as as well I don't think public charter schools are second rate organizations I think they're doing things that matter to our community I've watched people that are sitting here today in campaign events where they're asked about charter schools and um you know we want every kid to get a great education Broward yes we compete with them but we also partner with them uh to do a whole bunch of things thank you chair thank you Miss Thompson thank you so as someone that represents about 43 to 45% of people that go to Charter Schools I think about this a lot I think about this when I'm talking to people in the community to people who run Charter Schools I've toured charter schools and I do think it's important to build a partnership with them however I don't think this is the time to do it I think this is a time where we can highlight this our traditional Public Schools it's a very brief moment in time they can give the pledge at their forums and their meetings because they do have their own meetings um and I don't I just think it's very important right now that we all have a unified message that BCPS is is the best tagline and and when we go and and we need to be celebrating our successes and our wins because we have so many schools that did amazing things and we just don't have the time to highlight them um I don't think it needs to be put I'm I don't have a strong opinion on policy that is fine I just think we all as board members need to be unified in selling the amazing traditional public schools that we have thank you thank you Mrs fam did you want to weigh in yes thank you um I'm agree with Mr Zan we represent Charter Schools they are public schools Florida is a school choice state that we should not consider ourselves in competition with them we should complement one another we can really work together and that's the part of the problems here even today with the cities it's so divisive it's either you're all against it's your debt our debt you're paying or when you were asking them to subsidize the school district it's not their debt they paid the 20 years for students to be here they didn't say forever we're going to make same I'm stand going back on track but anyway I think if anything we can um really enrich relationship if you are B hell bent on competing then let's do spelling bees against them let's do competitions against Charters but in a friendly way not in a a a hate and the winner take it all I think we can really make the county as a whole a better place if there's less angst and and everyone I've talking to at Charter Schools and I go into parochial schools too um have said that they feel as if they're alienated they're the redheaded stepchild so I I think think this is a great opportunity to partner with them maybe they'll put some things up at their school we can work out a reciprocal agreement we promote one another we're allies why can't we be allies why do we have to be enemies so let's let everybody shine everyone has something unique to bring to the table here they have their strengths we have our strengths let's flourish among that thank you mam chair okay Dr hus thank you so much so um I just want to clarify that I believe that that um the majority of the comments from the board members um is in no way um uh not emphasizing the importance of every child in brow County I believe we all respect that and every child is important uh I think what we're asking here is BR County traditional schools are given a certain partt of money and charter schools are given their own partt of money and so when we start to use resources to promote Charter Schools I think it's one directional right so are charter schools using their resources to promote our students um so you know it's not a question about the students uh we value all students and we hope that they see the Great Value in Broad County traditional schools and come back to us but I think that it's important that we are not developing or the intent to develop partnership based upon utilizing resources that we have limited amount of uh to emphasize or include charter school where they have their own resources to do their own promotion thank you thank you I um just wrap that part up and move on I would say I think we all agree I've said it over and over we would love to enhance our partnership with Charter Schools and see how that works but again I didn't believe that this was this place it seems like that is the consensus so moving forward the pledge will be just Broward County Public School students and we'll find other ways as suggested to make sure that we can partner with them and and and do things in a more collaborative way so thank you for everybody weighing in I appreciate that chair yes just for clarity or we was the consensus include it in the policy or just a general practice I think we agreed it was just a general practice we didn't have to necessarily right included in the policy okay thank you all right perfect I just like point point of order I just want to put uh something on the record that I don't think we're allowed to make final decisions here at workshops they have to be done at board meetings and that's something that's bringing finality to a policy that's really an Unwritten policy you're saying we are prohibited from doing something so I just like my objection to be noted through the chair so noted it's fine Miss Batista yes so this is a part of the rul making process for a policy so this is the type of uh place where um certain rules are a little bit different one of them being for example if the public were to come and ask questions specifically as to the policy you would have to respond to those questions normally we don't engage the public that's one of the differences the other one is that the board can make decisions here as to what they would like to see in the policy that the policy will return to the board for final approval at a board meeting and further changes can be made at that time okay thank you I just um want to move on are we okay with the policy so I just wanted to explain a couple of the changes here um and then I'll you know go to everybody else so when when we came back from fsba some of the suggestions that I learned at the chairmanship board we brought back as a board we had a consensus yes let's try that but then we found out that there a law that doesn't allow us to just do that we needed to make changes in the policy so that's why you're seeing some of these changes here so what we were trying to do was to be more um respectful of people's time so we were going to put the public speaking for the consent items right before we go to the consent items which are supposed to be on consent so there's not a lot of discussion that happens on them but allow the public to comment on them all of them for five minutes if they choose to do it at that time and then after we had consent allow them again to speak on whatever items they wanted to to for five minutes before we went to the open items or the double items so that they didn't have to stay all day long to talk on an item for three minutes which we've heard I think we've all gotten emails complaining why do we have to sit around here for all day I would I don't agree with including the public general public speaking on that so on page seven I would say where it says 10 minutes during any single meeting it should say excluding that person's general public comments it shouldn't include it so that would expand the amount of minutes that someone has to speak to actually 13 minutes not 10 and then they if they didn't use all their 10 minutes they would be able to talk on on motions so um this was really out of just trying to be more respectful of everybody's time I know there's some people that don't mind sitting here all day waiting um for that particular item to come up because it may be at 1:00 it may be at 4:00 it may end up being bumped to the next day so I trying to be respectful of that also changing the Committees to the workshops again the Committees asked us us a lot of the Committees and actually got some emails to say thank you for doing this because they want to have the time for discussion and it was a mess last meeting when we were trying to fold it into the board meeting so allowing it to be at a workshop where discussion is expected and then if it wants to have a motion we could have the motion come to the next Schoolboard meeting where we're not having that talk in the middle of a school board meeting that's supposed to just be about specific Schoolboard business so that's really where a lot of this came from and the idea that the Committees are asking us to have that communication and that discussion with them the board workshops allow that to happen where board meetings don't really lend itself to the time to have the discussion so they would come they would give their report they would have recommendations in their report and then we could ask them questions we could have back and forth on what does that look like we could just give consensus to the superintendent yes and then staff would be able to tell us what they have or haven't done on that and then we could write a good solid motion which is what's in our policy right now um moving forward so that's where some of this came from it was to be more respectful of the Public's time of the community of the committee's time and many of them asked us what should our Reports look look like what do you and so if you look in there they you don't have to do a written report only if you don't come to report to the school board um so you're either coming and giving a verbal report or you're sending in a written report so that we have an idea of what your recommendations are what happened at your meetings and what it is that you have you're advising us on because that's really the idea of a committee is to advise us so I would um like again to say I would like to see that it it actually excludes the person's General comment time on page seven I don't think that the 10 minutes should in also be included um if they come and talk on General items so that's um my input and I Sarah was the first one Mrs leonardy with her hand up Dr Zan anybody else okay so yes Mrs leonardy oh no I'm good thank you okay Dr thanks so much chair I um am really uh excited to get these things put together uh I'm going to give a couple of comments um in the nature of this being a workshop and not a board meeting I actually think on page seven the current version is better than the one you described chair um one of the things that happens when um we get speakers who talk for a significant amount of time is that other people that would be interested in Schoolboard matters don't come and this actually gives us an opportunity to hear from more people and I think that's incredibly important I think that's incredibly important on advisory boards too uh to make sure that all of our meetings are inclusive and open to um every member of advisory groups to have equal time uh to share their brilliant insights into things so I actually prefer U page 7 7 A1 to stay as is not to be excluding uh their other time um I would recommend on one subject change which is on page eight that in general chair we have two board workshops a month right I uh wondered if you and and others would consider that the first Schoolboard Workshop of every month would be the time when advisory boards come in and talk that way it's Crystal Clear it is you know the 12th of March is when we have our first Workshop day uh you know if you've met at some point before the 12th so that you can get your meeting minutes together and come in and talk I don't know how long that is um I think that that would would mean we'd have one Schoolboard Workshop where advisory committees come in and talk and another one you know where we do Workshop business exclusively um and I think that that would make it better I also would like to read their reports and and on page nine um 3F one day prior to it it's a little bit difficult for me to get to them all uh but I'd really like to read them and I'd wonder if the board would consider you know some other number besides one day ahead so that uh board members could actually read them them digest them think about some questions and then you know be able to engage uh in meaningful dialogue I don't know what a better number is three or five or something like that but but given we're doing this for the first time it might um it might give us more time to do it I have one question uh chair for maybe you and the lawyer on page 11 we have let me give you the full reference sorry four e and F kind of um I really love it when someone from the public comes and criticizes me you're nuts about closing School Zeman Zeman you're crazy about this Charter School thing um I like that because I want them to be able to have an outlet to come and say my votes are wrong uh my topic are wrong is all that is there anything in here that stops uh a member of the public to come and say that Zeman's all wet and and kind of blew a whole bunch of votes in a row Miss Miss Batista uh not at all terrific so defamatory comments about a school board member are prohibited is that correct yes and so for someone to say I don't like you or the way you treat you know something or something like that someone being unrelated to school matters is is prohibited but talking about what we did you don't visit enough schools you voted the wrong way uh I don't like the way you we the ties every week that kind of stuff that's okay that's related to Schoolboard stuff right everything except for the tie part but I know I can't imagine someone objecting to one of my my ties but uh okay great and then the last uh recommendation on on this is to my knowledge um the way advisory boards bring us their recommendations they debate they talk they have an issue they go oh we need to tell the school board that we recommend this um and when they do that there's a vote right like they they have 15 members there members maybe 13 are there and there's a 8 to five vote of the advisory committee to bring a written recommendation that they have at that meeting so that then the chair of the board or a rep if that's the case will bring it to the school board and read what has been approved by the advisory right to that end I wonder if the attachment B down where it says recommendations to the school board can include what the vote was because if it's 13 to nothing I'd be more uh swayed by that than if it was 7 to6 um or or or the like but I also think it just reinforces the practice that we've written into policy which is you know advisory boards meet they talk they have all these different insights uh tremendous uh value for what they add uh and then they're supposed to write things down and say this is a recommendation to the board and then they vote and I just think that that um that would be an enhanced form if in fact we had the vote requ Court as well okay thank you U Mrs Leonardi thank you I I did have um a question pertaining to page 13 about um the piece about defamatory comments made against individual board members a superintendent or District staff um because I believe the general Council and I have had conversations about what is you know defamation and being an elected official and so I'm wondering if you could play that out um for me like how does the chair determine if something is defamatory what happens if they you know so a public speaker says something that that the chair believes is defamatory and then the chair says like you're you know you're done here's your warning and then you're done um Can someone can I guess the general Council play that out for me since we've had those conversations before certainly so um for de defamation issues um um so defamation is is defamation is there is a definition for it um legal a legal definition for it the only issue is that if there is going to be a lawsuit against um let's say you know a board member or any other political figure would like to file a case against someone who came or that said something about them it is very difficult to um rise to the level of proof necessary for a public figure F to show defamation because of the fact that you are a public figure so you would have to show that the person uh in fact uh was meant to um you know knew that whatever they were saying was untrue and that what they were saying um was aimed to harm you knowing that it was false um so it's a higher standard than you know that any other regular citizen would have um having said that you know there is and and I know you know it's it's difficult to apply sometimes these rules as one of the things that moms for Liberty that K said when you are in in the in the throws of a dispute with uh someone from the audience or whatnot but um it would be you know when some someone is coming to say again you know something that is um false um against you know that is patently false and that um more likely that it's something that is unrelated to your job as a board member or your job as an employee of the district they're not able to uh make those assertions that's what this policy is trying to prohibit um and I I think there were some board members that weren't here when I mentioned in U before that one of the things that is being changed is that um they are able to mention the IND individual by name which before the policy prohibited that okay so let me I I I do want some clarity so for instance there have been situations where people come during public speaking and they lie about certain things that are happening in our schools um and they accuse employees of doing things that they do not do so if moving forward if this policy passes they would not be able to do that is that correct uh I mean yes the the answer is yes um I you know it depends on how what the the remarks are and what is being said um if the individual is damaging the reputation of someone then um you know again and they know that what they're stating is completely false then that would be defamation okay so I'd like to just give a concrete example say someone say I come to the Schoolboard meeting as a public speaker and I say teachers in Brower County public schools are doing XYZ and XYZ is like clearly false it's not happening um would the chair then have the ability per this policy to say like you are out of order stop Yes okay thank you okay uh Mrs Thompson thank you um so I just wanted to get some clarity on moving the committee report reports and a couple other things surrounding that so is the intention that if we move it to a workshop then there'll be possibility of more dialogue so then a chair could say this is an issue the board could respond and it would be more of a conversation like they were asking for at the quarterly sit Downs yes that's the intent can we put that more explicitly in the policy so like the committee reports are being moved to this day to ensure that there's dialogue over the things that they're bringing Miss Miss Batista sure there there could be a you know just a short couple of words saying do to ensure um just so it's explicitly clear that the reason we're doing this is not willy-nilly but to like bring purpose to their reports yes or to ensure discussion on the reports or something along those Lin and then just again Clarity on the written requirement of reports if they attend they don't need to submit a report correct Miss Batista or Mr Sullivan Mr Hill you are correct they don't need to submit a written report however if there are any um formal Mo not motions recommendations then they will have to submit that one pager only okay can we also put that in the policy that if you are attending no written report is required yeah I think that was the intention that you give a verbal report but if you're not here but they can tweak the we we can put it but again if they have a if they have a recommendation then we're asking them to fill the one pager to offer the board backup information to their one I mean recommendation okay so just want us to say on letter C on page nine states that they don't have to submit that report if they attend yeah that's what I thought oh perfect I I missed that did I say C or E I mean e it's e awesome and then on the written report because I know there are chairs and like of different committees that actually go out to the schools and they do kind of parent case work for lack of a better name would that on the report fall under like areas of interest and and concern so it's not just committees that are meeting and in the votes that they've had it's actually the discussions they're having in the Committees and so on so forth I think that's in the report yes I'm asking if that's where it falls in the report if they're doing a a site visit no so there's I've heard concerns that committees do more than just vote on things and they have discussions or they do casework and stuff like that so I'm just making sure that this form that would fall under number eight you're asking to see on page on attachment a that's there's all these things that they have to fill out so would something like case workk or Community discussion committee discussion fall under eight I would argue it would solid okay that's it thank you okay Mrs rert thank you a lot to go over here um well firstly I'm not a fan of from my my words of cutting out the public from being partners with us in the school board um I feel this recommendation some of them are basically if somebody who's on staff or whatever the chair they may be or part of a committee I think they have the god-given right to come in and say anything that they want to do as long as it wasn't defamatory but it has to do with education I understand um but I don't think we lose our our cognitive ability unless you fall off a horse um if cognitive ability because you're now a chair of something or part of the committee I I just I'm not loving this so um not a fan especially from my words again that I feel that they're being cut out and maybe there's a better way to get around it and if this is going to be coming to the meeting uh for a vote then I I will probably have motions at that time so thank you Mrs rer did you want to give some suggestions so they could tweet it before it comes to the meeting I will but not right now on on the time level of it so okay yeah I threw my my other piece of paper away so this is a brand new copy without my notes on it gotcha okay um M McCarthy Mrs McCarthy Bulman um first of all chair I appreciate the background that you gave so that the intent of the policy change was clear I think that you know the the intent is to fac facilitate more dialogue and communication instead of staunching it so and hopefully that'll be the outcome um in terms of placing the advisory committee reports on the workshops I think that's a good idea if we if we that allows us to converse with them and allows us to have better communication with them because I think that that's something that I'm hearing just in my short time here um as a concern so we having a for for us to do that more easily then I think that that's great um to Dr Zeman's point about reviewing reports and things of that nature I think you know uh if we had all the infinite time then we would go to Every Community every advisory meeting and see what's going on in every meeting but we can't that's why we have the advisory committee so we have the ability to read kind of a a summary and understand what their concerns are um in writing that's always easier for me to see I don't know if that puts undue influence on somebody but um to be able to prepare understand the issues reach out to people if you need to before the meeting so you have a better idea what's going on um that that's just I think we just need to work to have better communication so that everyone feels heard thank you thank you Mrs Fam thank you um in going back back um to miss Leonardi's conversation I think I'm familiar with the case that you were citing to the moms are Liberty is that just this past year 2024 that's correct yes okay in that case um wasn't the person speaking referred to some people as I think um leftwing radicals or something like that yes precisely and then the court said that was not defamatory it was free speech and they were entitled to make that statement so I think we as a board should be very very careful about um our attempts to restrict Free Speech because that is uh in statements like that don't have to be proved because it's a matter of opinion in certain things so therefore they're entitled to voice them and if someone's upset about something I even think the case said that this is not a place to play nicey nicey this is where you get emotionally charged we should expect that and that people get to a their grievances when whether you like them or not whether they're said politely or not it's not about decorum it's about people publicly being able to express themselves without being censored so I just don't want to put us in a um position where we are subjected to liability based on the statements that you were making about um General statements that that no one in the school district can really be criticized well it was about teachers doing things and and there was no mention of any specific teacher so you're talking about the district as a whole I'm assuming but um I I don't know that that would hold a lot of water um in the event the ruling of that case um being handed down in addition to that um I just think even looking at this policy the restrictions I don't see why placards and small signs that are non observe are not allowed if they're not offensive as far as they're not violent they're not uh pornographic or they're not obscene and it's not during election and they're politically motivated I don't know why someone can't say that they're upset about something why they can't voice it I don't know why I I'm assuming that you're saying board members aren't allowed to do that as well I I don't know that um a board can censor other board members when it's free speech when it's not anything violent pornographic offensive as far as um being obscene and and lastly I would just say too that um I came in here about what two meetings ago and I was wearing my trump pin and I was told that I couldn't wear it unfortunately for me I had checked with legal before even wearing it it's not political I'm supporting the incumbent the incoming president and I have my flag so shows my flag pin that shows that I support the country as a whole so during a non-election when there's non- election cycle there's not anybody running that is not a political statement that is a statement of support for the commander-in-chief of the country that I reside in so I just want to say things are not all off limits like they've been portrayed in the past people have the right to their voices and they have the right to their opinions and in the past we've shut shut down too many opinions by saying that religious statements are hate speech um and that um people are bigots so if we're going to be throwing them out as board members to audience members then you have no right to expect a different standard from the people standing that audience and you have the no right to defame them do you have proof they're bigots or is that just your opinion do you have proof that that Rel religious language they've quoted is hateful or is that just your opinion so i' be very careful and tread water very carefully thank you Miss B Miss Batista yes thank you so um just a just a couple of clarifications um the moms for Liberty case talked about um the Quorum and it talked about unreasonable restrictions so there there is a right that the board has to maintain the Quorum during the meetings um there is the right that the shair has to rule someone out of order if that person gets disruptive regardless of what they're saying so if their conduct of the of the person or the wor of the person um are inappropriate for the uh Forum that we're in which is a school district trying to conduct business related to education those items would be properly ruled out of order um however to your point uh Mrs fam you are correct that um there are many things that people can say within the first amendment that even if they are um you know there's a group of people that may not agree with it that doesn't mean that it's not something that cannot be stated during a board meeting as long as it relates to education or the agenda as the case may be um the um item related placards and um signs that's something that has been part of the policy for a very long time um and it is a neutral restriction because the board is not saying we are prohibiting placards or we're prohibiting signs that stay a particular uh sentiment they're just prohibited across the board um that is not uh unreasonable it's not um you know there are other ways to share the information that the placard would have which would be through um making a statement at the board meeting or sharing a comment um in the website um I also wanted to address one um one of the speakers had said that in the past uh there was in the prior policy not this that is before you now that a person's submitted written comment would go uh would if if they submitted a written comment then they did not have the opportunity to speak and that's been um taken out of this of this iteration of the policy thank you Mrs Al thank you so I appreciate this coming forward to a workshop and then to the school board meeting to be voted on I think that it's it's commendable to you Mrs Hixon to try to figure out how to be more efficient within our meetings because it is a very difficult job when there's so many things to to manage so I think that's a a great idea um however I think that we might be moving a little bit too fast because a lot of these changes we haven't gotten by in um to my knowledge I haven't seen it from our committee chairs from from our public I mean there's two people here today and and this will impact a lot of things that we've been doing for for years um one of the things that I heard today that I was a little bit surprised about because I've never seen this happen we I've never seen us go back and forth in a workshop setting with public speakers I've never seen that and I I was told I heard today from Miss Batista that that we I guess can do that so that's that's new I don't think we've ever done it it's always been a hard line that with public speakers we we're not going back and forth with them in a workshop so I think this should be looped my my first question is what would the time frame of looping would what would that look like Mr Sullivan it depends on the Committees that you wanted to Loop and when they would meet so right now if we did not Loop it um and the board were to vote on this it wouldn't be able to vote into the February board meeting which would mean this wouldn't be effective until March if you Loop that then you're probably looking really real istically an April but more likely a May implementation so I'm okay with that with a two-month delay because I think that this is a huge change from what we always have done and and again to to make some change for things to be more efficient and and positive great but I think we we didn't get buyin from our key stakeholders which is our public and our our committees to to make these drastic changes in the way that we want to go about public speakers and I think that will it will flow a a lot better if if we Loop it Mrs Leonardi thank you I'm sorry before I I had asked some questions but I didn't make myself clear about you know the the policy proposals um and the changes I support them um I you know I I think in the interest of efficiency and timeliness um which is the intent of the the policy changes uh I would like to just move forward with our our rule making um I don't think that this particularly needs to be looped um and I look forward to uh more expeditious meetings as a result of these changes if they move forward thank you thank you um and I'd also I made a suggestion Dr Zeman made an alternate suggestion so I'd also like to get clarity for the staff on whether we want to include or exclude the public um the general public comments in that 10minute time frame for um for public the total public speaking because there's just two of us said something about it and we are not in agreement so I think staff would really need to know um better on that so let's I guess get a consensus on that and whether we feel this should be looped or not so I'll go the other way Mrs fam um no worries do you feel it should be looped and um on page seven do you want to keep the word including that person's General comments or um change it to excluding if I may Madam chair yes sir so right now the way it's written as uh the chair has said uh it would include their public comments so the 3 minutes would count against their 10 which means they would have a seven minutes uh the proposed change from the chair would exclude meaning that those three minutes would not impact their 10 minutes exclude that it would not impact the 10 minutes I I think we need to hear more from the public and do you feel that this um Rules of Order for which is really a school board prerogative do you feel it should be looped or should we move ahead with rule making I think in light of some of the recent changes and rulings by the court I think you definitely should Loop it and re-review because I I'm finding myself that um the conversation is being um stifled in board hearings and and based on that case that I I don't think that we're going to survive a lawsuit if one hits us thank you Miss Thompson oh and who I guess we who where will we we have to be specific on where it gets looped I guess we could wait until the end to see if there's okay board member Thompson I'm so sorry can we go over the two public speaking options again sure go ahead so right now the way it's written their public comment would count towards their 10 minutes meaning if I'm a public speaker I now only have seven minutes but I thought we were giving them five no they get 10 in total public general public speaking it's different than for this is when they come to speak on any issue they want in terms of in public comment they get three minutes this is if you just sign you're not signing up on an item you're just coming public speaker we usually do 10 so this the way it's written now if those three minutes in your general comments would count towards your 10 minutes for board items meaning you would only have seven I'm caught up I'm so sorry no worries um I think ex excluding it okay and L I could go either way but I think as so we can get business done more efficiently I'm fine with not looping this particular policy okay Dr Zan include and no looping okay Mrs Leonardi exclude no looping okay I'm exclude and no looping um Miss rert same Missy bman exclude uh no looping Mrs ala looping include okay and um Dr holness okay so I believe the direction of the M the consensus is to go with your motion or your change I should say where their three minutes would not count towards their 10 and not to loot the policy okay this is I did it right okay okay right um anybody else have anything on okay go ahead I just wanted to clarify about the um speaking with the public during the workshop my understanding was that we would just be able to speak with the advisory committee members during the workshop not necessarily engaging with the public because that's not really the public they're actually there right would be the presenters okay that's that's all thank you oh Mrs um Miss Batista so there is a specific rule under chapter 12 for Ru making um and that's under the administrative procedures act when you hold a workshop and part of the workshop is Ru making um you allow for the public to come and ask questions regarding the policy and then whoever um are the um employees um staff of the district that have dealt with that policy need to be present to answer questions from the public so that's the one time during a workshop when you would be able to go back and forth or not necessarily back and forth but just be able to answer questions from the public related to specifically the policy and that's it that's the only time Mrs Rupert did you have something else sorry I just wanted to ask one more time currently what is the it's it's 10 minutes with three the current policy before changing they get up to 15 minutes which includes their public comment and up to five items okay the the draft before the recommendation would be they get 5 minutes before the uh consent items 5 minutes before the open items and they can speak on any item so if they wanted to they could speak on every single item as long as they do it within five minutes the public comment would count towards those 10 minutes so if they do a public comment they would only have seven minutes but the board through consensus excluded the uh public comment towards the 10 minutes so they'll get five minutes um for the consent items and five minutes for the open items if they don't utilize either of those 10 minutes for those purposes then they would have the remaining time or the whole 10 minutes for motions by the board if there were any changes okay Ru making let's do it go ahead even though you have it you know maybe you have to do it that way there but you're really going to have to do some selling to people about okay you have to learn which of the consent items are and I just think you should just make it 10 minutes because because then you know and and you could say if you've got it you know the consent items are always first so if they're interested in one of the early items they're going to come then I I hear what you're saying but there it's kind of early though excuse me again trying to be um respectful of people's time if they only want to speak to the double letter items which are the open items which are the things that we actually discuss they could come a little later in the meeting the time to do people see I didn't even understand that I mean I was sitting there going okay let's see how when would I come if I was going to speak on this first so think that that's unclear you I don't like it that you're putting it in policy like that well just think about that we hear that and you know we'll have to see what it looks like when we pass the policy this is just a conversation right now so we hear what you're saying so we'll take it into account yes um M rert and then thank you U to actually use a olive branch here could we push it to another Workshop I know that sounds crazy people nuts but I I think if we don't start out clearly it's going to affect what they're doing so that's may miss Dr holess speak thought we don't okay I heard the speaker and um I I think 10 minutes in general is the way we should go and we we exclude as you mentioned because I think once we start to get a a little bit more um fragmented in the time it creates confusion so 10 minutes total I think a public member will be responsible if they want to use all of it for consent or they want to save some for non-consent they make that decision but we give them 10 minutes and we we exclude as you mentioned okay well me we're just doesn't matter to me I I just they're completely so if I may chair T to what you're saying so historically speaking most of the public speak on on open items and not consent items so by splitting it this way you're really allowing by the time we get to the open items it's probably going to be sometime around 10: so they don't have to come here first s in the morning some folks need to drop off their uh students or for whatever reason can't make that morning this is giving them the opportunity because if you put the 10 minutes in the front end by the that means they would have to be here for the beginning of the meeting so that's the only thing I would caution and I think that's what the chair was saying I think I think you're missing Judy's point though which is interesting if you're a member of the public and you want to come and talk about some things and you know you have 10 minutes to talk throughout the meeting you can focus your time on the things that matter the most and you can keep track of it I'm not even sure that staff can keep track of the rules that are written right now 55 and three because it's going to be a real challenge to keep a book on what you whether it was a consent open or public speaking time but it definitely uh would confuse the public but if you if everyone had 10 minutes uh across consent open or or public speaking uh it'd be easy for them to allocate their time to what they cared about the most theyd feel like they they they weren't constrained in any kind of artificial way it's fine but they have to be at the beginning and you would also they would have to be in the beginning because you want them to speak in the item before you vote on it I'm sorry but uh we allow them to speak before consent right MH and then they can speak during public speaking time as well for a total of 10 minutes but depending on when they took that time you in theory you could have passed the items that's where we're putting it before the board um passes the consent and before the open items you're allowing the public to speak before you take action so if you do the 10 minutes whenever you would have to put it in the beginning otherwise they wouldn't you would vote on stuff before they spoke if you did it after yes yes so that everybody has to be here to sign up because the way you've done it before you you know you're going to allow them to go ahead and sign up throughout the day or what however whenever they get here is that is that going to be the same process so we wouldn't if can so you would have to if it stays with the split time time you would have to utilize those times before the board took action so if you weren't here once they passed the consent items then you would have to sign up for it before they got to the consent items or the open items but if they wanted to speak on the consent item they would be here so and if they if they didn't want to then if if you're still allowing them to sign up yeah we're still it's that the sign up process isn't really changing it's when you just have to be here before they pass if you're speaking on consent items then you need to be registered before they close the consent item will I speak before each item if if I don't so then I guess the best way you could do it is you could say um we will do the consent items from this time to this time but at 10 o'clock you you need to keep a specific time when you're going to do the rest of the items then or something like that even if you're not done with the consent item so you could do it that way so that's the only way I can I hear you thank you for for the input okay anybody else all right you have your yeah this is Rule making only because it's rule making your harmonica well don't start singing but it's an open mind thank you I really just want to emphasize a point there were things that I made up hit said up here and I wonder if I just spoke into the wind I thoroughly appreciate where efforts are made to try to open up dialogue but there are some very restrictive elements here specifically restrictive on advisory chairs I know there are other concerns that have been voiced around this table as well about the general public so I'm very confused because I was actually at the last work at that Workshop that we had with you and we did put forward suggest sugestions or frustrations and and input about how we could be collaborating and communicating in better ways and this doesn't reflect that and yet it's being represented that it does um I'm very concerned that an item about stakeholder input is not going to be subjected to the process of stakeholder input looping this is going to affect advisory chairs we are at full stretch we are volunteers we are doing our best I feel that some of this is possibly targeted at at at limiting you know what you hear rather than necessarily who you hear from and I'm I'm I'm just appalled and really confused about some of these changes and the lack of awareness of what the effect of them is going to be which is going to be to constrain advisory chair it doesn't say we can come to a workshop and discuss our concerns it's saying instead of coming to a regular Schoolboard meeting you now want us to come and be and speak our five minutes at a workshop and go again it doesn't say there's going to be open discussion if you were saying once a month you're going to meet with us and we would be able to further discuss the concerns we're bringing up that would be the model you've described Madame chair but but what's written and what's being described here are two different things um we're being one more thinged on the the the the meetings we will have to attend and the things we will have to do and the things we'll be able to speak about and I am so deeply um upset to to have spent time coming here to provide constructive feedback so that we can find ways of all listening to and speaking to each other better um and to to make the point that we don't just hold meetings and pass motions and recommendation s we do so much more and for that to have not even been heard I I I think kind of sums up if we're trying to restrict listening we need to be listening to folks and this is going to be restricting the ability of advisory chairs to do so public as well but specifically The Advisory effect this is not uh a summarization of of the positive things that all of you folks and we folks spoke about doing thank you thank you okay okay I'm still going all right all right we from what she said though but there is one thing if if you didn't I didn't understand that you could go back and forth where was that written anywhere for public the public to know that we could go back and forth that that was told to us here and and we didn't even understand it exactly and so we sat there for a while and didn't say anything so I agree with whoever said do another workshop at least because then you could get the committee people here and you could you could at least get input from people and I it it just appears you're ignoring people and as she just said you don't want to ignore those people those are the people that are doing the work thank you thank you and just to um just to mention that we did uh email this to all the uh committee chairs and did um tell them this was going to be an item at today's Workshop okay we no we're may I speak to that you do say about having a representatives to speak on behalf of a large group of people a number of them I've been texting with right now can't be here because of the time it was the last meeting on the agenda uh last item on the agenda we're picking up kids I've had to delegate somebody else to pick up my kid and I'm actually meant to be 200 miles away I came for this secondly is the is the the first reaction when a number of of us saw this was just here we go again in the same way as the proposals to shake up policy 1070 it feels like we are just constantly under attack I feel that a number of others do and they have articulated to me on here right now on the text where I'm saying where are you folks and it's just like we why even bother that's where we're at why even bother because we don't sense that what we come up here and tell you to try to to form between us and you and all together to kind of shape like a piece of clay shape something that's going to be amable to everybody we don't feel that shaping happens we're speaking into the wind and that's why some folks aren't here too thank you thank you okay and Madam chair just to clarify so it's not that it's not that it becomes you know the the workshop uh piece related to policies becomes Open Mic it's just an opportunity for the public to address the any questions they have related to the policy and for staff to respond to those questions that's what the law provides for thank you Mrs S can you clarify though because you spoke earlier to say that we would be going back and fourth so what I would understand that would be if staff said something and then the public speaker had a question on what they said in its conversation back and forth is that go going to happen or not going to happen so I think the the best way to probably address this is to include something in policy 1020 specifically as to rule making workshops and Define what the law states so that there is Clarity for both the board and the public okay but can can you clarify is the intent of the law for it to be going back and forth with the public speaker the intent of the law is for the board to actually not even be here uh the law says that when you have a rule making um Ru making the ru making is with staff and the public and and it goes between staff and the public related to any questions that the public may have related to the policy so we have sort of like a hybrid here that is a little bit different so that's why perhaps it's not working quite correctly okay so then that gives me greater concern if the if the law is between that the board shouldn't even be part of the conversation at that time it's not required it's not prohibited but it's not required for the board to be here W then we should be following the law and then you know then when we are together we could be focused on different things and then staff can meet with the public and go through the rul making so apparently we've been doing it differently I'll just say so the way that is different is that we do a workshop the district Broward does a workshop for every policy that that comes along the law does not does not require the um require you to have a workshop for every policy Brower does so the only place that you do a workshop is here with the board the the way that a workshop is looked at under chapter 120 is that you do a workshop related to policym and then you would just have the policy the staff that had to do with the writing the policy the public so that they can get their questions answered and the board would not normally be present Madam Madam chair Dr Hess I I am so sorry I I I couldn't help but here and um I think Dr wanza was trying to make a comment and um on the same issue and I'm not sure if this is it would be appropriate for her to do that but I I did hear that in the background and I would like to hear her input Dr W did you have something to add happy New Year Valerie wanson Chief strategy and Innovation officer I got to get it right um so I'll go back 15 years the process about 15 years ago there was um an initial Workshop item that that was published as a part of the regular Workshop it was not published as Ru making for a policy if you will that's when staff would come because it was time for a policy to be revised or some something precipitated the need for some language to be revised staff would come and really just have a working set just a informational kind of guidance session with the board the board would then give direction Miss Rupert shaking her head she may remember parts of it the board would then give direction to staff to say yes this policy does need to be revised reworked whatever you want to call it we would get some direction around looping and just where we were going then we would actually advertise a Ru making meeting that was not a part of a board meeting it would be 5 6 o' or whatever in the evening it would be in the pre function room it would be at a school it would be at some centrally located place so that the public can come and provide their input and that's when staff would ask all the questions get the input then we would advertise and come back to the board in a conversation with the board and provide for the board we've gone out to we we had a formal meeting that was advertised in the paper we've gone through the looping process and this is the information we received we then got feedback from the board and that Workshop setting and then there was then then it was packaged again for a final to be presented to the board for the actual final so it was rule development and then rule making so that so it was um done that way and then over the years the process changed some kind of way and we've gotten down to the two meetings that we have now but like I said I'm going to make 15 probably 17 years I remember when we did the policy on um secondary school parking adult education fees and that's how those um processes work so thank you so I would ask just from what you just said looping was or to miss Batista looping was the first part of like it looped and then came to the school board that's what it sounds like instead of having a first Schoolboard Workshop it would Loop and then come to us no we we actually so the workshop agenda would publish and we would just put policy whatever this policy number is it wasn't advertised as an official rule making or rule development session it was actually and I said this one time and I was misquoted but it was almost like planning for the official rule development and Rule making process so that the board because the the communication Loop um policy now says that the board gives us the board of the superintendent gives Direction on what is to be looped what is to so we would come and say and for example when we did the one I think some of you were here when we did the one around the graduation speeches we came and had the conversation first we knew who we were going to Loop to who we were going to have the meeting so we went and did all of that and then we came to the board because we had gotten Direction on this is looping this is what we're looking at go out and get um feedback so that all of those questions were answered and then we came and advertized for formal um rule development and then rule making yes the the looping has nothing to do with rule making it doesn't U it has probably the same effect as rule as the ru making and the looping are similar in that respect but the workshops are very specific speically prescribed by the administrative procedures act they don't have to be done uh workshops don't have to be done at all on on a policy they are supposed to be requested by either the public or or someone that they want a workshop at some point the board decided through policy 1000 which is the policy policy that the board wanted to have a workshop on every policy and that's how this process was created thank you thank you for all of that history anybody yes Miss uh board member Thompson so just one more clarification on this back and forth I my understanding was it was just for the advisory chairs so that they would be conversation um I'll just that was my expectation as well because they're kind of the we're talking about two different things yeah she's going back to what yeah I think that's why I'm I'm confused because I want to I think that would help clarify that it's not just any public speaker can come up and we're going to have a 20-minute conversation with them can for rule making right so the committee chairs that's only as it relates to committee reports during uh workshops as the proposed policy but rule making that's open to everyone but that doesn't happen very often so in general so chair I think if it's okay with you um maybe Mr Batista so will um add some languages that relate specifically to the rules of rle making within this rule before we present it to the board for a vote in February as well as including that if the when the Committees give their reports and their recommendations that there's an opportunity because they would be the presenters to have disc a discussion um which was why we wanted to Madam chair Mrs go ahead m iup I'm so sorry but is anyone else going to the BC um PS showcase tonight at 5 because it's almost four now and we're going to get caught in traffic as it is I'm wondering if we can adjourn and and I can make a motion M Mr we're going to finish we it's 5 to 8 so we'll um and we have one more item so we're going to close it out with Mrs ala here get to the next one thank you so if we don't Loop because majority of the board didn't want to Loop this then I would ask if we can bring it I don't know what you want to call it Ru making or whatever you wanted to call it we have staff not with the board have staff meet with the public in a meeting to go over this policy before this gets brought to us to vote on my only comment we will do as directed by the board that just would mean more than likely it would not be presented to the board for a vote in February for implementation in March I think we can make it happen just one point of order though when was this item added to today's Workshop it was always on the workshop I'm sorry so it was uh a week ago that this put on and so just so we're just so we're clear um it the actual um policy itself without the proposed changes was uploaded a week prior and then the um changes was uploaded I believe on Friday if not Thursday but for sure by Friday but I do want to remind the board that this policy was advertised two weeks ago notifying the entire public that they that you would be discussing this policy two weeks prior to this workshop and we did also email the the draft of the changes to the advisory chairs I'm I'm uh with Miss rert on another Workshop by the way I I'm I'm confused about these things I'd love to tighten them up uh I'd love u i I would rather do that than race through this okay Mrs can the board though weigh on on what I said as far as staff meeting with the public on the policy as uh Dr wanza explained that could be part of the process would well I think we'd either have a workshop or we would have that meeting I think doing both is a lot okay I'm okay with staff meeting with the public without the board and then making the changes to bring back does that meeting have to be I'm guessing the meeting has to be advertised sure by how how long I think it's 14 days so again um just giving you the timeline if you did that then more likely you're looking for implementation at April or May board meeting as if as it stands right now this would not be effective until the March because you couldn't vote on it until February as it stands now so any changes to that you're looking uh one or two board member uh meeting delay okay Mrs leonardy yeah I mean I think we've we've been through a lot of iterations of Ru making and policy changes um members of the public have approached me I'm sure they've approached other board members when you know they have specific solutions to offer about a policy um and and motions for us to make um I think we need to move forward um I not in favor of having another Workshop I am not in favor of having staff meet with the public for um you know policy changes that the board should be making um again like I think many of us are open to meeting with constituents and stakeholders and taking specific bringing specific solutions to the table so that's where where I am on this thank you I would like to say that I also would want to move forward but I have the feeling that if this came to a board meeting um it would be postponed um or there would be so many motion changes that it would be time consuming at a board meeting so it may make sense to put the time in ahead so that when it gets to a board meeting we're not spending all this time making motions and doing what we're doing right now at an actual board meeting so um I one or the other I wouldn't want to to do both of those things but I um I feel like if we don't do one of them we'll be doing it at a board meeting and we're trying that's what we're trying to streamline and make more efficient and I um so I'd say one or the other Dr holess thank you madam chair so I am not in favor of another Workshop but I do agree and it it seems to be an alignment with what Miss Batista had mentioned what board member alh had have suggested in meeting with the public uh that seems to be in alignment if you could correct me Miss Batista with what you were saying in terms of what the law requires right um so I think I would much rather go that route but I'm not in favor of another Workshop but I do think that the staff needs to meet with the public bring it back to us it's the correct way to do it in adherence to what Miss Batista uh indicated and I think that would lend itself to a more easy path of this moving forward even if there's a month or two delay okay chair I may yes real quick sorry so since we haven't done this in a while I just you know this the staff's role in a public meeting is it's simply to answer questions or is it to take back because we're not the policy maker so we're not making changes or we bringing back their feedback for the board consideration because we're not the ones who decide on the policy so if we're simply there just to answer questions all I'm saying is the mechanics of doing it we haven't done it like that in such time so I just want to be clear from staff's point of view what is the expectation of us since we're not the ones making the ultimate policy decision and voting Dr heurn No I'm just agreeing with uh Mr suan I was going to ask the same question what are the parameters around this meeting what do you want us to bring back again we're not the uh uh policy makers or approving the policy we're just Gathering feedback and answering questions um so um I was going to ask the same question that Mr s just just um present it Miss Batista so that's the way that it was done as Dr W explained a long time ago because we were adhering to the statute a little more closely than we are now um so there would be a workshop in quotation marks Workshop meant that you would bring the policy with staff and then you would have you would bring back whatever comments were made and you would answer questions for the public related to the policy so yes to what Mr Sullivan said in summary Mrs rert I just wanted to weigh in um I like Lorie's suggestion Mrs McCarthy Bowman I do as well I think that'll be the most streamlined way to do it okay so seems like you have your direction that you're going to have I would call it a hybrid looping sort of I guess um to take it back um um you'll have to advertise that and then but again for clarity staff is there to answer questions on the draft that we just presented we're not we're not bringing back feedback we're bringing we're just answering questions to the public no I think the I aren't they supposed to bring the feedback from you bring back the feedback from the public so we answer questions and bring back their feedback and then the the board would decide what they wanted to incorporate which would I guess require another Workshop that's what I was going to ask sounds like okay I'm clear thank you m Miss buman are we going to use the exact draft that we have right now or is there any room for that to be updated a little bit and then brought back when before well I think based on the discussions we had today they would update it with what what we've added today Mrs Al but would it require another Workshop can staff put it together in an agenda item based on the superintendent then he's bringing a recommendation to the board based on the feedback from the public I don't believe we need another Workshop right it would come to a board meeting but well someone just said workshop it again no it just felt like it does feel like if they're taking recommendations how do we get that but if if the superintendent would say what his recommendation was then that would come to a board meeting and we would we would vote and we would include the feedback that we received from the public as backup yes we might not his recommendation might not be aligned to theirs um but you would have their feedback correct know what you're looking at when you go to the board yes it okay great all righty so you have your direction um Crystal Clear thank you thank you the last item the chief auditor appraisal system I will now turn it over to staff again for brief presentation good afternoon Heather parente director of employee evaluations here to present the chief auditor appraisal system I do realize that you received the material so I am happy to go through a brief presentation or collect the feedback that you have for US based on your review Madam chair would Madam chair would you like us to go through the presentation or go straight to questions um I think you could go straight to questions sounds good perfect is there any board any public comment no public comment no public comment okay board member comments um board member Thompson thank you um I just wanted to see is there um previous precedent for objective one where we're get getting the advisory committee's survey we did use this system with the previous Chief auditor but during that time the three objectives that that individual used did not include a survey so we've gotten their feedback on his performance before but it wasn't what we evaluate him on there was no feedback from the audit committee that was included in the evaluation correct okay um and is there any other person that's a direct report where we use survey data there are some administrators that have as an objective maybe improving like our direct report so the Miss oh I apologize um there is no survey feedback that is included in either one of those evaluations okay um so I would feel more comfortable either changing this objective completely because I don't or my concerns with it is I don't feel like it gives a full pi of the work you are doing um it is only one committee and the fact that it's a third of your evaluation I don't feel like it gives a proper picture of the work you're doing so if you wanted to use a survey type objective I would be more comfortable with it including all of your quote clients so the people you have audited uh principals District staff like a better picture of the performance you're doing um that way there's no biases with just one person um my other feedback is for objective to um I think it's great to attend meetings it expands your learning however it's it seems to me that it's just a box being checked you can attend a meeting via zoom and that would count for something um I would like you to attend the Comm the five trainings however I would like to include um and part of this objective is that you create a strategy or a plan to do district-wide training so you would go to those five trainings before your April 30th date and then you would bring to the board it doesn't have to be during a meeting it can be via email that this is my plan to make sure schools and District staff are all aligned with best audit practices that's my comments thank you um hold on Dr Zan thanks so much Mr wait Mr rhods had something he wanted to I I just wanted to uh respond I think you made good points um but the one thing that I was looking at was not so much um that it would be a survey but that that is a significant part of my job and a significant number of individuals ual that I interact with and that I provide both service and information to and so I understand the point that you're making and I would be interested to know if there's a different way of being evaluated on that part of my function because that part of my function is more routine and more repetitive with the same group of people who would be able to have some input into what it is that I do as opposed to people that I might interact with once every three or four years depending on the the type of audit that I'm doing that's that was one thing and the other thing was the the training portion is that um there's a responsibility that I have to uh get continuous education credits anyway and so one of the things that I wanted to try to do was try to develop and become a subject matter expert in how to implement Ai and and um other um methods methodologies into our audit uh steps and the way that we manage our audits and prepare for our Audits and it was more it was more that as a as a operational objective than it was a simple training uh method it was again as I see across the district that AI is becoming more and more a part of what's going on and I also understand that it's something that has to be very thoughtfully and carefully implemented in order to use it correctly I just wanted to provide that feedback to see if that had any uh impact on you or any others who are looking at these different objectives IV that we've put together go ahead um well thank you for that clarification um for the training I do I see your point that I and I do think that's valid however to make smart goals that we can evaluate on I would like a task associated with it and we can't really measure the knowledge you've gained from something so I can attend a training on AI and there's no real proof that any of that not saying that you wouldn't absorb the knowledge and and use it to the best of your ability but there's no nothing that I can measure or grade you on or evaluate you on just by attending a class that's why my suggestion was to incorporate some kind of product that you have from that if someone else has a better suggestion awesome um I I just truly feel that we are evaluating you on all of your functions and I don't feel that the advisory committee is such a large portion of your job I think the other things you do are so vital to our district that if we are going to use a survey component it needs to include everyone you interact with otherwise I'm happy for you to change that objective as well thank you thank you Dr Zeman thanks so much um uh what Miss Thompson brings up uh I agree with a th% and in particular having uh members of of an advisory committee assess in my view your role is the role of a leader not an individual performer and I appreciate the the critical nature of interacting with all advisory committees and with senior staff and and the like my alternative to this would be to survey uh folks that have been audited so that so that your teams performance in auditing people could be assessed and that would be great feedback to me I'd love to know what the principles think of your audit team that goes out because you manage and lead them and therefore when they go out to a school to do an audit how they present themselves how they gather the data how they present their findings um how they gather data is a reflection on your leadership and my my view of you is a very very senior leader in this organization uh not so much an individual performer on the training issue like Miss Thompson I'd prefer you to to attend these courses and then either come and train us on what you've learned or train your staff on what you've learned or train principles on on something if you learn a really cool thing um in data analytics that would be applicable you could record a course and uh distribute it out through teams um and folks could uh benefit from that um and then on on the succession plan the most critical part of succession plan is developing pools of candidates for your Senior Management jobs and those pools can be fully qualified now to move up uh you know needs another year or two of experience or needs more than two years of experience to be fully qualified that information tells us as your rating senior whether or not you've been working with people to figure out who's fully qualified today to move up who still needs a little bit more time and maybe specifically what you know you don't have to tell us what they're doing but you're guiding them to get the critical uh experience that they would need to promote and then others who are just not quite ready to to be developed uh and moved up so I love the idea I think leadership is all about two things uh performing your job and then building a team of people to come behind you and that's uh that's to me the best working definition of leadership but you as an individual performer you wouldn't be eligible for this job if you weren't a great auditor and so I got that you know you're technically brilliant at what auditing requires you to do the next step is how do you lead I think you have 37 or so positions 32 boy we gotten light thank you very much for saving us some money um but 32 is a lot and the function that they do is to me significantly more important than your individual relations with the audit committee and so that's that's what I would uh I would ask us to think in those directions um on those three performance Mrs Leonardi yeah thank you I agree completely with Miss Thompson's recommend recommendations um and you know I think particularly if if we're going to include um a survey of you know end users I think principles uh would be very good to include in that um if that's the route that we go in um or changing the objective in its entirety uh the other piece that I wanted to add on page eight um where it says professional responsibilities the first bullet point creates and maintains um professional working relationships with Board District staff and stakeholders I would add um the audit committee to that that's those are my comments for now thank you thank you Mrs McCarthy Bulman thank you chair um I agree with Miss Thompson uh I'd like to see an expanded um survey pool because I think that that will speak more to the breadth of um work that you're doing and um and also some kind of a deliverable from the training because I agree I mean you can go to five million trainings and it's un certain or clear if you were paying attention or what you bring back from that um and to Dr zema's point the third um the third objection the third objective in terms of um identifying those pools I think you know like one of the most important things that you can have in an organization is building a bench and when you have those gaps you can really feel it when people leave so that um they I think if that becomes a little bit clearer um that that's the objective I think that would be fantastic as well Dr holness thank you madam chair so um I am certainly in agreement with um Dr Zan and Miss Thompson regarding objective one um there needs to be a wider scope of individuals that can provide relevant feedback as to job performance I I don't I think it's very limited if we just stick to the audit committee so I'd like to see that change objective two um uh I think it's important uh that there is some measure of application from the training that is evident and so um whatever that is whe whether it's um a report from um uh regarding the you know how the training was useful and how it was applied to the job then I think that's that's necessary um and also for objective three um as Dr Zeman mentioned it it's important to show that you're able to build leadership capacity and build depth within your team um so I'd like to see more um substantive um you know as far as um indicative of what what of building leadership capacity within within your team basically thank you thank you uh Mrs Al I concur with all my colleagues thank you thank you um me too okay we're good I ought just one last thing I I don't like the fact that our evaluation is going to be based on somebody else's survey results like I I would rather it be about the audits that were being done I mean it's 25% of of the evaluation um you could put that in the other part like on page I got a light um what page is this on page seven under audit strategy completes portions of the approved audit I would rather that be the object Ive and then you put the the survey where it has the lesser amount of um impact on the evaluation I I think that objective should be about his job which is auditing things so I agree with everything else everyone else has said but I actually would like to see objective one be more about completing Audits and being on time with the audits that are doing and the audit survey could move up to those performance factors and be something in there I'm not saying that there there survey isn't important to us but I don't think it should be 25% of of how we're and saying and we you know we don't know what on there Madam chair point of clarification my understanding is that the 25% is inclusive of the three objectives to which the survey is a part of that 25% is that correct okay so 8.33 I got you okay I I was thinking of it the other way so I thought they were all 25% my not 25% is just I got you right okay um all right I still have a concern about us doing his evaluation based on someone else's survey so but anyway thank you Mrs Leonardi yep I'm with I'm with you so um I think Miss Thompson said like to either just change the objective Al together or if we are going to stick with survey results um to to include more of the end user uh so I'm I'm with you on just changing it all together anybody else I'm okay changing it anybody else I I actually think that like um like our principles are like a really cool group group of people to talk to uh they get audited uh there's a group of them every year that gets a really serious audit and how the audit team performs in our school to me is very important to the duties of the chief auditor and so yes uh we could add an objective and say you know performance measures on actually performing the audit plan did you get all the audits are required in the like um but I actually really like the idea of of getting feedback from the the our you know key player the school leader on how well those audits went in terms of the chief auditor training his team to go to our schools and perform that critical function so uh that's just my view on why that that audience is actually worth getting feedback from yeah and I'll just to clarify I just was saying move it not that the survey wouldn't be its own objective it would move into those performance factors above and then that this would be a new objective I wasn't getting rid of the Sur all together all good anybody else all righty du at this time do any of my colleagues have anything to bring to the board or Student Success to share well I'll just put a plugin there is a showcase tonight starts at 5 o'cl at the amarant theater it is for anybody and everybody in the district every if I'm not mistaken correct me if I'm wrong every school in the district will be represented there and we are really excited to show you why you should choose the best choose BCPS thank you the scheduled order of business for this Schoolboard Workshop of the school board of Broward County Florida has been completed seeing no obligations I now adjourn the meeting and just a reminder for everyone that your items have to be in um Monday at 10:00 to to be pulled for the agenda item for next week thank you have a great great day