Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
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10:28 Thank you, we will now say the Pledge of Allegiance.
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10:36 » I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of
10:36 America,
10:40 and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,
10:44 indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
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10:54 » At this time, I want to offer my fellow board members and Dr.
10:56 Mullins the opportunity to recognize students, staff, programs,
11:00 and
11:00 community members for their contributions afforded to provide
11:03 public schools.
11:04 Ms. McDougal, you want to start on that end?
11:07 » Sure, thank you.
11:08 Just two things, I want to give a shout out to our art teachers.
11:15 I think they’re still called art teachers, or maybe they’re
11:19 called media teachers.
11:19 But anyhow, I received a link to their art exposition.
11:27 Exposition, am I saying that right?
11:29 We have some gifted art teachers, they are absolutely amazing.
11:33 I kept going and scrolling through the different genre and
11:36 mediums that they
11:37 worked on, and I just thought our students are so lucky to have
11:40 these art
11:41 teachers in our district.
11:43 So thank you to all of our fabulous art teachers, and
11:46 I want to take lessons with some of you.
11:48 But anyhow, so I wanted to thank our art teachers.
11:50 And the other thing I want to give a shout out to is Freedom 7.
11:53 To the students there who did SDGs, I had to figure out what
11:58 that was.
12:00 And they, two weeks ago on our Brevard News,
12:03 if you haven’t had a chance to look at it, they also showcased
12:06 their work.
12:08 And all their work was around sustainable development goals.
12:13 And they did a fabulous job of what can we do for sustainability.
12:19 So shout out to all of our students who participated in the FDG
12:23 goals at
12:25 Freedom 7.
12:26 So that’s what I have today.
12:29 » Thank you, Ms. McDougall.
12:30 Ms. Campbell?
12:32 » Thank you.
12:33 So I just wanted to, I’ve got two.
12:35 First one is our PIE program, our Partners in Education program.
12:39 I’d appreciate so much Deborah Foley and Sarah Allman for the
12:41 work that
12:42 they’re doing, even during the pandemic time.
12:46 Because usually they have a once a month meeting where they have
12:49 with our
12:50 PIE coordinators from each school and our business and community
12:53 partners.
12:54 And they share their needs.
12:55 Well, they are keeping that going.
12:57 They’re super active on their Facebook page.
12:59 They’ve been doing virtual meetings that are lots of fun.
13:02 And so that our partners and our school teams are just staying
13:05 connected,
13:06 which is so important when it comes time to meeting the needs of
13:10 our students.
13:11 And so I just shout out to them and also to all our wonderful PIE
13:14 coordinators at each school.
13:17 And I think there’s one here for ESF as well.
13:19 And then to our amazing partners who support our schools,
13:23 even when the doors are closed.
13:25 So we appreciate all of you guys so much.
13:27 And the other one is kind of an unusual one.
13:30 You know, all of our different programs have so many,
13:33 have had so many different challenges during this time.
13:35 But I was made aware that our band directors are really working
13:41 side by side.
13:42 I won’t say hand in hand because we’re not supposed to be like
13:44 touching each
13:45 other, but side by side right now,
13:47 a group of nine band directors have been meeting and kind of
13:52 rotating through
13:52 all their schools in the last couple of weeks, cleaning band
13:55 instruments,
13:56 things you don’t think about,
13:57 but they collected all the school and band instruments together.
14:00 They let them sit in quarantine for a couple of weeks,
14:02 and then they go and they literally like give them baths.
14:04 I don’t know, I had a French horn.
14:05 I just stick it in the bathtub every now and then clean.
14:07 So they’re having to like wash all these instruments,
14:09 clean them down so they can get them back out to our students
14:11 who need to be
14:12 practicing over the summer.
14:13 So I’m just, I was really encouraged by the partnership and they
14:17 always worked
14:18 together so well,
14:19 but just that they were really helping one another out so that
14:21 they can serve
14:22 our students well. And that’s, this is off time.
14:25 So I’m sure they have fun, you know, bathing instruments, but
14:28 you know,
14:29 I just really appreciate our band directors and the way they,
14:31 they worked so quickly and cooperatively.
14:34 Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Ms. Doskovich.
14:37 I have two shout outs today.
14:39 The first one is for Ms. Eller, the guidance counselor,
14:41 or one of the guidance counselors at satellite high school.
14:44 She was awarded the impact pin the last week of school.
14:47 I’ve had several parents reach out on her behalf and request
14:52 that she receive
14:52 acknowledgement.
14:53 And I thought it was an impact pin was a good way to acknowledge
14:57 her hard
14:58 work. Some of the things parents had said about her is that she
15:01 helped her
15:02 child with an IEP get across the finish line to graduation.
15:05 And obviously that was a lengthy email that wasn’t the,
15:08 but that’s the gist of the email.
15:10 Another mom said that her door is always open and without her,
15:14 her sons and daughters, she obviously has many children and at
15:17 satellite,
15:18 they divide up the student body by last name.
15:20 So all of her children have had the same guidance counselor.
15:23 So her sons and daughters would not be the confident young
15:25 adults they are
15:26 today. So thank you, Ms. Eller,
15:28 for your hard work and your commitment to our students.
15:31 The second one is for Ms. Lyba at was at sea park.
15:37 She retired.
15:38 Her last day was the last day of June and just want to give her
15:42 a proper
15:43 farewell from the board meetings.
15:44 Since we don’t have them in to celebrate their retirements right
15:47 now and a
15:48 shout out to her community and to all she has done because the
15:51 community put
15:52 on a parade for her and fire was out there. Police was out there.
15:57 All of her staff showed up and community members kind of lying
16:00 to the
16:01 street in the area and fire truck did the hose water across.
16:06 And I was just, it was really, really beautiful.
16:09 And I think she spent at the school for 20 plus years.
16:13 I didn’t write down the number of years,
16:15 but she’s been there a long time and they appreciate her and we
16:17 will miss
16:18 her. Thank you. Very good. Thank you.
16:20 Mr. Susan.
16:22 Thank you, madam chair.
16:24 I have a shout out today for mayor Malek from Cocoa beach.
16:27 I thought about how I was going to do this.
16:30 So I’m just going to let it go.
16:32 So last week when we were sitting here and we were discussing
16:35 the,
16:35 whether we would go ahead and fund the track for Viera,
16:38 there was a lot of negative connotation that got thrown on Viera.
16:42 And that was completely unfair, completely unfair.
16:46 These parents had been raising money for 2012.
16:50 They had a track that they had that it was 13 years old.
16:54 They were just working as a families to try to raise the money
16:55 and
16:56 nobody in here, this isn’t for anybody in here. This is for the
16:59 public.
17:00 Those people are small.
17:02 Those individuals that came out against those families didn’t
17:04 understand
17:04 that they were raising money for Rockledge’s track.
17:07 And that because they didn’t get it,
17:08 they got put back a year and a half at Rockledge to raise money
17:10 to read,
17:11 to redo theirs, that Viera got put back a year.
17:14 And I’m sick and tired of people out there saying that this is
17:17 us.
17:18 This is mine. This is what I need at my track.
17:21 I got to go. I got to.
17:22 I was over at the AAU and Mayor Mallet came up to me and he says,
17:26 Matt,
17:26 I heard about what happened at Viera. I’m so sorry.
17:29 We’ve got a track at Cocoa Beach. How do we do this?
17:33 And I said, you know what, mayor, you’re talking to me because.
17:37 I was trying to represent two of my things in the district.
17:40 I know you guys are over there. How do we do this?
17:43 Not as an individual school, but as a group.
17:46 How does Viera, Cocoa Beach, Rockledge work together with
17:50 community partners?
17:52 And so Mayor Mallet and I started talking.
17:54 And we are going to put together a group and a guideline set for
17:59 May,
17:59 for mayors, for local health providers,
18:02 for local businesses to be a part of that track and fundraising
18:06 effort.
18:07 Because what it takes is not many people understand that these
18:10 are
18:10 community tracks that when satellite was getting theirs,
18:13 I got emails over the break that people couldn’t access it,
18:16 that were teachers that were in my district that drive over to
18:19 yours
18:19 so that they can run on the track because they have bad knees.
18:22 It’s an amazing opportunity.
18:24 And I think that the community in general, if we work together,
18:28 we can accomplish all of these, whether it’s Titusville,
18:31 whether it’s Palm Bay.
18:32 But if we have a footprint that they say, yes,
18:35 the local health providers can come down and they can do health.
18:38 They can do health and wellness stuff out on the track as a
18:41 group with the
18:42 city officials and with the elected officials and the businesses
18:46 and bring
18:46 out their employees and do five K’s.
18:48 It can become the center point for all of our community
18:51 organizations as far
18:53 as health and wellness.
18:54 And we know with the raising diabetes and everything else that’s
18:57 going on
18:57 out there, that this is something that’s needed.
18:59 So my shout out was to Mayor Mallet because, you know,
19:02 I was sitting there for a little while.
19:04 I was really upset about the way that we had some negative connotations
19:07 about the era. And he came out and said, we,
19:10 and he was one of the few people from the community that came
19:12 out and said,
19:14 how can we work together? So that’s my shout out today. Thank
19:17 you.
19:18 Thank you, Mr. Susan. Dr. Mullins.
19:25 Thank you, Madam chair.
19:26 I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize and acknowledge
19:30 while we’re at
19:30 the beginning of the meeting, our reopening task force,
19:33 I’ve made mention of them and their work at a previous board
19:36 meeting,
19:37 and I’ll be providing the board and the community an update on
19:39 the work of our
19:42 task force at the end of the board meeting.
19:44 But in the event that folks don’t stay tuned along,
19:46 I just wanted to give a shout out to our team of 14 team members,
19:52 three cabinet members that oversee and lead the task force.
19:57 Since we launched our online portal for community input,
20:02 we’ve received over 10,000 inputs,
20:05 and I can assure our community and the board that staff are
20:08 reviewing every
20:10 entry and collating it and capturing it and capturing themes and
20:14 common threads
20:15 of information and feedback. I’ll provide some of that later in
20:18 the presentation,
20:20 but the work that it is taking to manage that along with the
20:23 ever changing
20:25 environment that we’re in most recently with the guidelines
20:28 provided by the
20:29 state late last week,
20:32 they’re having to meet hours on end every week to stay abreast
20:37 and to be,
20:38 and to be proactive and make sure that we’re prepared for the
20:41 starting the
20:41 school year.
20:42 So just wanted to give our team a shout out across Brevard
20:45 public schools,
20:47 all, all areas,
20:48 as well as our local health department leaders and officials who
20:50 are
20:51 participating and let the community know at this point,
20:55 we will be moving toward having a reopening plan by mid July,
20:59 which will be addressed more in my presentation at the end of
21:01 the board
21:02 meeting. Thank you.
21:04 Thank you.
21:06 I just want to second the recognition of the task force.
21:11 I know that we all have been getting lots of emails from
21:15 constituents about so
21:16 many different issues with regard to our schools being reopened
21:19 and access to
21:20 campuses and that sort of thing.
21:21 And so not only have they been doing the really tough work of
21:25 monitoring all of
21:26 that, that feedback online,
21:27 but I know I personally have been been reaching out to them on a
21:30 regular basis
21:31 to ask them questions so that I can respond to constituents as
21:34 well.
21:35 So thank you very much to all who are, are working to,
21:39 to try to make things move as, as swiftly and safely as possible.
21:43 We appreciate it. And then I’m going to also give a shout out to
21:46 our procurement
21:48 team. I know,
21:49 I think the email was copied to all of you all, but there was,
21:53 we had received some information about thermometers or something.
21:56 And Chris Moore said, we’ve, we’ve already got our order placed.
22:00 They will be in, we’ve got a shipment coming in.
22:02 I think they were coming in Monday and we’ve got more coming in
22:04 for reopening.
22:05 And just want to thank procurement as,
22:08 as we still struggle to get the things that we need to keep our
22:11 homes and our,
22:13 our environment safe.
22:14 Our team here at the district has been working really hard to
22:16 make sure that we
22:17 have all those things to ensure that we have a safe return for
22:20 our students and
22:21 faculty as well. So thank you to Christy and all of our
22:25 procurement team for
22:26 making all of that happen.
22:29 All right. That will bring us to the adoption of the agenda.
22:35 Dr. Mullins, I believe you have some info for us.
22:39 Ms. Belford and members of the board on this morning’s agenda,
22:43 we have one presentation, 22 consent items, four action items,
22:48 and six information items and an item in the superintendent’s
22:51 report on school
22:52 reopening. Changes made to the agenda since being released to
22:55 the public are as
22:56 follows.
22:57 A7 on administrative staff recommendations was moved under
23:00 action to item G34.
23:03 Item F16 on administrative and professional reappointments was
23:06 revised.
23:08 Item F9 on senior cabinet reorganization is an addition.
23:13 Attachments were added to the budget update presentation and the
23:15 school
23:16 reopening update.
23:19 That’s it.
23:21 All right. What are the wishes of the board? Move to approve.
23:23 Second. Moved by Mr. Susan. Second of all, Ms. Deskevich.
23:27 Ms. Escobar, would you please call the vote?
23:33 Mrs. Belford? Aye.
23:35 Mrs. Deskevich? Aye.
23:37 Ms. Campbell? Aye.
23:39 Ms. McDougall? Aye.
23:40 Mr. Susan? Aye.
23:43 The motion passes 5-0.
23:45 Dr. Mullins, will you please tell us about our presentation this
23:48 morning?
23:49 Yes, Madam Chair. At this time, members of the board, Ms. Cindy
23:52 Lasinski, our
23:53 chief financial officer, will provide the board and viewing
23:56 audience a budget
23:58 update. Ms. Lasinski and Mr. Collins.
24:01 Ms. Lasinski will introduce Mr. Rick Collins and toward the
24:06 later part of the
24:06 presentation, I’ll actually join Ms. Lasinski and provide some
24:09 additional
24:10 information to the board.
24:13 So, good morning. It’s my great pleasure to introduce to you Mr.
24:20 Rick Collins.
24:22 Rick has served in the auditing and financial management fields
24:27 for over 41
24:28 years. Rick started his career as an auditor, focusing mainly on
24:32 school
24:33 districts, and it’s my hunch that he must have audited the
24:36 Orange County Public
24:38 Schools more than once, and they decided to hire him versus
24:42 having more write-ups
24:43 from Rick Collins. So, he worked for the Orange County Public
24:46 Schools for over
24:48 11 years and assumed the number two position for financial
24:52 operations of the
24:54 school district. He then became the CFO of Osceola County Public
24:59 Schools, where
25:00 he served for another 11 years. Rick returned back to Orange
25:04 County, this time
25:05 as the CFO for the 10th largest school district in the country.
25:11 That is amazing.
25:13 Where he served for 10 years until his retirement. During this
25:16 tenure, Orange
25:17 County became the top-rated school district in Florida by the
25:20 major rating
25:21 agencies, and I’m sure that is because of Rick Collins and all
25:25 his audit
25:26 expertise and all the years and years that he has spent in
25:30 accounting and
25:31 budget. Since his retirement, he’s been working with the Florida
25:35 Association of
25:36 District School Superintendents, FADS, helping new superintendents
25:40 understand
25:41 the budget and the importance of accounting, and on Tuesdays and
25:46 Thursdays,
25:47 he normally watches his two beautiful twin grandbabies. He’s
25:54 here with us today,
25:56 and today is actually their sixth-month birthday. Can you have a
26:01 six-month
26:01 birthday? So Rick has met me at the door on day one as a mentor.
26:09 He’s been
26:10 helping me all along and helping guide me as I transition into
26:14 this position as
26:16 CFO as Brevard, and I’m incredibly grateful for everything that
26:19 you’ve done.
26:21 He has really helped reduce that learning curve, and today Rick
26:25 will
26:26 discuss his deep dive analysis of our financial condition and
26:30 how we compare
26:31 to local districts.
26:51 Well, good morning, board members and Dr. Mullins. Thank you for
26:58 inviting
26:58 me to come talk to you today. What I’d like to do is just
27:03 briefly talk about
27:04 some of the analysis that I’ve done for the school district.
27:08 Again, just taking
27:10 a look at some of your historical financial data to try to
27:13 determine sort
27:14 of where is the district at, sort of a macro look, and I did
27:18 also take a little
27:19 bit of a look at the final conference report as far as how it
27:24 impacts the
27:24 school district. I know Cindy’s done a much more deeper look at
27:28 all of the
27:29 numbers on the conference report, but I’ll do some brief
27:33 analysis on that as
27:35 well.
27:39 Okay, the agenda is, again, to take a look at the historical
27:42 financial data
27:43 and also to review your 2021 financial conference report data.
27:50 Let’s get right
27:50 into it. The analysis of the historical financial data, what I
27:54 did is I took a
27:55 look at three different areas, your expenditures by object,
27:59 comparing you to
28:01 some of your peer districts, and when I say peer districts,
28:03 primarily those
28:04 districts that are comparable in size. You’ll find that
28:08 districts that are
28:09 comparable in size generally have similar operations, but if you’re
28:15 trying
28:15 to compare yourselves to a Miami-Dade that’s massive or to like
28:18 a Jefferson
28:20 County or an Okeechobee County that’s really small, you’re going
28:22 to look very
28:23 different than they do. But when you start looking at yourselves
28:26 compared to
28:27 your peer districts, which are comparable in size, then you
28:29 should see some
28:30 similarities. So that’s what I tried to do is to take a look at
28:33 that. Let’s get
28:35 right into the details. Looking at your – I went back to fiscal
28:40 year 2018. When
28:41 I say fiscal year 2018, that’s the 17-18 fiscal year. And I’ll
28:46 show you the
28:47 details here. It may not be very easy to see. I think you may
28:50 have the detail
28:51 reports with you. Let me see if I can make that a little bigger.
29:02 Okay. You’ll
29:04 notice that when I looked at 2018, and these are expenditures by
29:09 object. An
29:10 object is, you know, what the item is, you know, salaries and
29:13 benefits and
29:14 equipment, things like that. Nothing really jumped out at me.
29:19 And again, the
29:20 purpose of the analysis isn’t necessarily to say this number is
29:24 exactly a
29:26 certain percentage. And this is – by the way, these numbers are
29:29 percentage of
29:30 your total budget in each category. So the purpose wasn’t to go
29:34 in and say, oh,
29:35 your number is exactly this or exactly that. It was really to
29:39 get a feel for
29:41 any outliers that you may have. I mean, is there something
29:44 really different about
29:45 the way Brevard County operates compared to your peer districts?
29:49 And then
29:49 why? So I took a look at, again, expenditures by object for 2018.
29:57 And
29:57 nothing really jumps out at you that is really out of line with
30:00 your peer
30:01 districts. That’s the first point I’d like to make. The second
30:04 point is that at
30:05 the time of 2018, your materials and supplies expenditures were
30:10 slightly
30:11 higher. And when I say materials and supplies, that also
30:13 includes textbooks in
30:15 that category. But your expenditures in that category was
30:18 slightly higher than
30:19 your peer districts. And your other expenditures, which is
30:22 primarily things
30:24 like your part-time salaries, was actually lower than your peer
30:28 district.
30:30 Just nothing right, nothing wrong. It’s just that’s the way it
30:34 came out. So there
30:38 wasn’t anything that jumped out at me for 2018. So I went to
30:42 2019 to see if
30:44 there was anything unusual about 2019.
30:54 And again, nothing really jumps out at you as being out of line.
30:58 I’ve done this
30:59 type of analysis for several school districts throughout the
31:01 state. It’s
31:03 amazing what you find out sometimes when you start looking at
31:06 comparisons with
31:07 your peer districts. But Brevard doesn’t really stick out like a
31:10 sore thumb in
31:11 any particular category. Again, your other expenditures here are
31:15 slightly lower
31:16 than your peer districts. And that just has to do with how you’re
31:20 classifying
31:20 certain expenditures. Okay. Let’s move on.
31:31 The next thing I wanted to talk about was the expenditures by
31:34 function. Now the
31:36 functional area is sort of where or the purpose of the
31:42 expenditure. The red book
31:45 accounting – have you guys heard of the red book? It basically
31:47 tells you how
31:48 you’re supposed to categorize all of your expenditures. The red
31:51 book basically
31:53 tells you how to classify that. Based on the red book, your
31:59 expenditures are
32:01 slightly higher in the instructional technology area. Let me
32:04 bring up that
32:05 summary here as well. Okay. Again, your instructional technology
32:16 area, slightly
32:17 higher. Again, that’s technology that’s purchased for use in the
32:21 schools for use
32:23 for instructional purposes. So being a little higher in that
32:26 would be something
32:27 that you would actually be proud of. Your general administration
32:31 area is way
32:33 down as far as a percentage of your total expenditures. It’s an
32:37 indication of
32:38 efficiency of the operation of the superintendent and his staff.
32:42 It may also
32:43 be an indication that you’re classifying expenditures with some
32:46 flexibility
32:47 based on the guidelines in the red book that may be a little
32:50 different than some
32:51 of your peers. It may be a little above. I didn’t get down to
32:54 that level of
32:55 detail to figure out why. But it really does not indicate that
32:58 you’re spending
32:59 more than your peers in that area. It actually indicates you’re
33:02 spending less.
33:06 Administrative technology would be your business ERP system. And
33:11 you can see
33:11 that you’re actually spending less than your peer districts as
33:14 far as the
33:15 percentage of your total. And then the transportation services,
33:19 you’re actually
33:20 spending less than your peer districts as a percentage of your
33:24 total budget. Now
33:27 that may be an indication of efficiency, which I think it
33:30 actually is, or it also
33:32 may be a function of actually transporting fewer students as a
33:38 proportion
33:39 of your total. That’s something we would have to dig into deeper
33:42 to see if that’s
33:43 okay. But again, nothing jumps out at you as being unusual about
33:47 your expenditures.
33:49 Okay. This area I wanted to spend a little bit more time about
34:00 is basically
34:01 your reserve levels of the school district. Something called a
34:09 financial
34:10 condition ratio. Have any of you heard of that term before,
34:14 financial condition
34:14 ratio? The state actually uses that term in measuring whether or
34:19 not a school
34:21 district may be in a state of financial emergency. In fact,
34:27 there are
34:28 thresholds below which you have to – if you go below – when
34:31 you hit the 3%
34:33 threshold, you actually have to provide notice to the
34:35 commissioner that you may
34:37 be entering a state of financial emergency. If you go below 2%,
34:42 then you
34:42 have to come up with a plan that you have to submit to the state
34:45 which they
34:46 have to review and approve that’s a financial emergency
34:52 avoidance plan if you
34:53 go to hit 2%. Now fortunately for Brevard, you’re not in that
34:58 range as far
34:59 as your financial condition ratio. Now what is a financial
35:02 condition ratio?
35:03 Let’s just talk a little bit about what it is. GASB 54 actually
35:10 determines
35:11 how you classify your year-end fund balance. The governmental
35:17 accounting
35:17 standards board, every school district should be using similar
35:21 classifications.
35:22 There are two major categories. One is called non-spendable and
35:27 one is called
35:27 spendable. Accountants try to keep it simple. Non-spendable is
35:33 primarily
35:33 inventory and prepaid items. Let’s forget about that because
35:37 those aren’t
35:37 spendable. In the expendable category, you have several
35:41 categories. And they
35:42 move from most restrictive all the way to least restrictive. One
35:47 is called
35:47 restricted. Again, we keep it simple. Restricted is something
35:51 that’s restricted
35:52 by law. So you have to use those funds that are left over at the
35:56 end of the
35:57 year for restricted purposes. Committed means that this board
36:01 has taken action
36:03 to commit a portion of your fund balance for a specific purpose.
36:08 And you did
36:09 that as part of your board action. And those particular items
36:14 are listed in
36:14 your notes to your financial statements what those particular
36:16 items were. You
36:19 also have a category called assigned. This is less restrictive
36:23 than committed,
36:24 but it’s something that the superintendent can assign dollars to
36:28 out of the fund
36:29 balance. Things like summer school. Summer school occurs
36:32 throughout the
36:33 summer, so if you’re partway through the summer school, you may
36:37 reserve or
36:39 assign some dollars to finish out your summer school program,
36:42 that type of
36:43 thing. And then the final category is unassigned. Now I will
36:47 tell you that in
36:48 your policy, you actually set aside 3% of your revenues in a
36:54 contingency fund.
36:56 That contingency fund is actually part of that unassigned
36:59 category. Based on
37:01 the GASB classifications, a reservation like that by the board
37:09 for contingency
37:11 purposes actually show up in the unassigned category. Now the
37:18 financial
37:18 condition ratio, you take the assigned category and the unassigned.
37:24 Let me show
37:25 you the details here. Okay. So you take these last two
37:35 categories of assigned
37:37 and unassigned and you divide it by your revenue. So that’s just
37:41 the mathematical
37:43 process for calculating the formula. In your case, you’re at 8.24%.
37:48 Is that good?
37:49 Is that bad? What does it mean? There is literature that is all
37:56 over the place
37:56 as far as what the number should be as far as best practice. I’ve
38:00 read some
38:01 literature that says between 5 and 10% is good. I’ve seen some
38:04 literature that
38:05 says two months’ worth of revenue would be good, which is about
38:09 17%. So that’s
38:11 much higher than what you have. The state average is around 10%.
38:16 So you are
38:17 slightly less than 10% or the state average as far as what your
38:22 financial
38:22 condition ratio is. One thing about your financial condition
38:29 ratio is that it is
38:31 consistent over time. So by looking at these numbers, you know,
38:36 in 2015, 8.94%
38:38 all the way to 8.24%, there’s not a lot of variability in your
38:43 financial
38:43 condition ratio every year, which is actually very positive.
38:48 That’s an
38:48 indication of strong financial management and effective
38:51 financial
38:52 management by your superintendent and staff. So that’s actually
38:55 a good thing.
38:57 The rating agencies, they look at that and they say, hey, what’s
39:00 going on with
39:01 your financial condition ratio from year to year? If it bounces
39:04 around, either
39:05 going up too fast, going down too fast, they get concerned. So
39:09 they’re looking
39:10 for adequacy and they’re also looking for consistency over time.
39:15 In your case,
39:16 it’s been very consistent over time, which is a good thing.
39:22 Now, what do you use your reserves for? Why do you need a
39:27 certain level of
39:28 reserves? Well, primarily for unforeseen circumstances. That’s
39:31 why you have to
39:32 have an adequate reserve level is to cover any potential
39:36 unforeseen
39:37 circumstances such as a hurricane. Being here in Brevard County,
39:41 when a
39:41 hurricane hits, you have to outlay cash in a hurry to start
39:45 fixing up things,
39:46 paying people overtime, those types of things. Those dollars
39:50 initially will
39:51 come out of some pot of money. So you need to have some kind of
39:55 reserve pot
39:55 to use that. Now, you eventually get reimbursed either by
39:59 insurance or by
40:00 FEMA for much of that cost, but it takes years, literally it
40:06 takes years
40:06 to get reimbursed sometimes from FEMA. So you have to have that
40:09 pot of money
40:10 that you can lean on to get those things done that have to be
40:14 done to
40:15 cover those unforeseen circumstances. Another reason for having
40:18 a reasonable
40:19 reserve is a mid-year revenue adjustment. I don’t know if any of
40:22 you guys were
40:23 around back in fiscal year 2008. Mid-year major adjustment, yeah,
40:29 downward,
40:29 yeah, partway through the year. You already had all your
40:31 contracts in place
40:33 with your faculty members and everybody else, and all of a
40:36 sudden the state
40:37 says, “Oh, we were just kidding about those revenues we told you
40:39 about. We’re
40:40 actually lowering those substantially.” So that’s another good
40:43 reason for
40:44 having a reasonable financial condition ratio. I think I covered
40:50 all the points
40:51 on the slides, so I’ll just move on.
40:59 Okay, what I’m going to do now is just shift gears a little bit
41:01 and talk a
41:02 little bit about the 2020-21 financial final conference report.
41:11 One of the
41:12 categoricals this year was kind of confusing, to be honest with
41:16 you. It’s
41:17 the total funds compression allocation, so I was asked to take a
41:19 look at it and
41:20 see what happened. The purpose of the categorical allocation is
41:25 to move your
41:27 total per-student funding of districts that are below the state
41:30 average closer
41:31 to the state average. So it’s a noble purpose, but those of you
41:34 who are being
41:35 funded on a per-student basis less than the state average, you’re
41:39 trying to move
41:40 closer to the state average. That’s what that purpose of that
41:43 additional funding
41:44 is for. And what they do is they look at your total per-student
41:47 funding and they
41:48 say, “Okay, we’ll give you 25% of the difference between what
41:52 you’re getting
41:53 and what the state average is,” and so that moves you slightly
41:56 towards that
41:57 state average. However, there is a little bit of a caveat. The
42:03 state legislature
42:04 only appropriates a certain amount of money for that categorical,
42:07 so they’ll do
42:08 the calculation and say, “Okay, you’re entitled to this amount
42:11 of money,” but
42:12 then they’ll look at their bottom line and say, “Oh, but we don’t
42:14 really have
42:15 enough to fund that, so we’ll do a proration of it.” So that’s
42:18 what happened
42:20 for the 2020-21 conference report. Let me show you the actual
42:28 calculation here.
42:38 And again, I don’t want to bore you with the weeds here, other
42:40 than the fact that the…
42:45 Mr. Collins, I would suggest these are good weeds for our
42:49 community and our
42:50 board to understand, given the discussion we’re going to have
42:53 shortly about
42:53 budget. Okay. Yes, can I just, can you just very briefly, you
42:58 talked about this
42:59 allocation because for the districts that are below the state
43:02 average, can you
43:03 give us like a 20-second why districts like Brevard County are
43:07 receiving below
43:09 average funding per student? I know the district cost
43:13 differential is not a
43:15 20-second statement, but if you can give us, you know, for our
43:17 listening public, why
43:19 are we receiving less than the state average? Okay. Would you
43:23 mind if I wait
43:24 until the next slide to show you that? Yes. Because when we look
43:26 at the total
43:27 funding… No, I don’t mind. We’ll talk about that. Okay. Okay.
43:30 On this
43:31 particular categorical, you’ll see that your $71.58 is your
43:37 funds below the
43:38 statewide average at this, at the time of this calculation. Also,
43:44 remember this is
43:45 based on the prior two years data. It’s not based on current
43:49 data. It’s actually
43:50 based on the 2020 data, and then it’s also based on the 2019
43:55 data. So they
43:56 actually go back to completed years to do the calculation. Well,
44:01 2020 hasn’t
44:02 completed yet, but they, so it’s kind of confusing, first of all,
44:05 because they’re
44:06 using completely different numbers than they’re using in the
44:09 2021 conference
44:10 report. So that’s what, that’s one of the confusing parts is
44:14 they’re using
44:14 historical data. And so in your case, you’re $71 below, so they
44:22 should take 25% of that, which would be $17.90, times your
44:27 number of students,
44:28 your actual FTE. So your calculated numbers should be $1.3
44:33 million. That’s
44:34 what you should get for your first calculation compression
44:40 allocation. Now
44:42 you only got $917,000, and why is that? It’s because of the proration.
44:49 And
44:50 one thing that comparing to last year is interesting is that the
44:54 actual
44:55 calculation, you were $613,000 less than last year, but that’s
45:02 because you were
45:02 actually moving closer to the state average. So the good news is
45:06 that you’re
45:07 actually moving towards the state average, but the bad news is
45:10 that you’re
45:11 still below it. And the bad news is that the compression
45:17 allocation was
45:18 prorated this year to the tune of $394,000 that you didn’t get
45:22 or you won’t
45:23 get because of the proration. Does that kind of make sense? That’s
45:31 important
45:31 to understand why. And that’s one of the answers to your
45:35 question is that
45:36 why are you below the state average is this compression
45:38 allocation would
45:39 eventually catch you up, but they don’t always fully fund it.
45:43 The state
45:43 legislature doesn’t fully fund it, so you kind of lag behind a
45:46 little bit.
45:47 That’s part of the answer to your question. And let’s go on to
45:56 the next
45:57 slide. Mr. Collins, were you going to address here or later what
46:02 the district,
46:02 what the revenue difference would have been if we were funded at
46:06 the state
46:07 average? Yes, sir. The total difference would have been $7.8
46:11 million.
46:12 That’s actually on the summary slide, but I’ll mention it now as
46:16 well, is that
46:17 if we were actually funded at the statewide average for the 2021
46:22 fiscal
46:22 year, your total funding would be $7.8 million higher than your
46:31 proposed
46:31 budget will be for 2020 and ‘21. Okay. Let’s move right on into
46:44 that next
46:45 one, which is the look at the total conference report. And I’ll
46:52 bring up the
46:53 slide. It’s kind of a busy slide, but I’ll kind of explain what
46:56 it means.
46:58 If I can zoom in a little bit. I’ll just leave it out there. You
47:04 guys have a
47:05 copy of it. But what I did is I just took a look at your peer
47:08 districts to
47:09 see how they’re funded and look at Brevard County, how it’s
47:13 funded on a
47:14 per FTE basis. So the left side of the screen here just shows
47:17 the total
47:18 numbers coming right out of the conference report. And then the
47:21 per FTE
47:22 is a calculation showing what each of your school districts
47:25 would look like
47:26 on a per FTE basis in each of the categories of the FEFP
47:34 calculation
47:35 included in the conference report. So a few things to note is
47:41 that your tax
47:42 base is actually stronger than most of your peers except for Volusia
47:45 County.
47:46 And you can tell that by in several different areas like the .748
47:52 mills compression. You’ll see that, again, that’s another
47:58 compression
47:59 allocation, but it’s just compressing the discretionary millage.
48:06 And you see
48:06 that Volusia is only $82.80. You’re $111 to get to the state
48:12 average.
48:13 But you’ll see that Osceola, Pasco, and Seminole, their numbers
48:17 are much
48:18 higher than yours to get. What that tells me is that, first of
48:22 all, your
48:23 tax base is below the state average, but it’s not as much below
48:28 the state
48:29 average as Osceola, Pasco, and Seminole, but it’s actually
48:33 better than
48:34 Osceola, and that’s just one thing to tell. So going back to
48:37 your initial
48:38 question, that’s one reason why your overall numbers are less is
48:41 because
48:42 your funding from your tax base is actually below the state
48:46 average.
48:47 That’s part of it. Your ESE guaranteed allocation is slightly
48:54 higher than
48:56 your peers, which means you have a slightly higher concentration
49:00 of your
49:01 ESE. In the lower three categories of classification, you know,
49:07 ESE, you
49:08 have a five-tier matrix for classification of severity of need.
49:13 The
49:13 first three categories is you get the supplemental funding for ESE
49:16 guaranteed to help fund the first three categories, and you
49:21 apparently
49:21 have a slightly higher concentration of ESE students. Therefore,
49:26 you
49:26 would get a slightly higher ESE guaranteed allocation. You get a
49:35 slightly
49:35 higher allocation for supplemental academic instruction than
49:39 your peers,
49:40 slightly higher. That one, when it was created back in the 1990s,
49:48 had
49:49 certain metrics that they used to create the SAI allocation, and
49:54 then
49:54 it’s been adjusted over time based on workload and price level
49:59 adjustments.
50:01 So if there were differences that existed back in the 1990s,
50:05 many of
50:06 those differences still exist, so they’ve just been brought
50:09 forward. So
50:10 again, that’s the differential thing that will cause you to be
50:13 different
50:13 than some of the other districts or the state average even. Your
50:20 transportation allocation is lower than your peers. Again, we
50:23 talked
50:23 about that earlier. You’re either more efficient in how you’re
50:27 transporting or you’re transporting fewer students. Then you do
50:33 get the
50:33 federally connected student supplement, which is kind of unique
50:37 among
50:38 your peer districts. You have certain federal property that is
50:43 not
50:43 taxable. It doesn’t – you don’t collect property taxes because
50:47 it’s
50:47 federal property. So you do get a little bit of a supplement
50:49 from the
50:50 state to make up for part of that. So that’s what that’s for.
50:55 Defunding
50:55 compression, we talked a little bit about that, is that it’s
50:59 lower than
50:59 your peers, primarily because you’re closer to the state average
51:02 than
51:02 your peers are right now. The lottery and school recognition
51:06 allocation,
51:07 just a caution on that, and I talked to the staff about that as
51:11 well,
51:11 because it’s based on your test scores. Well, you didn’t have
51:16 testing
51:16 this year, so we don’t really know how that’s going to be
51:19 allocated yet.
51:20 We know what was budgeted, but that may or may not materialize.
51:24 And then
51:24 finally, looking at the report, all of this may be garbage. I
51:30 mean, we
51:30 don’t know what’s going to happen once the governor steps in,
51:35 because
51:35 the governor hasn’t approved this yet. So the governor may step
51:39 in and
51:39 veto it or veto parts, not necessarily this, but other parts of
51:43 the
51:43 budget. The legislature may be required to come in and have a
51:47 special
51:48 session. We don’t know all of that. Dr. Mullins, maybe you can
51:51 give us
51:52 an update on that at some point. But let me go on to the last
51:56 slide, and
51:57 then I’ll let Cindy take over. So in summary, when you look at
52:08 the
52:08 expenditures by object with your peers, there are some
52:10 differences, but
52:11 nothing really material, nothing significant. Expenditures by
52:16 function,
52:17 again, nothing really significant to jump out at you and require
52:21 a lot
52:21 of extra in-depth investigation. Your financial condition ratio
52:27 indicates
52:28 consistency of operations over time, and it is slightly below
52:32 the state
52:32 average. Again, that shows effective management. The total funds
52:38 compression adjustment is less because funding is better, but
52:42 also
52:43 because of a proration. And again, Brevard Public Schools would
52:50 have
52:50 received an additional $7.8 million if funded at the state
52:54 average per
52:56 student. And again, there are lots of things that enter into
52:59 that. The
53:00 district cost differential is another thing I didn’t mention
53:04 earlier that
53:05 also can impact your funding. If you’re – the district cost
53:11 differential
53:11 is something that basically looks at the cost of living in your
53:15 district
53:16 and – hang on a second. Let me back up just a second and cover
53:21 that one
53:22 again. In your case, your district cost differential is .9877,
53:30 so you’re
53:31 less than one, which means that you’re getting less than average
53:36 funding
53:37 for the cost of the district cost differential. That means that
53:42 based on
53:43 the study that was done as far as the cost of living here in Brevard
53:47 County, they determined that it’s less than state average. And
53:51 there’s a
53:51 whole myriad of things that go into that calculation, including
53:57 what they
53:58 call an amenity adjustment. If you have waterfront property,
54:01 they actually
54:02 adjust that downward somewhat as far as what the cost is there.
54:06 I won’t get
54:06 into that because I don’t really understand it all. They hire
54:09 economists
54:10 that do that and not accountants, apparently. So again, the last
54:20 point I
54:20 wanted to make real quickly again is that the funding for 2021
54:22 may change
54:23 rapidly based on future actions. We don’t know when that’s going
54:27 to happen.
54:27 The governor could make some changes at the time he’s actually
54:32 approving the
54:33 budget. He could veto certain items. Or he may call a special
54:36 session later on
54:38 in the year, if necessary, to get things back on track. Okay.
54:43 Turn it over to
54:45 Dr. Mullins.
54:46 » Rick, before you go, I would just add for the board to recall,
54:50 during
54:50 session this year, there was quite a bit of discussion around
54:53 the DCD, the
54:55 district cost differential being adjusted based on a new study
54:59 that would be
55:00 done or was done. And then also reconsideration of the
55:03 compression funding
55:05 line item that Rick spoke to specifically. Those issues, those
55:10 adjustments
55:11 were suspended or embargoed for this year. So they did not play
55:16 into our
55:17 funding. And it’s hard to say exactly what would have happened
55:21 if DCD would
55:22 have been recalculated. We anticipate that our .9877 would have
55:28 risen a little
55:29 bit. So we would have received more funding through the DCD. If
55:33 I remember
55:34 correctly, I don’t believe it’s shown here, but we lose
55:37 approximately $4
55:40 million, a little over $4 million as a result of just the DCD
55:44 calculation. But
55:46 of course, if that would have occurred, then our compression
55:49 contribution would
55:50 have gone down because, you know, we would have been – so it’s
55:52 hard to know
55:53 exactly what the ultimate outcome would have been with the DCD
55:56 and compression,
55:58 not knowing where the legislature would have gone. Would they
56:01 have adopted
56:02 both? Would it have been one or the other? So I just wanted to
56:04 remind the
56:05 board that that was up for discussion this year. It was paused.
56:09 It will be
56:09 interesting to see if it’s reevaluated for next year’s budget.
56:15 » Any board members have any questions for Mr. Collins?
56:23 » Thank you so much, Mr. Collins. We appreciate all the work
56:27 you’re doing to
56:27 support Brevard.
56:28 » You’re welcome. And I’ll stick around in case there are
56:30 further questions.
56:31 » Thank you.
56:32 » Thank you, Rick.
56:46 » So as I stated during the April budget workshop, there is no
56:50 greater
56:51 indicator of a child’s future than his or her education, and Brevard
56:54 Public
56:55 Schools takes this charge incredibly seriously. Before the pandemic,
57:02 we
57:03 already faced a triple challenge as we prepared to enter the
57:06 upcoming fiscal
57:07 school year, sustaining and driving up an already high standard
57:10 of learning
57:11 and excellence for all of our students, tackling the
57:14 unsustainable cost
57:15 structure of our current self-insured health care plan, and
57:19 balancing the
57:20 2021 budget needs with reduced revenue from the state. As we
57:26 move, the
57:28 pandemic grows our challenges as we navigate the uncertainty. As
57:36 we come
57:36 back to school, we will have to quickly assess where our
57:39 students are both
57:40 academically and, more importantly, emotionally. In order to
57:43 make up lost
57:45 ground, we’re going to have to reach our students’ hearts before
57:48 we can reach
57:49 their minds. In addition to our increased cost in health
57:52 insurance, we
57:53 also have to meet anticipated health and safety measures for our
57:57 children,
57:57 our teachers, other vital employees as we return back to school
58:00 and work to
58:02 support our children’s education. We will also be navigating
58:05 increased
58:06 financial uncertainty as we assess the state’s financial health
58:09 after months
58:11 of reduced tax revenue, and we will also be faced with the
58:14 potential of
58:15 reduced student enrollment, depending on how parents feel about
58:19 sending
58:19 their children back to school.
58:25 So I showed this slide at the last budget update, and I think it’s
58:31 important
58:31 to take a look at it again, and you can see that the student
58:34 enrollment in
58:35 Brevard County continues to grow over the years. However, the
58:39 Brevard Public
58:40 Schools enrollment is projected to decline for the third year in
58:44 a row,
58:45 while the charter schools continue to grow, and an enrollment
58:49 problem is a
58:50 money problem for us. The negative growth compounds our
58:54 financial
58:55 challenges, and so the growth of 646 FTEs in charter schools equates
59:01 to a
59:01 transfer out of our budget of about $5 million. And as I
59:05 mentioned again,
59:06 these numbers are pre-COVID. These numbers were projected in
59:12 January
59:13 and submitted to the state in January. We still don’t know what
59:18 our numbers
59:19 will look like the first day of school. The task force is doing
59:24 everything
59:24 they can do to make sure that the schools are ready day one and
59:28 that they’re
59:28 safe and that we’re ready for our children, because there’s
59:30 nothing more
59:31 important than the first day of school. You only have one first
59:34 day of school.
59:35 And we need to be ready, it needs to be great, and it needs to
59:41 be safe.
59:41 So I think that we’re on our way of doing that. But again,
59:47 enrollment
59:48 could further decline, and if that does, depending on the number
59:52 of kids
59:53 that don’t come back to school, that could be a significant
59:57 shortfall
59:58 for us that we’ll have to cover.
1:00:06 And so this slide talks about the conference report, but I think
1:00:09 Mr. Collins,
1:00:12 Rick Collins, did an amazing job going over the conference
1:00:14 report,
1:00:15 and we did go through this at the April budget workshop. So what
1:00:19 is different
1:00:21 about this is since then we had a May calculation. And the May
1:00:25 calculation
1:00:27 bettered our starting position about 809K. And what happened is
1:00:27 we lost
1:00:33 some students to charter schools, and we had to make an
1:00:35 adjustment.
1:00:36 And we also had a slight proration, so there were some
1:00:39 adjustments.
1:00:40 We kind of paid forward. So you see the fourth calculation, the
1:00:44 number
1:00:44 is slightly less than third calculation, which gives us a larger
1:00:49 change
1:00:49 from the conference report – from the fourth calculation to the
1:00:54 conference report.
1:00:55 So we have a starting position of $15 million available.
1:01:03 For the starting of the year. But when we go to the next slide,
1:01:07 the news doesn’t stay that good. So we start off with the $15
1:01:13 million,
1:01:14 and then we have to subtract out our categoricals or our non-restricted
1:01:19 items
1:01:19 if you’re an accountant and you use the simple language of
1:01:23 restricted items.
1:01:24 So we subtract that out, and then we have the net funds
1:01:28 available of $9.1 million.
1:01:31 Then we have the charter school growth that we have to transfer
1:01:34 out.
1:01:35 And then we also have the increase to Florida retirement
1:01:38 employee rate of $5.1 million.
1:01:43 So that leaves us at a shortfall starting from the conference
1:01:48 report at $1.2 million.
1:01:51 And as Mr. Collins referred to, the conference report in April,
1:01:57 I told you it wasn’t signed by the governor, and today it is
1:02:00 still not signed by the governor.
1:02:03 And the budget is expected to be delivered to the governor soon.
1:02:08 But the longer – I mean, I have a note here that says 14-day
1:02:11 countdown.
1:02:13 We have 14 days until we get to the next fiscal year.
1:02:16 So most likely we will be going into the next fiscal year with
1:02:26 this budget.
1:02:29 So health care insurance.
1:02:33 So we face, like many other school districts, some very
1:02:35 difficult challenges managing a self-insured health plan.
1:02:40 We are legally responsible for all the financial risk involved
1:02:44 in paying for the claims which ensures over 11,000 employees and
1:02:49 dependents.
1:02:50 Over the last three years, our medical expenses have exceeded
1:02:53 the contributions resulting in a declining fund balance,
1:02:57 which is not sustainable over time and has resulted in a
1:03:00 significant shortfall.
1:03:02 Our projected health insurance trust fund shortfall is $25.6
1:03:07 million.
1:03:08 And that is comprised of $13 million, which is 60 days’ worth of
1:03:12 cost to be available to pay claims,
1:03:15 and $12.6 million, which is the amount of our expenditures that
1:03:20 exceed our revenue.
1:03:22 Because Brevard School’s expenses have grown less than the 6%
1:03:26 national average,
1:03:28 our superintendent’s insurance advisory committee forecasted a
1:03:32 negative trust fund balance of $10.5 million.
1:03:36 And this has been the number they’ve been working diligently
1:03:40 towards to help resolve the deficit.
1:03:44 On May 14th, the SIAC delivered the listed recommendations to
1:03:48 the superintendent,
1:03:50 and the total projected savings and/or revenue, if it comes to
1:03:55 fruition, comes to approximately $5.8 million.
1:04:01 So at a minimum, the board must address the $4.7 million reoccurring
1:04:08 shortfall for FY 2021 in order to remain solvent.
1:04:27 As we move into next year, this is a list of our current minimum
1:04:31 budget requirements.
1:04:33 And the first one is the cost of the opening of Viera Elementary
1:04:39 School, and this is the cost of their staff.
1:04:42 We have to continue to fund the longevity differential, security
1:04:46 cost increase of our SROs to keep our schools safe,
1:04:50 and again, the health insurance trust fund of $10.5 million.
1:04:56 And so that is our projected total budget deficit today,
1:05:01 and if our potential health insurance fund savings for the SIAC
1:05:05 recommendation come to fruition, the $5.8 million,
1:05:09 we will have a minimum projected total budget deficit of $7.1
1:05:17 million starting the year.
1:05:22 And for challenges, I will recap these areas, and this is a
1:05:28 picture, again, of a little girl that – this was her first day
1:05:32 of kindergarten.
1:05:33 And again, we have to ensure that we make every child feel
1:05:38 important, because you only get one first day of kindergarten,
1:05:41 you only get one first day of going to school, so we have to
1:05:44 make our schools safe, and we have to make them great.
1:05:48 As we look at FY 2021, we not only have to address the realities
1:05:54 of the pre-COVID enrollment decline,
1:05:58 but we must quickly assess the impact of the COVID on enrollment
1:06:04 as we open schools this fall.
1:06:08 Lawmakers pass language that increase the employer rates for the
1:06:11 Florida retirement system.
1:06:13 The FEFP calculation does not include specific revenue source to
1:06:18 offset these costs.
1:06:20 So our estimated portion, as we talked about in the earlier
1:06:23 slide, is $5.2 million.
1:06:26 Ultimately, these areas drive us to – ultimately, these areas
1:06:30 drive us to budget cuts in order to address employee
1:06:33 compensation and our self-insured medical shortfalls.
1:06:38 The COVID-19 implications are still uncertain, and we may learn
1:06:43 more as the back-to-school staff works through their plan.
1:06:50 But one thing – the only thing that is certain is the
1:06:53 uncertainty, actually, that we face this coming year.
1:06:57 And we need to posture for a potential mid-year reduction, like
1:07:00 Mr. Collins discussed.
1:07:02 What our state’s budget can afford is a very real concern, and
1:07:06 that has to be addressed.
1:07:08 So the March 19th conference report is expected to be delivered
1:07:11 to the governor soon.
1:07:13 Again, final countdown, we’ve got 14 days before it’s – so it’s
1:07:17 supposed to be delivered to him soon.
1:07:18 And as July 1st draws near, it’s more likely that the governor
1:07:22 will take the budget as is and possibly use a series of line
1:07:28 item vetoes.
1:07:30 But he can only really veto things like single-member projects.
1:07:35 He can’t veto the education budget because it’s just too large
1:07:40 with all the calculations.
1:07:43 So it’s kind of a take it or leave it.
1:07:46 You know, there is – there really – you can’t revise it
1:07:49 without a special session.
1:07:51 So the concern will be – so most likely, in my opinion, we’ll
1:07:56 go into the school year with this budget.
1:08:00 The concern will be, will it hold up?
1:08:02 Will we be able to hold on to those dollars or will we
1:08:05 experience a mid-year reduction?
1:08:09 And the mid-year reduction, as Mr. Collins pointed out, is not
1:08:12 unusual.
1:08:13 During the great recession, 2008, we received two mid-year
1:08:19 reductions, two.
1:08:21 And it was $12.8 million, and that was about 2.24% of the budget
1:08:26 back then.
1:08:28 So if we had the same percentage, that would be about 13.8
1:08:33 million this year.
1:08:35 So we would have to absorb a 13.8 million, or we could
1:08:39 potentially have to absorb that kind of caliber of a number at
1:08:44 mid-year.
1:08:46 The state’s March tax revenue was down by 800 million, but they
1:08:51 did have – their January/February projections were up about 200
1:08:56 million.
1:08:57 So kind of down 600 million in March.
1:09:00 The next big major report, they call it the May report, will
1:09:04 come out on June 25th, and that will report the April tax
1:09:09 revenue.
1:09:10 And that is expected to be down more than the 800 million
1:09:13 because that’s when we were under lockdown; right?
1:09:17 So we’ll see what that looks like.
1:09:24 And then the state will have a better picture of the revenue
1:09:26 they may lose and then the factors to the equation that they
1:09:29 need to see if they can get through.
1:09:32 So they’re going to take a look at CARES Act funding.
1:09:35 They’re going to look at their reserves.
1:09:38 They’re going to look at line item vetoes, and they’re going to
1:09:41 see if they can save this budget.
1:09:44 We’ve got 14 days to see what happens.
1:09:48 So what we do know is they have about 5.9 billion in untouched
1:09:52 CARES Act money, and they have about 4.6 billion in state
1:09:57 reserve offset.
1:09:59 Now, you know, if they were to use all of their reserves this
1:10:03 year, then that would cause concern for the following years
1:10:06 because they would have to replenish their reserves.
1:10:09 So as we consider all these challenges, we must actively manage
1:10:13 our overall financial condition.
1:10:16 It is necessary to hold back as much savings and reserve funding
1:10:19 as possible until at least midyear while the state fully assesses
1:10:26 its financial health.
1:10:30 I think I covered that slide. Any questions?
1:10:34 And then we talk about the CARES Act update.
1:10:37 There’s a lot of talk about CARES Act, and CARES Act is just
1:10:41 huge.
1:10:42 But the main portion that we are concerned about or we’re
1:10:45 receiving is the elementary and secondary school emergency
1:10:49 relief fund.
1:10:51 And this is – we’re projecting it to be between $14 and $15
1:10:57 million after we find out more from the nonpublic schools if
1:11:02 they opt in or not.
1:11:05 And this funding gives us a lot of flexibility, broad discretion
1:11:10 in use.
1:11:11 We can use it over two years, so we can use it strategically to
1:11:15 cover immediate needs.
1:11:18 I want to make sure that our children are getting the education
1:11:22 that they need to accelerate and get caught up, those kind of
1:11:26 things, as well as ensure they’re safe.
1:11:30 And then have money we can use in the next year to make sure
1:11:34 that we protect jobs and make sure that we have stability.
1:11:40 The one thing I do want to hammer home is this is one-year money,
1:11:44 or this is one-time money, I should say.
1:11:48 And so it’s meant to fill gaps. It’s meant to build a bridge
1:11:52 over maybe the next two years, but it is one-year money.
1:11:57 It will not solve some of the issues that Dr. Mullins is working
1:12:02 with for funding that we will need over the years.
1:12:07 And then you can see here the current priority areas that we
1:12:12 plan on using these funds for, academic enhancements, technology,
1:12:18 health and safety, and workforce stabilization.
1:12:26 And again, I recommend that we hold steady on much of the CARES
1:12:30 Act funds until we have a better indication of the financial
1:12:35 health of the state.
1:12:37 This will protect our classrooms and the workforce if we do
1:12:41 receive a reduction mid-year from the state.
1:12:46 And then from here, Dr. Mullins is going to take over.
1:12:53 Ms. Lisinski, if I could, just before, as Dr. Mullins is
1:12:55 approaching and you’re transitioning, I just want to thank you
1:13:00 for your student-centered approach to all of the financial
1:13:03 information.
1:13:05 We very much appreciate it. Welcome to the team.
1:13:12 Thank you, Ms. Belfort and members of the board, and I’ll extend
1:13:15 my thanks to both Rick and Cindy for their work to bring this
1:13:20 information,
1:13:21 but also the work they’ve been doing behind the scenes every day
1:13:24 with staff to manage a rather volatile financial environment
1:13:29 and try and be grounded and sound in the decision-making and in
1:13:34 the preparations while also being proactive and trying to
1:13:37 position Brevard Public Schools responsibly with our financial
1:13:42 standing and our financial future.
1:13:45 I’ll add just a couple other comments to CARES Act before I move
1:13:48 on to the next budget.
1:13:50 I don’t think Cindy mentioned we received the CARES Act
1:13:54 application on Friday.
1:13:57 It is due by June 30th. So we quickly met yesterday.
1:14:03 I want to extend thanks to Dr. Sullivan is putting together a
1:14:06 team of staff that will be overseeing the CARES Act funding and
1:14:12 the implementation and so on.
1:14:14 We met with her for a short time yesterday afternoon and we
1:14:18 began thinking about how do we be forward thinking with the
1:14:24 funds to support our kids to make sure that we can give them
1:14:28 every structure we can,
1:14:29 every learning opportunity we can coming back in the fall,
1:14:33 anticipating some gaps, but also be responsible for the funds in
1:14:37 preparation for the future.
1:14:39 I want to take a moment and also clarify the governor made
1:14:42 several announcements on Thursday about additional funding for K-12
1:14:47 education.
1:14:49 The allocations that he referenced were from the governor’s
1:14:53 allocation of CARES Act, not our CARES Act dollars.
1:14:58 So the allocation that you see here, the projected $14.5 million,
1:15:03 that does appear to be Brevard’s allocation and we have
1:15:07 virtually the autonomy to direct and utilize those dollars.
1:15:12 The specific dollars that Governor DeSantis discussed and
1:15:15 presented last week, those are out of his pot of CARES Act
1:15:18 dollars from the federal stimulus.
1:15:21 We received on Friday an anticipated projection of $1.6 million,
1:15:26 for example, for this summer academic enhancement proposal or
1:15:31 grant that he introduced on Thursday.
1:15:34 And again, our elementary team is looking at how might we
1:15:36 utilize those dollars, but it comes with a lot of restrictions
1:15:40 and expectations and so on.
1:15:42 And we’re waiting to hear where the other allocation dollars
1:15:45 will fall on impact Brevard, but again, they come with a lot of
1:15:49 directed mandates for the utilization of those dollars as we
1:15:53 move forward.
1:15:57 Robin Ward, our grant coordinator, has indicated that every day
1:16:02 she looks to see if another DOE toolkit has arrived in reference
1:16:08 to the CARES Act funds and future funds.
1:16:12 So we’ll keep the board apprised as we learn more moving forward.
1:16:18 So now I’d like to move into how are we going to address our
1:16:23 budget shortfall situation with reductions moving forward,
1:16:30 particularly as we’re facing a new environment with COVID-19.
1:16:35 But I want to begin, actually, with the board’s charge several
1:16:39 months ago now in looking at a plan towards increased
1:16:43 compensation, and that began with a look or an analysis of
1:16:47 particularly areas that we could save money in going forward.
1:16:51 Little did we know we were going to be facing a difficult
1:16:54 financial year or certainly had no indication or conception of
1:16:59 what a global pandemic would involve.
1:17:02 One of the areas we looked at was our dual enrollment program.
1:17:05 It was suggested, do we need to and should we be spending the
1:17:08 money on dual enrollment?
1:17:10 Our dual enrollment program across the district, I would suggest,
1:17:15 is one of envied across the state.
1:17:19 But nevertheless, dual enrollment is not an area where we can
1:17:23 make cuts because it is a statutory requirement on Florida state
1:17:27 statutes.
1:17:29 We do spend approximately $4 million annually on our dual
1:17:32 enrollment, ultimately saving students and their families the at
1:17:37 least that equivalent of college tuition.
1:17:41 I would remind the board and share with our community, how do we
1:17:45 know the effectiveness and the impact of our dual enrollment
1:17:49 program?
1:17:50 Well, for the second year in a row, Brevard Public Schools has
1:17:54 graduated over 400 seniors who walk across the stage and earn
1:17:59 their high school diploma while also earning an AA degree from
1:18:02 Eastern Florida State College.
1:18:05 That is in large part because of our commitment, our engagement,
1:18:10 our partnership with Eastern Florida State College to provide
1:18:14 our students a robust access opportunity to avail themselves to
1:18:19 college courses.
1:18:21 And we’ve created a real cohesive pipeline and journey for our
1:18:26 kids to be able to acquire that while they’re in our schools for
1:18:32 high school.
1:18:34 How do I know it’s better than others across the state?
1:18:36 Well, I will compare us to another district south of us that
1:18:40 starts with the letter B.
1:18:43 That’s two and a half to three times our size and the last
1:18:47 calculation I received they had when we had 434 graduates with
1:18:52 an AA degree, they had 250.
1:18:57 So that gives a comparison of the impact of our dual enrollment
1:19:01 program.
1:19:03 One of the other areas we were requested to look at and analyze
1:19:07 is what would be the financial impact of going from six of seven
1:19:11 periods a day in our secondary schools to five of six periods a
1:19:16 day for students.
1:19:18 And actually it’s a little counterintuitive because the
1:19:21 expectation or the anticipation is that if we reduce the number
1:19:25 of courses that our students are required to have and the number
1:19:29 of courses that teachers would teach, we would need fewer
1:19:32 teachers.
1:19:34 But actually the opposite is true because six sevenths versus
1:19:40 five sixths is a larger percentage of students being taught by
1:19:46 teachers.
1:19:48 So we actually in a six of seven model versus a five of six
1:19:51 model, teachers have more students, therefore we need fewer
1:19:55 teachers.
1:19:57 So if we were to transition to five of six, it would actually
1:20:00 cost the district additional money because of the need of
1:20:04 additional teachers approximating about two point three million
1:20:08 dollars.
1:20:09 Now you’ll see at the bottom the actual calculation of how that
1:20:13 is determined so that our public understands exactly how that is
1:20:17 calculated.
1:20:19 Just as a reminder, if we were to reconsider a five of six day
1:20:23 compared to six of seven, it would require graduation
1:20:27 requirement changes.
1:20:30 We currently have a 26 credit graduation requirement for our
1:20:33 students because they are eligible to earn up to 28 credits.
1:20:38 If we were to go to six period day, students would only be
1:20:41 eligible to earn up to 24 credits, which is the state graduation
1:20:46 requirement, but it would eliminate opportunity or access to
1:20:51 other programs like CTE, performing arts and academic electives
1:20:58 and others because they would not have the additional periods
1:21:02 which to take classes in.
1:21:04 But I must acknowledge that a five of six period day for our
1:21:08 teachers is certainly a work condition improvement because they
1:21:14 have fewer students overall resulting in fewer papers to grade
1:21:19 and so on.
1:21:21 But the six of seven structure does provide exemplary
1:21:25 opportunities for our students and I just want to express my
1:21:31 appreciation and shout out to our teachers for making these
1:21:35 opportunities available to our students.
1:21:38 That makes us a leader in the state.
1:22:01 I’ll just repeat your question for the public so that they know.
1:22:08 Ms. Deskevich asked if the average teacher salary cost of $56,000
1:22:11 is reflective of our average teacher salary.
1:22:13 Actually, this was done early in this school year, so it
1:22:17 actually may have gone up a little bit since then because I
1:22:21 believe this was created before we finalized this past year’s
1:22:25 compensation.
1:22:27 So it might be just a little bit higher. Yes, it’s inclusive. It
1:22:33 is inclusive of fringe.
1:22:39 The other structure or potential budget savings option we
1:22:43 analyzed was a four day school week.
1:22:47 Interestingly, this was obviously before this was pre COVID. In
1:23:03 fact, a shorter school week or work week, eliminating a Friday
1:23:03 or a Monday would save the district approximately just under a
1:23:03 million dollars.
1:23:04 That savings would come from reduced expenses and transportation
1:23:07 primarily and some utilities savings cost across the district.
1:23:12 However, it is nominal when considering the impact to our
1:23:15 community and for our students across the district. We’ve listed
1:23:19 there on the left some of the pros to a four day school week and
1:23:24 then some of the cons or the challenges presented with this
1:23:29 concept on the far right.
1:23:31 Probably one of the largest drawbacks is the length of school
1:23:34 day that would be required, particularly for our middle schools,
1:23:39 which would extend the middle school day beyond 5 p.m. in the
1:23:43 afternoon.
1:23:44 And then with transportation, it would be getting students home,
1:23:48 you know, between approaching six o’clock in the evening.
1:23:52 Given the the nominal savings that this would present and the
1:23:56 impact to our community, we did not pursue this as a cost saving
1:24:02 option.
1:24:03 And you’ll note that as we looked at it this year,
1:24:06 implementation would not reasonably be possible before the 2021-22
1:24:13 school year.
1:24:15 Another school model that we analyzed and studied was presented
1:24:19 by a community member called multi track or the four track model,
1:24:25 which is a year round calendar that divides the entire student
1:24:28 body and staff into different tracks.
1:24:31 Now, it’s important to note that this is not the traditional
1:24:36 year round school model where the same cohort of students have
1:24:41 three week periods off in between quarters throughout the school
1:24:46 year and they attend all through the summer.
1:24:48 The four track model actually utilizes the schoolhouse for the
1:24:52 months during the summer to add a 20 to 30 percent greater
1:24:57 student capacity in that school.
1:25:00 So it would we would expand the school year, but only three
1:25:03 quarters or 75 percent approximately of the students would be
1:25:07 attending the school at any one time.
1:25:11 And every quarter, a 25 percent of the student body would then
1:25:15 go on their break or intercession.
1:25:18 It maximizes the utilization capacity of our schools.
1:25:22 The savings comes in, you don’t see an exact dollar amount of
1:25:26 savings because the savings comes from the consolidation of
1:25:30 schools to then grow other schools.
1:25:33 So it would be dependent on how many schools could be
1:25:36 consolidated to increase the capacity and the savings would come
1:25:41 from not needing to fund schools, the schools that would be that
1:25:46 would be would have been consolidated.
1:25:50 Some of the challenges that come with this concept is it
1:25:53 eliminates any opportunity to get into schools to do maintenance
1:25:57 when students aren’t there.
1:25:59 The board, if you’ll recall, we are currently in the midst of 17
1:26:03 large capital improvement projects or renewal projects this
1:26:07 summer across our districts, about 15 percent of our schools
1:26:12 right now.
1:26:14 It does not provide extended time for large facility
1:26:17 improvements and projects normally completed over the summer.
1:26:21 It does provide a considerable disruption to our community.
1:26:25 As we analyze this, it would be very difficult to consider a
1:26:29 four track model for high schools.
1:26:32 It is a feasible model for K-8 or elementary and middle schools.
1:26:38 However, 25 percent of the students would be on an intercession
1:26:43 every quarter and it would ultimately result in district wide
1:26:47 attendance boundary changes because it would be consolidating
1:26:51 schools as well as there is the potential, particularly for a
1:26:55 family with three or four children, that their children could be
1:27:00 on staggered intercessions, making some of the care and support
1:27:04 for their children increasingly difficult.
1:27:07 As I shared this concept or this model with the community
1:27:10 ambassadors council that I was meeting with since October, well,
1:27:15 up until in person, up until our school closure, and then I’ve
1:27:20 continued to meet with the ambassadors council virtually since
1:27:23 then, this did not emerge as a, necessarily as a model that the
1:27:29 council felt the community would necessarily consider as a first
1:27:33 option for either budget savings or the school.
1:27:36 Or as a revenue increasing option.
1:27:44 So that brings us to the budget challenges we face this year,
1:27:48 the options that I presented so far have not necessarily
1:27:52 realized opportunity for us for the 2021 school year, even the
1:27:57 four track model which could present some considerable savings
1:28:01 for the district.
1:28:03 Would require significant preparation and planning for
1:28:06 implementation and at the very earliest would not could not be
1:28:11 realized until the 2021 22 school year.
1:28:15 So I began a journey with staff to analyze our budget and look
1:28:19 at how are we going to meet our budget responsibilities and
1:28:23 address the shortfalls for this year, working with Miss Lucy and
1:28:28 her staff, of course, as well, I want to take the board and for
1:28:32 our viewing community back to a slide that was shared at the
1:28:34 last budget workshop that gives a snapshot of the work that this
1:28:37 district has done over the last five years to address budget
1:28:41 revenue increases ultimately to the operating budget.
1:28:44 But also recognizing the impacts to the organization over time.
1:28:50 What you see here is four different years over the last five
1:28:53 years where explicit budget reductions and cuts were made or
1:28:57 transfers from the operating budget to the capital budget were
1:29:01 made bringing up revenue.
1:29:04 So you’ll see down the first column is the description of the
1:29:07 items that were cut or transferred and then in the second column
1:29:11 at the bottom you’ll see cumulatively over $11 million has been
1:29:16 transferred to the capital budget.
1:29:19 And the next column you see personnel and staffing impacts
1:29:23 totaling $9.4 million in revenue freeing up revenue for the
1:29:29 budget and then the last or the next column operating budget cumulatively
1:29:35 over the last five years, we have made over $6.1 million of cuts
1:29:43 to our operating budget that essentially has freed up revenue
1:29:47 for
1:29:48 employees. Ultimately we have prioritized over the last few
1:29:52 years employee compensation so essentially these dollars have
1:29:56 gone and been committed to employee compensation totaling almost
1:30:00 $27 million over the last five years for our budget and this is
1:30:05 exclusive of this current year.
1:30:09 I commend the work that cabinet and the district has done over
1:30:13 the last several years to continually analyze and dig into our
1:30:18 budget to identify resources that can be capitalized or utilized
1:30:24 for compensation.
1:30:26 But as we continue to cut our budget to meet expenses and
1:30:34 address priorities, it does come with a cost. When we continue
1:30:42 to impact personnel, we are impacting ultimately the level of
1:30:42 service we provide to our students and the level of service we
1:30:44 provide to our families and community with our work.
1:30:49 So as we move forward, as the board already knows, and I trust
1:30:54 the community will understand, the additional budget cuts that
1:30:59 we had to address this year just continue to address that level
1:31:04 of service and ultimately critical programs and personnel that
1:31:12 we’ve had to make very difficult decisions for.
1:31:16 So to begin, I’d like to give the board and the community an
1:31:20 overview of how we are addressing the minimum $7.1 million
1:31:24 budget shortfall going into next year.
1:31:28 First, we calculated or estimated the potential retiree
1:31:42 attrition. This has been a calculation we’ve used for the last
1:31:46 few years. Last summer, we shored up this calculation and
1:31:46 created a business rule for calculating retiree attrition.
1:31:46 This is a projection at this time because we’re not completely
1:31:50 through the employee retirement process window, which would
1:31:54 obviously continue into past July 30. So this is a projection,
1:31:59 but we believe that it is a reasonable and sound projection of $1.5
1:32:03 million.
1:32:04 The board may recall that the last two years that retiree
1:32:07 attrition was actually approximately $3 million.
1:32:12 However, we were coming to the close of that window of the drop
1:32:16 incentive retirement of about five or seven years ago, and we’re
1:32:21 now coming out of that window so the number of retirees is
1:32:26 starting to reduce, which is why we see a lower estimate for
1:32:31 retiree attrition this year.
1:32:35 Senior cabinet worked again, diving into department and division
1:32:39 budgets as well as contracts, and I commend them for their work
1:32:44 and the additional $1.3 million that was reduced from their
1:32:48 budgets going into next year.
1:32:51 At the same time, we analyzed and reviewed all of our academic
1:32:55 programs to see if there weren’t savings opportunities within
1:32:59 the programs we were providing, and we identified programs such
1:33:04 as advanced placement and found ways that we could save money
1:33:07 there without taking opportunity away from our students.
1:33:11 We analyzed students who were going into Florida Virtual School
1:33:16 and how we might enhance our Brevard Virtual School program, and
1:33:21 by increasing course sections availability for our students, we
1:33:25 actually realized about $300,000 savings by increasing that
1:33:31 program.
1:33:32 As well as we analyzed FTE earning accelerated programs like ACE,
1:33:36 Cambridge, and IB and identified additional revenue that the
1:33:41 district could utilize for covering administrative expenses or
1:33:46 the operating budget for a total academic program savings of
1:33:50 approximately $1.1 million.
1:33:56 We did make the very difficult decision of analyzing again our
1:34:02 regional busing program in preparation for meeting our budget
1:34:08 needs.
1:34:10 As the board knows, we’ve been having to evaluate our regional
1:34:13 busing program, and as we faced financial difficulties in the
1:34:17 past leading to the unfortunate but necessary elimination of
1:34:21 regional busing, we find ourselves today with financial
1:34:25 challenges that are also compounded with operational challenges
1:34:29 with reopening schools that presents specifically in the
1:34:34 planning for transportation services.
1:34:38 Last year, while maintaining approximately 32 buses and routes
1:34:42 for regional busing, we experienced a consistent shortage of 17
1:34:46 drivers across the district.
1:34:49 This resulted in daily route consolidation, often maximizing bus
1:35:01 capacity and causing regular late arrivals.
1:35:11 So given our current financial and operational challenges, I
1:35:16 must recommend the elimination or suspension of regional busing
1:35:22 service to adequately and responsibly provide our required bus
1:35:27 service to over 20,000 students across our district every day.
1:35:35 And I want to assure our community, I know this will not be well
1:35:38 received by our parents and our families that take full
1:35:41 advantage of our choice programs and our choice schools across
1:35:45 the district.
1:35:46 And know this is certainly not something that I or we want to do,
1:35:51 but we are in a position of something that we must do to address
1:35:56 our current circumstances.
1:35:59 In addition to that elimination of service to our students and
1:36:03 families, we’re also facing the elimination of both non-school
1:36:08 based positions across the district as well as many school based
1:36:12 positions.
1:36:14 The board is aware and we’ve already reached out to our media
1:36:17 assistants in our schools and made them aware that we will be
1:36:21 transitioning out those positions or transitioning the
1:36:24 elimination of our media assistant positions across our schools,
1:36:29 both in elementary and secondary over the course of this year.
1:36:33 We will provide them the stability of employment this year as we
1:36:37 work closely with each of them through our human resources
1:36:41 department and seek other employment opportunities for them
1:36:45 across our organization.
1:36:48 We currently have 72 media assistant allocations with four of
1:36:52 those positions currently vacant, which will not be filled as we
1:36:56 transition out those positions in the coming year.
1:37:00 The savings of the non-school based positions and the school
1:37:05 based positions is approximately $4.5 million.
1:37:10 Accumulating a total recurring savings of approximately $9.6
1:37:15 million.
1:37:16 In the next slide, I want to provide the board and the community
1:37:20 a closer look at the non-school based and school based positions
1:37:24 that we have that we are prepared to eliminate.
1:37:28 I want to emphasize here that at this time we have prioritized
1:37:33 maintaining workforce stability and have not instituted any
1:37:38 layoffs at this time and will not have to with these eliminations.
1:37:44 The eliminations you see are either through attrition or their
1:37:48 positions that are currently vacant as I instituted a hiring
1:37:52 freeze back in January, February of the middle of the school
1:37:56 year.
1:37:57 In addition, there are some positions that are being funded for
1:38:01 a year out of our anticipated CARES Act dollars to ensure that
1:38:05 we can provide the workforce necessary to greet and meet our
1:38:09 students with all the supports they need.
1:38:13 For example, you’ll see the elimination at the bottom of
1:38:16 teachers on assignment positions as well as instructional
1:38:20 assistant positions.
1:38:22 We will fund the TOA positions out of CARES Act this coming year
1:38:26 as well as at least 10 of the instructional assistant positions.
1:38:32 But the positions will be transitioned out in future budget
1:38:36 years.
1:38:37 But this year we have the support of those positions through CARES
1:38:41 Act to provide additional stability as our schools greet and
1:38:44 meet our students with high quality service.
1:38:53 So here we come back to our current position and a summary of
1:38:56 our standing.
1:38:59 As Ms. Lisinski presented, we start this budget year with a $1.2
1:39:04 million deficit.
1:39:06 Our known expenses going into the year approaching $13 million.
1:39:11 We are anticipating work with our union groups, keeping in mind
1:39:16 that any changes to insurance plan design or premium changes
1:39:22 must be bargained with our collective bargaining units.
1:39:25 Provide federation of teachers and the United Alliance 1010
1:39:30 union groups, but it has the potential of garnering up to $5.8
1:39:35 million of savings, leaving us with a minimum budget deficit to
1:39:40 address of $7.1 million.
1:39:43 With the total recurring savings that I presented, that would
1:39:47 position us with a remaining recurring savings of approximately
1:39:52 $2.4 million.
1:39:54 And those dollars would be used to address potential future
1:39:57 enrollment uncertainties, any additional health insurance plan
1:40:03 needs, compensation considerations for employees, and/or any
1:40:08 potential mid-year budget adjustments from the state.
1:40:16 Now I’d like to take a few minutes and brief the board and the
1:40:19 community on our non-recurring fund balance as we have taken the
1:40:23 time to project what that would look like.
1:40:26 So any additional non-recurring salary, non-labor lapse
1:40:29 identified at a later date will be reserved for the enrollment
1:40:32 fluctuations, mid-year hold back, and so on.
1:40:36 The figures you see here, some of them are estimates,
1:40:39 particularly the salary lapse.
1:40:42 For the first time, we did a deep dive look at our salary lapse
1:40:47 earlier than we have in the past and calculated what that would
1:40:52 be through June 30.
1:40:55 Let me explain what a salary lapse is for, I know the board is
1:40:59 aware, but for our watching public.
1:41:02 Salary lapse comes as a result of positions being vacant for a
1:41:06 period of time, positions that were not filled, as well as when
1:41:10 a person leaves the organization and we rehire a position and
1:41:15 the new person may come in lower than the previous person in
1:41:20 that position.
1:41:21 So it all creates what is called salary lapse non-recurring
1:41:25 savings.
1:41:27 So our estimated savings is approximately $7.4 million.
1:41:32 In addition, I’ve made the board aware that we have been
1:41:34 capturing COVID-related savings, things like substitutes,
1:41:38 utilities, transportation fuel costs.
1:41:43 And every year we capture what are considered one-time savings
1:41:46 through dollars that are not expended throughout the year.
1:41:51 So our estimated captured one-time savings, including COVID-related
1:41:56 savings, is approximately $5.9 million for a total non-recurring
1:42:01 savings of $13.3 million.
1:42:04 I know the board is very aware for our public, we have a
1:42:07 recurring health insurance trust fund annual commitment of $3.1
1:42:13 million that must come off the top of any non-recurring fund
1:42:17 balance.
1:42:18 That has been in place since 2015 and we’re obviously obligated
1:42:23 to that commitment.
1:42:25 In addition, it’s been an ongoing practice of the district that
1:42:28 workman’s compensation has exceeded what is budgeted.
1:42:32 So $2.9 million on average has been committed to that expense
1:42:37 out of fund balance at the end of the year.
1:42:41 In addition, I am recommending that $1.7 million be utilized to
1:42:46 cover salaries of media assistance as we attrition or transition
1:42:52 out those positions throughout this year.
1:42:56 In addition, recommending we make a health insurance trust fund
1:43:01 one-time contribution to offset the declining fund balance in
1:43:06 our insurance plan of $5 million.
1:43:10 So the savings of $13.3 million taking away those allocations
1:43:17 and expenses leaves a $600,000 non-recurring fund balance at
1:43:26 this time.
1:43:28 Obviously, we’ve been faced with very difficult decisions and
1:43:32 very difficult challenges financially that none of us foresaw a
1:43:37 year ago when we were going into a budget and certainly went
1:43:42 into a very favorable and positive compensation year for our
1:43:45 employees as a priority for the ‘19-‘20 school year.
1:43:53 These decisions have become increasingly difficult as we’re
1:43:57 going into now the sixth year of budget reductions that will
1:44:01 total over $35 million.
1:44:04 But I want to assure the board and our public as we have made
1:44:07 these difficult decisions and brought forward these
1:44:10 recommendations towards our budget for next year that our number
1:44:14 one priority has been to protect an excellent education for our
1:44:18 children, for all of our students, every one of our students.
1:44:22 While also protecting and supporting an effective workforce
1:44:26 because we know the service and the experience we give our kids
1:44:30 is directly dependent on the workforce that we can put before
1:44:35 them and around them.
1:44:37 But we have a responsibility and obligation to both maintain
1:44:41 fiscal strength for the district as well as protect our
1:44:44 taxpayers’ interests and those have been our driving forces as
1:44:49 we have walked through the very difficult challenges we’re
1:44:53 facing for next year and as we move ahead to ensure that we
1:44:58 maintain the highest quality of education and learning
1:45:00 opportunities for every one of our students pursuing excellence
1:45:04 as our standard.
1:45:06 While also meeting our financial and fiscal responsibilities.
1:45:14 Finally, I would share with the board the timeline or the
1:45:20 schedule for adoption of the budget.
1:45:25 There will be an advertisement of the tentative budget later in
1:45:29 July and then the first public hearing on the budget on July 30th.
1:45:35 Just a reminder that that actually is an evening meeting with
1:45:38 the final public hearing on September 10th.
1:45:42 Of course, there are some there is some element of adjustment
1:45:47 because we have not received a final budget from the state.
1:45:51 We do anticipate the governor to be signing the budget in the
1:45:54 coming days.
1:45:55 I have heard offline that the governor is a day or two away from
1:46:02 signing the budget. So it could be, I suspect, even this week.
1:46:06 We have not received strong indication that there will be
1:46:09 negative impacts to the any further negative impacts to the
1:46:14 budget.
1:46:15 But then again, I’ve received no official word as well.
1:46:20 At this time, I make myself, Ms. Lisinski, Mr. Collins available
1:46:26 for any questions that the board may have.
1:46:30 Any board member have any questions for the budget discussion?
1:46:36 » I’m working now. I do not have any questions. But Dr. Mullins,
1:46:53 I am thoroughly grateful for the work that’s been put into this.
1:46:56 I’ve been on the board four years now and I don’t think I’ve
1:46:58 ever sat through a budget presentation that was so well done.
1:47:04 It was so concise, so clear, so thorough. I’m sure others agree
1:47:09 with me.
1:47:11 We’ve had some struggles obviously in the past with numbers and
1:47:14 fungible numbers and the community has come after us on that a
1:47:20 little bit.
1:47:22 And we’ve taken some heat. But I am extremely grateful for the
1:47:25 work that has gone into this.
1:47:28 I feel like you incorporated in this the challenge I gave to you
1:47:32 several months ago now for a long-term fiscal plan for our
1:47:38 compensation issues.
1:47:42 I mean, it’s not clear when you look at this, but you touched on
1:47:44 the six to seven. You touched on the options.
1:47:48 And I’m sure that was a lot of work digging in on those
1:47:50 calculations and what that was going to cost us as a district.
1:47:54 I know the track model, the four-track model is something out of
1:48:00 our realm of thinking right now as a community, I’m sure even as
1:48:04 a board.
1:48:05 But it could potentially be a viable option down the road.
1:48:12 I saw that presented and the first thing that came to mind was
1:48:15 that we have those 20 extra elementary schools than Seminole,
1:48:20 yet the same budget.
1:48:22 It’s not something our community wants to look at right now, I’m
1:48:25 sure of it.
1:48:26 But I would like us as a district to maybe keep looking at that
1:48:31 model and seeing is there a potential for education in our
1:48:36 community for that to be a viable option as we could consolidate
1:48:40 and then give a bigger raise, consolidate, give a bigger raise.
1:48:44 I mean, is that a potential for a long-term solution for one of
1:48:47 our major issues of compensation?
1:48:49 So, you know, that wasn’t the highlight of this presentation,
1:48:52 but I definitely took that away from this presentation along
1:48:56 with the hard decisions that have been made probably within each
1:48:59 of our departments when I look at the projections for
1:49:03 eliminating positions.
1:49:05 I do have one concern because this is the first time I’ve seen
1:49:09 that one slide, the presentation that you sent us didn’t have it,
1:49:14 so the tech associates, I feel like we’re already so short-handed
1:49:19 in ET.
1:49:20 I’m not looking for an explanation right now, but that one
1:49:23 jumped out at me of how are we going to maintain, well, we have
1:49:26 more and more students going online, how are we going to support
1:49:30 that.
1:49:31 I’m sure you’ve looked into it, I’m sure Mr. Cheatham has either
1:49:34 expressed his concerns or support in the background, and that’s
1:49:37 all my comments.
1:49:39 Thank you, sir.
1:49:40 Thank you, Ms. Toskovich.
1:49:43 Ms. Balfour, if I may take a moment just to respond.
1:49:46 I want to use the opportunity to, one, just acknowledge senior
1:49:51 cabinet’s work to come around this very difficult situation,
1:49:57 circumstance.
1:49:59 And every single cabinet member came to the table understanding
1:50:03 that we all had to come together and address the challenge that
1:50:06 was ahead of us and really look at our work and the service we
1:50:12 were providing and begin to prioritize.
1:50:15 And Mr. Cheatham, he’s the stand-up individual, we all know him
1:50:21 to be, I’m not going to tell you he’s pleased about losing tech
1:50:27 associates. I’m not pleased.
1:50:29 But he knew that this is what we needed to do, and he accepted
1:50:33 that work and challenge.
1:50:35 And he is digging into his staffing and his allocation of the
1:50:38 positions.
1:50:39 I will say for our tech associates that are out there, we have
1:50:42 current vacancies in those positions. No one is going to be
1:50:45 losing their job.
1:50:46 There’s going to be no announcement of that coming from this
1:50:49 meeting.
1:50:50 But there’s going to be a reallocation of duties and
1:50:52 responsibilities.
1:50:54 And he said we’ll do everything we can to make it work and
1:50:59 provide quality service.
1:51:02 But I have to remind, I know our board understands it, I have to
1:51:07 remind our public, we’re in the people business.
1:51:12 We serve kids, we serve parents, we serve our community, and it
1:51:16 takes people to serve in that capacity.
1:51:20 And when we take away workforce, we are at the place we can’t
1:51:24 maintain the same level of service we’ve always been able to
1:51:29 provide and maintain.
1:51:31 It doesn’t mean we’ll compromise the quality of service, but the
1:51:35 level of response and turnaround time is likely to take longer.
1:51:40 And we’re going to need some grace and flexibility as we work
1:51:44 through these adjustments and account for the reduction in
1:51:48 workforce.
1:51:49 It’s no light decision that we’re transitioning out our media
1:51:52 assistance across our schools.
1:51:55 I’ve been in, I think, just about every single media center in
1:51:59 this district.
1:52:01 And when I go into our media centers and I see the literacy
1:52:05 focus for our kids, I see online learning going on,
1:52:11 I see a media specialist and assistant engaging with our kids in
1:52:15 a little small group learning environment,
1:52:19 or there’s maker space going on over in this room, that’s what
1:52:26 we want for our kids.
1:52:30 But when we’re facing these state funding challenges, we have to
1:52:36 make difficult decisions.
1:52:39 So I want to emphasize to our media assistance, this was not an
1:52:46 easy decision. I want to emphasize to our choice school, choice
1:52:50 program students and their families,
1:52:54 we’ve been through the challenges and the difficulties of
1:52:58 eliminating regional busing in the past.
1:53:02 Not what I want to experience again with our community. This is
1:53:06 not what I want for our, we talk about equity, access and
1:53:10 opportunity.
1:53:13 We’re faced with the harsh reality that we’ve got to maintain
1:53:17 access, opportunity and equity for all of our kids and regional
1:53:22 busing because it is an optional service.
1:53:25 And now we find ourselves in a place with the additional
1:53:28 compounded challenge of it being an operational, not just a
1:53:32 financial challenge,
1:53:35 it begins to impact and affect the equity, access and
1:53:38 opportunity of many other students in our other schools.
1:53:43 And I’m not, I don’t want to put against and others, we want
1:53:47 everything for all of our kids.
1:53:50 I’m just trying to emphasize how difficult these choices and
1:53:53 decisions have been for our district and not where we projected
1:53:57 to see ourselves 10 or 12 months ago.
1:54:04 So I will, I will make one last comment before I turn it back
1:54:10 over to the board for any questions. I met with our principals
1:54:17 last week, last Tuesday and made them aware of the difficult
1:54:22 decisions that were coming ahead.
1:54:25 And I asked them, I said, I don’t want any one of our media
1:54:28 assistants or a media specialist to receive this news from a
1:54:32 letter or an email from me.
1:54:34 They need to hear from you. And with love and compassion, I’m
1:54:37 asking and imploring you, please reach out to them personally
1:54:42 and have a sit down, have a conversation and assure them that we’re
1:54:47 going to walk this out together.
1:54:49 We’re going to provide as much stability as we can in this
1:54:52 coming year. No one is going to be laid off.
1:54:56 And I know we’re going to have media assistance or specialists
1:54:59 respond to, you know, displeasure or disappointment to this,
1:55:04 this situation.
1:55:05 And I understand. I share it. But I want to express my thanks to
1:55:10 our principals who connected with our media assistance and
1:55:15 specialist over over the following days last week to provide the
1:55:22 assurance.
1:55:24 We’re BPS family and we’re going to walk out these tough times
1:55:28 together and do everything we can to uphold the commitments that
1:55:32 I shared of supporting an excellent workforce.
1:55:36 So, Madam Chair, I appreciate the additional privilege of just
1:55:40 sharing a little bit more of the heart and what has led to the
1:55:44 decisions. And Ms. Deskovich, thank you for those comments. Any
1:55:50 other board members wish to comment or question? Ms. Campbell?
1:55:54 » First of all, the thing that I appreciate the most about the
1:55:59 way that you work through this is that we aren’t doing any
1:56:03 layoffs because I know that was very – it’s all a difficult
1:56:07 decision to make for you.
1:56:07 But I appreciate that you continue to work and find a way to not
1:56:11 do that with layoffs this year and so that people have time to
1:56:16 make the transition.
1:56:19 I – you know, the regional busing is a really tough one and we
1:56:22 have sat in meetings and impassioned speeches. We need to keep
1:56:25 this opportunity.
1:56:27 But one of the first things that occurred to me when we were
1:56:30 talking about when the COVID pandemic hit is, you know, no
1:56:34 matter what things look like as we reopen, the busing challenges
1:56:38 that we face, especially over this last year, to with regional
1:56:43 busing where we have, you know, a shortage of drivers one day
1:56:46 and we’ve got students at Central, you know, 100 students
1:56:48 hanging out waiting for their buses to get there for 30 minutes
1:56:51 after school.
1:56:52 Those kinds of things just really don’t need to be happening
1:56:55 when we’ve got, you know, need to get students on buses safely
1:56:58 and less crowded than they usually are.
1:57:01 So I – you know, another thing that we really, really hate, and
1:57:04 I know that you do as well, is that we’re having to do this at
1:57:07 this point in the year when parents have already made their
1:57:09 decisions of where their children are going to school next year.
1:57:13 But it’s, you know, it’s not just hard work, it’s gut wrenching
1:57:19 work that you guys have done and I appreciate that.
1:57:24 And I think that’s it. I had something else but I lost it.
1:57:30 Thanks, Madam Chair.
1:57:32 If it comes back to you, let me know.
1:57:34 If I may, Ms. Campbell, thank you for that acknowledgment with
1:57:38 regional busing and absolutely I’ve shared with the board.
1:57:43 It devastates me to be bringing this to our community in the
1:57:46 turnaround time that they have to begin working through the
1:57:50 adjustments.
1:57:52 I want to provide them the assurance that our school choice and
1:57:55 program choice office is prepared and ready to assist them with
1:57:59 whatever questions and needs that they may have.
1:58:01 And we will do everything we can to work with them through, you
1:58:04 know, processing this information.
1:58:07 Our school choice and program schools obviously are already
1:58:10 aware and they’re very prepared and ready to work with parents
1:58:15 and students for the coming year to do everything we can to
1:58:18 support them.
1:58:20 Thank you. And I would just let the public who is listening be
1:58:23 aware that the wait list opportunities are still open, the wait
1:58:27 list windows are open currently through I believe the middle of
1:58:31 July.
1:58:32 Thank you.
1:58:38 Well first I want to thank you very much for the presentation. I
1:58:41 can’t say that I’m jumping up and down.
1:58:45 I think you know my feelings about regional busing and I feel
1:58:50 that we have so many great programs that I’m concerned for our
1:58:55 students.
1:58:56 We are a district of choice and this just makes it harder for
1:58:59 some of our parents to get to the schools that they would like
1:59:02 their children to.
1:59:04 I’m not saying that it’s wrong. I’m saying that it is very
1:59:08 difficult and I have some concerns for some of my students well
1:59:14 across the district of darn I wanted to go this program and I
1:59:17 don’t have to.
1:59:18 have any way to get there.
1:59:20 That’s upsetting to me, it is concerning to me.
1:59:25 I really, I don’t have a good answer at this point
1:59:28 of how do we solve this, but I want to go on record
1:59:31 that I am struggling with us not having regional busing.
1:59:39 - Thank you, Ms. McDougall, Mr. Susan.
1:59:41 - First off, I want to say thank you to Dr. Mullins.
1:59:44 I will say this publicly until the day I’m done
1:59:48 with Brevard Schools or when my children are out,
1:59:51 you are the first superintendent that has taken on
1:59:53 the insurance with all effort in.
1:59:57 And that, to me, has been a difficult thing for 14 years
2:00:01 in this district is that the superintendents have allowed
2:00:05 a blind eye to it and impacted negatively our employees
2:00:09 and our budget, and you sat down and said,
2:00:12 “No, that’s not acceptable,” all the way to the last point
2:00:15 where you’re still taking on ideas to try to fix it.
2:00:18 That goes a long way for me, and I know it goes a long way
2:00:21 for other people in the fact that you’re willing
2:00:23 to roll up your sleeves on that tough issue
2:00:25 because it is tough.
2:00:27 So I wanted to give you credit for that.
2:00:28 The other thing is is that I agree with you, Ms. McDougall,
2:00:30 I agree with you on all your sentiments with choice busing.
2:00:34 Here’s the problem I came down to,
2:00:35 because if there’s anything out there,
2:00:38 my district, I think, has the highest percentage of kids
2:00:40 that are in choice busing.
2:00:41 When I’m looking at it and I’m saying,
2:00:43 “My gosh, I mean, these are opportunities,
2:00:45 “these are kids that have signed on,
2:00:46 “this is things that are going on,
2:00:47 “and these kids have dreams to go to these schools,”
2:00:49 but here’s what it is.
2:00:50 We are faced with the very simple fact
2:00:53 that there may not be a bus showing up to pick those kids up,
2:00:56 and what I mean by that is is that it’s a workforce issue.
2:01:00 This entire thing has a little bit to do
2:01:02 with the budget for me, but it is a workforce issue.
2:01:05 The majority and percentage of our bus drivers
2:01:08 are all in the special class for COVID.
2:01:10 How many of them may not come back?
2:01:12 At any given time right now,
2:01:14 we have 30 to 40 bus drivers throughout the district
2:01:16 that are sick, that are out,
2:01:18 and we’re already 30, 40, 50 bus drivers down.
2:01:22 We have people that are at each one of the locations
2:01:24 that are literally, literally leaving their posts
2:01:27 that aren’t even bus drivers to cover bus routes.
2:01:30 We have bus drivers that are trying
2:01:31 to cover other bus drivers’ routes
2:01:33 by packing more and more kids in.
2:01:36 That was pre-COVID.
2:01:37 So what I want everybody to understand is
2:01:39 that the issue is deeper than us
2:01:42 just trying to save a million dollars,
2:01:44 because I think a lot of people out there are gonna say,
2:01:46 well, we can make up the funds, we can try to do, no.
2:01:49 We’re looking right now at an opportunity
2:01:51 that there may not be that many bus drivers to come back
2:01:54 to fill the positions that we have,
2:01:56 and that choice busing is a huge workforce issue.
2:01:59 I know that I receive daily, sometimes weekly emails
2:02:03 from people that are bus drivers and individuals
2:02:05 saying we’ve got to have some relief.
2:02:08 We pushed to try to give raises to our bus drivers
2:02:10 so that we could attract more from SCAT
2:02:12 and from around surrounding counties.
2:02:13 It is a workforce issue.
2:02:15 With a targeted class and an already decimated workforce
2:02:18 in that area, it’s gonna be hard to just field buses, period.
2:02:22 And I think that that’s where it comes to,
2:02:23 is that we can continue to make the choice of,
2:02:26 yes, we’re gonna provide these choice programs,
2:02:28 we’re gonna do these things for them,
2:02:29 and then hope that there’s enough kids that come back,
2:02:32 or enough bus drivers to make that choice.
2:02:34 But we may be facing a choice where we don’t even have
2:02:37 enough bus drivers for those positions, needless to say.
2:02:40 So for me, I made the choice based on workforce
2:02:43 to support the superintendent’s recommendation,
2:02:45 and I would value anybody that says this is ridiculous,
2:02:49 you promised, look at the workforce issue,
2:02:52 talk to the bus drivers, go to the regional positions
2:02:55 and say, hey, tell me about what you’re dealing with.
2:02:57 Because it is scary how many of our employees
2:03:01 that are not, that have the bus driver certification
2:03:04 that are former bus drivers that have moved up
2:03:05 in our organization that are covering bus routes,
2:03:07 and not actually performing what they should be
2:03:09 at transportation.
2:03:10 So with that, I just wanted to kind of say thank you,
2:03:12 and I support your recommendation, Dr. Mullen.
2:03:15 - Thank you, Mr. Susan.
2:03:16 I just want to add, he mentioned, he is absolutely right,
2:03:18 we have had non-bus driver employees stepping away
2:03:22 from post to cover buses, but they are certified
2:03:25 bus drivers as well. (audience laughing)
2:03:26 They’re all credentialed.
2:03:28 I just wanted to clarify that, thank you, sir.
2:03:33 - Thank you for clarifying that, Dr. Mullen,
2:03:35 that made me choke a little bit when he said that as well.
2:03:39 So I have, as you all know, been an incredibly strong
2:03:46 proponent of regional busing, and for a lot
2:03:50 of different reasons, but especially because,
2:03:52 and you know, pardon me getting out of my soapbox
2:03:55 once again, but District One is, for all practical purposes,
2:03:59 pretty close to a choice desert.
2:04:01 And so geographically limited, whereas once you get down
2:04:07 into the other parts of Brevard County, we’re much wider.
2:04:11 So distance-wise, and number of programs-wise,
2:04:14 and the rest of the district, it’s just very different
2:04:16 than District One.
2:04:19 And we’ve made some progress, and part of that progress
2:04:22 was regional busing, so that the students in District One
2:04:25 could access programs outside of District One,
2:04:29 since there are limited opportunities there.
2:04:35 And I would be lying if I didn’t say that this particular
2:04:39 issue pains me, probably it all pains me.
2:04:43 And I think that’s an important note too, is we’re at a point
2:04:47 where we’ve cut $27 million from the budget,
2:04:50 and people haven’t felt much of that.
2:04:55 But we’re at a point where we just don’t have a lot more
2:04:57 to cut without having some impact.
2:05:00 And so financially, I can understand to some extent,
2:05:08 where I think we have a real issue, and why you’re not
2:05:11 going to see me pound my fist and yell and scream
2:05:13 and say I’m absolutely fighting this to the end,
2:05:16 is in our current situation with COVID and the requirements
2:05:20 for busing and the fact that we can’t put as many kids
2:05:24 on a bus, we were already struggling to get many
2:05:27 of our struggling students to school so they can have
2:05:30 a full breakfast and great academic day.
2:05:34 We’ve got issues with our drivers, we’ve got,
2:05:37 I just feel like this was the final punch in the gut
2:05:40 for regional busing, and it pains me,
2:05:44 but I think that’s where we are.
2:05:47 But I’m not giving up totally on my soapbox,
2:05:51 because I think Dr. Mullins did a great job last time
2:05:56 that we were together discussing the passion and commitment
2:06:00 from his perspective, but also I think the board
2:06:02 has been very much on board with the importance of equity
2:06:06 and access and opportunity in our district.
2:06:09 And that is incredibly important to me as well,
2:06:14 not to say it’s more important to me than the rest of you.
2:06:18 But it is a major issue for me and something that truly
2:06:21 keeps me up at night in the role that we play.
2:06:24 And so my ask would be that we make a commitment
2:06:30 to figure out how we move forward with equity
2:06:34 in our district with the removal of the regional busing.
2:06:38 And I believe there are solutions there and ways
2:06:41 that we can get there.
2:06:43 If you go back to Dr. Mullins’ presentation,
2:06:46 there are some non-recurring dollars that are currently
2:06:50 not allocated that can potentially be utilized
2:06:54 to start to develop some framework
2:06:58 to work on equity within our district.
2:07:01 It’s not gonna fix it all by any means,
2:07:04 but I think that we have to make a commitment,
2:07:07 especially in this particular day and time,
2:07:11 to start addressing those issues of access for our students
2:07:16 and ensuring that we are helping them all
2:07:18 to get opportunities and support
2:07:22 to be successful going forward.
2:07:24 And so that would be my ask is if we could potentially,
2:07:28 as a board, give some recommendation.
2:07:32 We’re not voting on this budget today,
2:07:36 but I would like for us to make a commitment
2:07:38 to prioritize that in the work that we’re doing
2:07:40 going forward.
2:07:42 With that, I will get off my soapbox.
2:07:44 - Ms. Belford.
2:07:46 - I support that, it’s the 600,000 you’re talking about,
2:07:49 if not a portion, or I don’t know if Dr. Mullins
2:07:52 already has something planned in mind,
2:07:54 but I think that’s definitely a good use of those funds.
2:08:01 I do worry about the children that are accessing programs
2:08:03 that now will not have access to programs.
2:08:06 I think that, I don’t know if there’s some other
2:08:09 community solution there, if there’s a non-profit
2:08:13 that could pick up some funds for a transportation van.
2:08:18 There’s some parents that can step in
2:08:19 and fill this gap that have just been using it
2:08:21 because it’s easier, and then there’s some
2:08:22 that just won’t be able to get to the program now.
2:08:24 So I don’t know, if somebody’s out there watching
2:08:27 and they’ve got a great third party solution,
2:08:30 we would love to hear that, and I’m sure there’s some way
2:08:34 we could connect that to happen.
2:08:36 But my last comments, I just want to,
2:08:40 Dr. Mullins talked about our media assistance and that is
2:08:44 by far and large the biggest impact, I think,
2:08:46 that comes out of this whole list of cuts
2:08:48 that I’m looking at.
2:08:50 And I appreciate you speaking to how important they are
2:08:54 and how we do value them.
2:08:57 I am curious, I know we’ve had discussions before
2:09:01 when we did, when we got the evaluation,
2:09:03 when we compared district to district,
2:09:05 not the one that the gentleman did today,
2:09:06 but the, I can’t think of his name,
2:09:09 but also through a superintendent–
2:09:11 - Jim Hamilton?
2:09:11 - Yes, that report.
2:09:13 Other districts like ours do not have media assistance
2:09:17 at all, if I’m correct, is that–
2:09:20 - So several months, a few months ago,
2:09:22 two or three months ago, did a look at other districts
2:09:26 across the state and how they were staffing
2:09:28 their media centers.
2:09:30 And it’s, there’s every possible combination.
2:09:35 There are, there was at least, I think we surveyed 10
2:09:40 or 11 districts, at least half of them only have one
2:09:43 or the other.
2:09:44 Some media centers only have a media assistant.
2:09:47 They don’t have media specialists.
2:09:49 Some have a media assistant and other kind of support staff
2:09:54 that appears, it could be shared with the front office,
2:09:56 but then spends time in the media center
2:09:59 and that type of thing.
2:10:00 So very few districts that we surveyed,
2:10:06 have staffing of both positions.
2:10:09 - A total, an allocation for that.
2:10:11 Okay, I’m wondering if we could look into,
2:10:14 I know we’ve gotten quite a few emails
2:10:16 from media specialists on what are we gonna do now?
2:10:19 You know, they don’t know how to function
2:10:22 because they have their whole system where they,
2:10:24 the media assistant is helping kids that are coming in
2:10:26 to check out books while they’re doing things with classes.
2:10:29 And so maybe we could somehow connect our,
2:10:33 I don’t connect our media specialists
2:10:35 with media specialists in the district.
2:10:37 Maybe there’s some creative solutions
2:10:39 that we just aren’t thinking of to support and help them.
2:10:41 - I do know that they do coordinate us.
2:10:43 They work on other things.
2:10:44 They were working on standards yesterday,
2:10:47 but we do still have some elementary schools
2:10:48 that are the smaller, under 500, correct,
2:10:51 that don’t have a media assistant.
2:10:53 So they, I’m sure they’ll be able to share their ideas
2:10:56 of how that, I know West Melbourne School for Science
2:10:58 once upon a time was less than 500
2:11:00 and we didn’t have a media,
2:11:01 so they used to volunteer crews and things like that.
2:11:03 - A few of my schools don’t, but they are smaller.
2:11:05 - Don’t wanna downplay at all the negative impacts of this
2:11:09 because they are so valuable to, you know,
2:11:12 to all the different programs that are being run every day
2:11:14 in our media center, so.
2:11:16 But they, you know, they have that opportunity to,
2:11:19 even within the district, to work together.
2:11:23 - Thank you.
2:11:24 - I’ll just add, I was with a principal last night,
2:11:27 one of our elementary principals last evening at an event,
2:11:30 and, you know, she was sharing, you know,
2:11:33 I said, how did your conversation go
2:11:34 with your media assistant?
2:11:36 And she says, it was okay.
2:11:38 I just assured her, we’re gonna work through it together.
2:11:41 And we’re gonna look for other options
2:11:44 and I’m gonna help you seek other employment opportunities
2:11:48 you’d be interested in in the district.
2:11:50 And we’ll, and the conversation then transitioned
2:11:53 with her media specialist and said,
2:11:55 you know, we’re gonna be okay.
2:11:56 We can work through this, we can find alternatives
2:11:59 and we’ll tackle this as a team like we always do.
2:12:02 That’s just a testament to the leadership in our schools
2:12:04 and our principals, you know, doing everything they can
2:12:08 to work through it in the most positive way possible.
2:12:10 So, appreciate that.
2:12:15 Ms. Belfort, if I may, I have, I want to be as transparent
2:12:19 and forthright with our employees
2:12:22 and the community as possible.
2:12:24 And I said something that Dr. Theddy,
2:12:28 she texted me and said, you need to correct this.
2:12:30 And I’ve already made the board aware of it
2:12:32 because I’ve said it before.
2:12:34 And that was, we don’t have any layoffs.
2:12:36 So, we are currently in the bumping process
2:12:40 with instructional assistants.
2:12:43 And by virtue of that process with seniority,
2:12:46 there is the highly unlikelihood of layoffs.
2:12:51 It is a process we go through every year.
2:12:53 And we have historically not had to get to that point
2:12:56 because there’s attrition and employees
2:12:57 who choose to not return.
2:12:59 But we don’t know that until we go into the process.
2:13:03 So, we will work as valiantly as we have in the past
2:13:07 through the I, the instructional assistant bumping process.
2:13:10 I’ll work through that.
2:13:11 I know it causes some concern.
2:13:14 We’ve heard some from parents,
2:13:15 some parents particularly about the instructional assistant
2:13:18 who is supposed to not be returning to their school.
2:13:20 And Dr. Theddy and her staff know about
2:13:23 all of those circumstances and situations and work so hard
2:13:28 to work through them with the school, with our employees,
2:13:31 with families to provide as much stability
2:13:36 and continuity as we can.
2:13:37 So, I just don’t want someone to come back and say,
2:13:42 Dr. Mullen said there’s no layoffs,
2:13:43 but I have this letter that says
2:13:46 we’re in the bumping process and I could be laid off.
2:13:48 It is part of our normal process every year.
2:13:50 And I’m very optimistic we’ll be able
2:13:53 to work through that and provide employment opportunities
2:13:55 for all of our I-8.
2:14:00 - Any additional comments, questions?
2:14:03 - I would just add thank you for,
2:14:04 and I think Ms. Spencey mentioned in her part
2:14:07 that we’ve already addressed some of the CARES Act,
2:14:11 well, you talked about it as well, the number,
2:14:13 but that we already have some of those already planned for
2:14:17 as far as some of these positions
2:14:19 that are gonna help us in this year.
2:14:20 That’s gonna be so important to make sure
2:14:21 that our students are academically ready and made up.
2:14:24 So, thank you for starting to address that
2:14:25 ‘cause there have been questions,
2:14:26 you know, what are we doing with all the CARES Act money?
2:14:28 So, looks like we’ve already have plans
2:14:30 to put it through really good use, so thank you.
2:14:34 - Dr. Mullens, any direction that you need from the board?
2:14:38 Are you ready to march forward?
2:14:41 - No, I believe I understand the support of the board.
2:14:45 We will be moving forward with all of the reductions
2:14:50 and cuts, eliminations that I presented.
2:14:53 We’ll be communicating and working closely
2:14:55 with our media assistants, most affected,
2:15:00 reassuring them that we’re gonna work through
2:15:02 this year with them and they’ll continue to have employment.
2:15:05 And then, of course, we’ll be reaching out
2:15:07 to our regional bus students and families
2:15:11 and providing every support we can as they reevaluate
2:15:14 and consider the impact that will be on their families.
2:15:18 Thank you. - Very good, thank you.
2:15:20 Ms. Lisinski, Mr. Collins, we appreciate you very much.
2:15:24 At this time, if no one is opposed,
2:15:26 I would like to recommend that we take a brief break
2:15:28 for personal care and come back
2:15:31 in approximately five minutes.
2:15:33 All right, we will. - Risa.
2:15:43 (upbeat music)
2:29:19 - Next, we are going to take Marsha.
2:29:22 - Yes, Dr. Mullins and the school board,
2:29:24 thank you so much for allowing me to speak.
2:29:27 It is the school, it is Brevard County School Board’s motto,
2:29:30 to serve every student with excellence and as the standard.
2:29:34 By closing down the student parent program
2:29:36 at Titusville High School,
2:29:38 I fear that motto might have gotten thrown to the side,
2:29:42 as I am fearing that you are not seeing the students
2:29:45 that seen the almighty dollar.
2:29:47 My question to you is, one, what about the students and men
2:29:51 that do not want to ride the bus with their child
2:29:54 an hour to cocoa each way?
2:29:56 Two, what happens if that child becomes ill?
2:29:59 That student has now rode the bus to school,
2:30:02 has no transportation to get their sick child home,
2:30:05 which now will in turn make other children sick.
2:30:10 Number three, who is going to protect
2:30:12 the underage child on the school bus
2:30:15 when we can barely protect those riding the bus now?
2:30:18 Number four, I know that Cocoa High has a wonderful,
2:30:22 wonderful child care program,
2:30:24 and they give their students community help.
2:30:27 But what community help will be available
2:30:29 for the parents that live in Titusville
2:30:31 or surrounding area?
2:30:33 Question number five, will the fathers be bused
2:30:36 to the same school as the mother,
2:30:38 or do we assume that this just all falls
2:30:40 on the bare of the mother and her shoulders?
2:30:44 Titusville High School offers services for both parents,
2:30:47 and if so, if both parents go,
2:30:50 now you are removing another student
2:30:52 that is going to go against the Titusville High School
2:30:56 or the Astronaut High School school counts,
2:30:58 and therefore we may lose teachers.
2:31:01 Number six, Titusville High School student building
2:31:05 was built to be a daycare.
2:31:07 Cocoa does not have the same.
2:31:09 What happens if the Cocoa campus
2:31:11 should extend the 40 student mark,
2:31:13 as the building is not equipped to go over
2:31:15 the capacity of 40?
2:31:17 Question number eight,
2:31:19 when do we start practicing what we preach?
2:31:21 We want this cycle to end.
2:31:23 We want students to get their high school diploma.
2:31:25 We want father and mother home.
2:31:27 Well, when is this society going to step up
2:31:30 and make this a possibility?
2:31:32 Every day we see people on the news stating lives matter.
2:31:36 Well, when will these students’ lives matter?
2:31:39 The two students that are known
2:31:41 that have attended Titusville High School
2:31:44 have decided that they, nor their child,
2:31:47 will be blessed to Cocoa.
2:31:49 That does not include any student
2:31:51 that may have become pregnant
2:31:53 during the COVID virus pandemic.
2:31:57 So those two students are dropping out of school.
2:32:00 When are we going to be the voice of these students?
2:32:03 Again, your motto is to serve every student
2:32:05 with excellence as the standard.
2:32:08 What you may want to do is,
2:32:10 what you may want to consider as a motto is a new motto.
2:32:14 It is our motto now to serve only the students
2:32:18 that the budget will allow.
2:32:20 Thank you so much and thank you for your time.
2:32:23 Thank you very much.
2:32:24 And before we take our next comment,
2:32:26 please go ahead, anybody who hasn’t yet,
2:32:28 press zero now.
2:32:29 Zero now on your phone and Donna or Scrina
2:32:32 will get your name and get you through to make your comment.
2:32:35 Our next one will be Jeff.
2:32:38 Jeff, go ahead with your comment, please.
2:32:41 First, I would like the Board to address an answer
2:32:43 as to why Mrs. Masterson is being transferred
2:32:45 from Surfside Elementary School.
2:32:47 Mrs. Masterson is the head of the school climate and culture
2:32:49 at Surfside.
2:32:50 It is her leadership role in fostering that award-winning
2:32:52 culture and climate and academic excellence.
2:32:55 She has helped and supported my five children
2:32:57 that attend that school.
2:32:58 Stability in that leadership is crucial
2:33:00 now after surging distance learning and moving towards reopening.
2:33:03 It is my feeling and that of many other parents
2:33:05 that Mrs. Masterson must stay in order for that school
2:33:07 to be the best school that it currently is.
2:33:09 How does the Board expect the standards of culture
2:33:11 to continue in her absence?
2:33:13 Second, the school board knowingly or unknowingly
2:33:15 has allowed West Shore to violate Sunshine Law.
2:33:18 Any alteration of West Shore’s admission requirements
2:33:20 would need to follow the procedures set forth
2:33:22 in Chapter 120 of the Administrative Procedures Act.
2:33:26 On March 17, 2020, Commissioner Cochran used executive authority
2:33:30 to cancel this year’s SSA test scores due to COVID-19.
2:33:35 They also ordered as follows.
2:33:37 The requirements for graduation, promotion, and final course
2:33:39 grades
2:33:40 will be evaluated as though those assessments
2:33:42 which were cancelled did not exist.
2:33:44 The consideration of fourth and fifth grade SSA scores
2:33:46 per West Shore admissions requirement
2:33:48 raises a number of legal requirements.
2:33:50 It appears to be without legal authority
2:33:53 because Florida Statute 1002.31,
2:33:55 those published admission requirements
2:33:57 are the admission requirements.
2:33:59 The statute implies the unpublished
2:34:01 and hidden requirements will not have legal effect.
2:34:03 And if the Board wants to add or amend the requirements,
2:34:05 it is to engage in rulemaking.
2:34:08 Here the fourth and fifth grade SSA requirements
2:34:10 are not published requirements for admission
2:34:13 so they cannot be considered.
2:34:15 Further, the school board did not engage in rulemaking
2:34:17 to add or amend the admissions requirements to West Shore.
2:34:19 This naturally means that the policy change
2:34:21 had to occur behind closed doors about public participation.
2:34:24 This would make this policy void.
2:34:26 It also appears that justification of these scores
2:34:29 was based on racial bias of Caucasian students
2:34:31 with the same or similar test scores
2:34:33 have been admitted, yet my adopted African-American fund was not.
2:34:38 Lastly, but certainly not least,
2:34:40 we are aware of the plans to build a new track
2:34:42 at satellite high school as well as host the Junior Olympics.
2:34:44 Please explain the Board’s support
2:34:46 of this specific location if Ms. Deskevich
2:34:48 is well aware of the toxic land and water issue.
2:34:50 It is no secret that elected and appointed officials
2:34:52 from satellite beach accompany Mr. Holmes
2:34:54 to Washington, D.C. to support his testimony
2:34:56 about these concerns.
2:34:58 The televised testimony for March 11, 2020
2:35:00 not only mentions concerns of groundwater
2:35:02 and drinking water and soil contamination.
2:35:04 This area has been identified as a prior naval dump
2:35:06 and it’s considered circumspect cleanup.
2:35:08 Mr. Holmes’ testimony includes a statement
2:35:10 from his deceased daughter’s doctor,
2:35:12 also documented in Florida Today,
2:35:14 specifically stating, “I have no other explanation
2:35:16 “for Sheva’s brain tumor than that
2:35:18 “of the PFAS contamination near the base.
2:35:20 “Yet we are soliciting and building here
2:35:22 “to put other kids’ lives in danger.
2:35:24 “This is called culpable negligence.
2:35:26 “We see you and we see what you are all doing.
2:35:28 “Thank you.”
2:35:30 - Thank you very much. Again, before we take our next comment,
2:35:34 please, anybody who hasn’t yet, press zero
2:35:36 and we will get you in line to make your comment.
2:35:38 Press zero now and Donna will make sure
2:35:40 you get through to get your comment.
2:35:42 Our next one will be Anthony.
2:35:44 Anthony, go ahead with your comment, please.
2:35:49 - My name is Anthony Cluchey.
2:35:51 I’m the president of the Brevard Federation of Teachers.
2:35:53 Typically, I offer some sort of challenge to this board.
2:35:56 Tonight, I want to offer a challenge to our teachers
2:35:58 and other stakeholders. That challenge is to pay attention.
2:36:01 Listen and educate yourself about the district’s budget
2:36:03 because as someone who does those things,
2:36:05 I will tell you that the dire budget situation
2:36:07 this district faces is real.
2:36:09 The district is in this position because of the games
2:36:11 the state legislature plays, such as increasing
2:36:13 the base student allocation, but not increasing it enough
2:36:15 to cover increases in FRS costs.
2:36:17 They are sending money for raises,
2:36:19 but in a completely inequitable way,
2:36:21 they are sending money to the district.
2:36:23 They are sending money to the district.
2:36:25 They are sending money for raises, but in a completely inequitable
2:36:28 way,
2:36:29 that essentially discovers raises for teachers
2:36:31 making less than an arbitrary dollar amount.
2:36:33 And the legislature continues to roll back millage rates
2:36:36 so the district does not receive the benefit of increasing home
2:36:39 value.
2:36:40 It is crucial that we continue to find local sources of revenue
2:36:44 to make up for these measures.
2:36:46 For that reason, we support and urge you to support
2:36:48 the extension of the half-penny failed CERF Act.
2:36:51 Switching gears, this board has some incredibly difficult
2:36:54 decisions
2:36:55 to make about the return to school.
2:36:57 I applaud the work that has been done in this arena
2:36:59 and am pleased that teachers’ voices are being heard.
2:37:03 CFP is conducting a survey of teachers about the return to
2:37:06 school.
2:37:07 I will send you the results later in the week
2:37:09 and share it with the task force as well.
2:37:11 The data so far is telling and I think it will help
2:37:14 with the decision-making process.
2:37:16 Based on 735 teacher responses, we found that 65% of teachers
2:37:22 are planning on wearing a mask next year,
2:37:25 49% of those teachers are planning on wearing the mask all the
2:37:28 time,
2:37:30 71% feel that the schools have capacity to sanitize their
2:37:34 classrooms,
2:37:36 40% are high risk for COVID,
2:37:39 53% are living with someone who is high risk,
2:37:42 62% would volunteer to take students’ temperatures,
2:37:46 98% would allow students to wash their hands
2:37:49 or use sanitizer every two hours,
2:37:51 58% would voluntarily sanitize their students’ desks daily,
2:37:56 44% expect students to wear masks in class,
2:37:59 97% of teachers believe that students who exhibit COVID-19
2:38:03 symptoms
2:38:04 should be tested before they can return to class.
2:38:07 On this point, I want to mention how crucial testing is to the
2:38:10 plan.
2:38:11 I want to stress that the district must ensure
2:38:14 symptomatic students are being tested prior to returning
2:38:18 or the whole plan falls apart.
2:38:21 Only 71% of teachers would be in favor of a staggered schedule,
2:38:26 meaning different students come on different days to increase
2:38:29 safety.
2:38:30 I strongly urge the board to consider and vet that as a
2:38:32 possibility,
2:38:34 although staggered schedules may create some other issues,
2:38:38 they could make social distancing and tracing much more feasible
2:38:41 in schools.
2:38:42 DFT will conduct a community survey to get more input on that
2:38:46 option as well.
2:38:47 Thank you.
2:38:48 Thank you very much. We’re going to go ahead.
2:38:52 Our next one, we’re going to take Lauren.
2:38:55 Lauren, go ahead with your comment, please.
2:38:57 Thank you very much. My name is Lauren and my son is going into
2:38:59 fourth grade
2:39:00 at Surfside Elementary School.
2:39:02 I’m speaking today with deep and sincere concern
2:39:04 regarding the actions placed to remove Lori Natcherson from Surfside.
2:39:08 May I first say that I myself am a Surfside Panther from the
2:39:10 early 90s,
2:39:11 along with my brothers in the 70s and 80s.
2:39:13 Ever since we were young, Surfside had the best reputation
2:39:16 and the best culture that you could possibly ask for in a school.
2:39:19 I received notification that our principal will not be returning
2:39:21 next year
2:39:22 and transferring to a new school, understanding that the
2:39:24 placement of jobs do change.
2:39:25 I feel like in this case, we already had so much change at Surfside
2:39:28 this year.
2:39:29 We had an absolute horrific tragedy with the loss of one of our
2:39:32 own students.
2:39:33 We’ve had social distancing, we’ve had COVID-19, and now
2:39:35 distance learning.
2:39:36 These alone have been so hard on our children,
2:39:38 and with this announcement that students will be returning back
2:39:40 to school in the fall,
2:39:41 I think it’s absolutely absurd to remove a principal and a vice
2:39:44 principal
2:39:45 at the same time, in the same location, in the same year.
2:39:48 These children need to come back to feel incompetent,
2:39:50 feeling familiar and encouraged by the same leader that they’ve
2:39:52 always had.
2:39:53 They have already been through so much,
2:39:55 and Lori Natcherson has been there for every step of the way for
2:39:57 these kids.
2:39:58 I don’t think that you can tell me that you have a principal in
2:39:59 the entire county
2:40:01 that can name every student by name, every parent by name,
2:40:03 and make sure that every one of them is taken care of the way
2:40:05 she does.
2:40:06 These kids run after her with light in their eyes
2:40:08 and the biggest smiles on their faces,
2:40:09 and that’s exactly what we want as parents to see when they come
2:40:11 back to school in the fall.
2:40:13 I sent an email to Jane Klein, Mark Mullins, and Tina Deskovitz
2:40:15 to express my concern.
2:40:18 I also informed them that there’s a petition going around with
2:40:19 over 100 signatures from parents in our community
2:40:22 that have the same concerns that I am, and extremely concerned
2:40:25 parents.
2:40:26 The email I received back basically said that they would find
2:40:28 someone to
2:40:29 “fit the culture of Surfside.”
2:40:32 The problem I have with that is you already have the perfect
2:40:33 person there.
2:40:34 We’ve been doing that every single day.
2:40:36 When the loss of one of our own happened,
2:40:38 Lori Natcherson was right there for every one of these children.
2:40:41 She made sure that they knew that they could come to her for
2:40:43 everything and anything that they were upset about.
2:40:45 She made sure that she attended that funeral and made it known
2:40:47 that that family had her support.
2:40:49 If that doesn’t fit culture of Surfside Elementary, I can’t tell
2:40:52 you what does,
2:40:53 and I’d love for you to explain that to us.
2:40:55 She made sure that there was support from Surfside and that
2:40:57 funeral
2:40:58 because as far as I know, she was the highest ranked person
2:40:59 there from the school district that even showed up,
2:41:02 not one supervisor. Tell me how that’s acceptable.
2:41:05 These children are so used to having Lori with them, it’s
2:41:07 absolutely disgusting to take that away from them.
2:41:10 These children want to continue to thrive and feel safe and feel
2:41:12 loved and encouraged and be the best they can be.
2:41:15 The return of the fall is going to be overwhelming for them as
2:41:16 it is.
2:41:17 Why on earth would you want to make it harder on our children by
2:41:19 taking this solid backbone away from that school that they
2:41:22 always have had?
2:41:23 I hope you can take my expressed concerns as a parent,
2:41:26 representing a large group of parents from our school and keep
2:41:27 Lori Natcherson here with us.
2:41:29 These kids deserve it and so does she.
2:41:31 Do the right things, stand behind these parents and keep her
2:41:33 there at Surfside.
2:41:35 Thank you.
2:41:36 Thank you very much.
2:41:38 I just want to stress, anybody else who’s on the call who has
2:41:41 not pressed zero to get in line to make your comment,
2:41:44 please press zero now. Go ahead and press zero now on your phone
2:41:46 if you have not already.
2:41:48 And next, we are going to take Jana. Jana, go ahead with your
2:41:52 comment.
2:41:53 My name is Jana Doss and I’ve been the media assistant at
2:41:55 Williams Elementary for four years.
2:41:58 I disagree with your plans to eliminate the media assistant
2:42:00 position.
2:42:02 I’d like to ask if any of you have ever observed what occurs in
2:42:04 a media center.
2:42:06 When the bell rings, our media center, the heart of our school,
2:42:09 receives our first class.
2:42:11 We are with students all day except for planning and lunch.
2:42:14 While the media specialist is teaching, I’m the one who’s
2:42:16 handling the library.
2:42:18 In our school of 600, we averaged 150 students, checking out 109
2:42:23 books per day this past school year.
2:42:25 All the books turned in go through my hands and are checked for
2:42:27 damage before being reshelved.
2:42:30 Without an assistant, will the media specialist have time during
2:42:32 class to do this?
2:42:34 These are 458 new books I processed and added into our
2:42:37 collection just this year.
2:42:39 How do you expect my five and a half hour job to be accomplished
2:42:41 in a 40 minute planning period?
2:42:44 Also, I can assure you, some students take a while to decide on
2:42:47 that one perfect book.
2:42:49 We spend a significant amount of time searching for topics for
2:42:51 our students and finding what they need.
2:42:53 It takes a team to get these students in and out of our library.
2:42:56 A team to make sure students leave with the book that’s best for
2:42:59 them and help, in your words Dr. Mullins,
2:43:02 support our school’s mission of literacy instruction.
2:43:05 I invite any of you to my school to watch as we are surrounded
2:43:07 by students trying to find their perfect book.
2:43:10 It’s not a quick and simple process when you still mismanage the
2:43:12 rest of the class and operate the circulation desk.
2:43:16 And what about faculty?
2:43:18 While the media specialist is teaching, I’m often helping
2:43:20 teachers.
2:43:21 I have a teacher who checks out a minimum of 100 books at a time
2:43:23 for her class.
2:43:25 She only has her planning period to pull books and there are
2:43:27 times when I finish it for her.
2:43:29 When would you expect the media specialist to check out her
2:43:31 wagon full of books when my position is gone?
2:43:34 Well, how about when my assistant principal brings me
2:43:36 professional books to add to our inventory and needs them back
2:43:40 quickly?
2:43:41 I have them on her desk in less than an hour.
2:43:43 Will the media specialist be able to do this?
2:43:45 Do you have a plan that includes added time for them to be able
2:43:48 to provide the same level of support to faculty when our
2:43:51 position is gone?
2:43:52 Something else I do, tech support.
2:43:55 If teachers have a problem with their iPads, Chromebooks, or
2:43:57 launch pads, they send their students to me.
2:44:00 Eye-ready, I help with that.
2:44:02 Trouble in the computer labs? I do that too.
2:44:05 I also volunteer. I pour my heart and soul into my media center,
2:44:08 my school, and my students.
2:44:11 I come in before hours to assist with book clubs.
2:44:13 I read as many books as I can, including all the SSYRA books so
2:44:16 I can provide book recommendations.
2:44:19 I’m there for every family reading event.
2:44:21 I assist on the SLAM teams and I’m an advisor for the yearbook
2:44:24 club.
2:44:25 The story of my day is only partially told here.
2:44:28 You can be sure that other media assistance days are just as
2:44:31 busy and valuable as mine.
2:44:33 Rather than eliminating our position, I ask on behalf of my
2:44:35 colleagues and our students that you examine this upcoming
2:44:39 school year budget and find other ways to save money.
2:44:42 Thank you.
2:44:43 Thank you very much. I just want to say again, please, if you
2:44:46 haven’t pressed zero to get in your comment, please press zero
2:44:49 now and Donna will get you through.
2:44:51 Please press zero on your phone to get a comment in.
2:44:54 And next we’re going to take, I’m sorry if I butcher this name,
2:44:59 Kayla.
2:45:00 Hello, my name is Kayla Hardrose and I’m speaking on behalf of
2:45:02 the student parent program at Titusville High School.
2:45:06 I think the program is very important regarding teen parent
2:45:08 education and it helped me a lot when I went to Titusville High.
2:45:12 If the program wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have been able to stay
2:45:14 in school because I didn’t have enough money to pay for daycare
2:45:16 outside of THS.
2:45:18 The parenting class in the program also helped me prepare myself
2:45:21 to be the mother I am now and all of the staff in the program
2:45:24 are very supportive.
2:45:26 Especially in moments when I felt like school was too much, they
2:45:28 were pushing me to keep going.
2:45:30 My husband and I were both in the program and he graduated in
2:45:33 2019 and went to the U.S. Army.
2:45:36 The student parent program was in a poor role in him getting his
2:45:39 diploma.
2:45:40 We got married December of 2019 and I moved away before I
2:45:43 graduated and there are no schools with daycare where I am now.
2:45:47 I can say that I was very lucky to have one at THS.
2:45:50 I did plan to move back to Titusville this summer and use the
2:45:52 program for childcare and now I’m looking for alternate ways to
2:45:55 finish my education.
2:45:57 I know the program is at Cocoa High, but a lot of us don’t have
2:46:00 cars and the city bus does not stop in a lot of places in Titusville
2:46:03 like the inner park.
2:46:05 It will also involve getting up earlier than usual with our
2:46:07 babies which can really affect our sleep for those of us who
2:46:10 have jobs and our babies already wake us up at night.
2:46:14 According to nhlbi.nih.gov, sleep plays an important role in our
2:46:18 physical health.
2:46:20 For example, sleep is involved in healing and repair of your
2:46:23 heart and blood vessels.
2:46:25 Ongoing sleep deficiency is linked to an increased risk of heart
2:46:27 disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and
2:46:31 stroke.
2:46:32 So for a lot of us, the city bus is not an option.
2:46:35 The daycare is very helpful to helping other teen moms in Titusville
2:46:38 like myself stay in school as well and make the best out of our
2:46:41 situation.
2:46:42 The program teaches us that just because we have babies doesn’t
2:46:44 mean our lives are over.
2:46:46 It also teaches us long term parenting skills that I wouldn’t
2:46:49 have learned on my own and it shows important life skills like
2:46:52 how to apply for jobs.
2:46:54 A lot of our families abandon us at a time like this and the
2:46:56 student parent program points us to helpful resources and helps
2:46:59 us themselves.
2:47:01 Studies show that 40% of teen mothers finish high school and we
2:47:04 want that number to be 100% and keeping the daycare at THS will
2:47:08 be a great start. Thank you.
2:47:11 Thank you very much, Kayla.
2:47:13 Before we take our next one again, please, if you haven’t
2:47:15 pressed zero to get in line to make your comment, please press
2:47:18 zero and Donna will get you in line.
2:47:21 Our next one will be Sue. Sue, go ahead with your comment.
2:47:25 Dr. Mullins and members of the board, I’m Sue Stocks, a primary
2:47:28 ESB teacher at Surfside as well as the parent of a rising fifth
2:47:32 and first grader also at Surfside.
2:47:35 I’m deeply upset that Lori Masterson is not planned to be
2:47:38 returning as our principal next year.
2:47:41 During this unprecedented time, families, teachers and students
2:47:45 more than ever are in need of stability.
2:47:48 It’s been the district’s motto to continue teaching with grace,
2:47:51 flexibility and understanding.
2:47:53 And in my opinion, this dramatic change in leadership at Surfside
2:47:56 at this time is not consistent with that.
2:48:00 The relationships that Mrs. Masterson has built with her
2:48:02 students are unparalleled.
2:48:05 She has a unique way of connecting with children on a personal
2:48:08 level and they know her as simply Mrs. Masterson, not the
2:48:12 principal.
2:48:13 She has a very comforting, calming way about her and she knows
2:48:16 each and every student and parent by name.
2:48:20 A perfect example of these relationships is when it comes to
2:48:22 testing time.
2:48:24 Mrs. Masterson tests a small group of children, including my son,
2:48:27 that have the accommodation of small group testing.
2:48:31 My son has this because of test anxiety caused by ADHD. He feels
2:48:36 much more calm and relaxed taking his tests with her
2:48:39 in the principal’s office of all places than he does in his
2:48:42 classroom with his teacher and his peers.
2:48:45 Last year, when we were concerned as to how he would perform on
2:48:48 his first FSA because of this anxiety,
2:48:51 he scored a three in reading and a four in math.
2:48:54 And if that isn’t a testament to Mrs. Masterson’s relationships
2:48:56 with her students, then I don’t know what is.
2:49:00 If she’s moved to another school, those relationships will be
2:49:03 destroyed.
2:49:04 It is my hope that the employees of Brevard Public Schools will
2:49:08 be given the same grace and flexibility
2:49:10 that we have without question given our students during this
2:49:13 past very trying year.
2:49:15 Mrs. Masterson not returning to Surfside is going to absolutely
2:49:19 devastate our school family and most of all the children of Surfside.
2:49:24 I implore you to reconsider her reassignment and keep her as
2:49:27 Surfside’s principal. Thank you.
2:49:30 Thank you very much. We are going to take Holly next. Holly, go
2:49:35 ahead with your comment, please.
2:49:37 Hello, my name is Holly Barber and I am here today to speak in
2:49:39 support of the student parent program at Titusville High School.
2:49:43 For the past four years, I have had the honor of serving as the
2:49:46 director of the student parent program.
2:49:49 In this role, I have walked alongside 36 students as they learn
2:49:52 to balance the responsibilities of parenthood
2:49:55 while completing their education requirements.
2:49:58 Often when I meet new students, the program is the first place
2:50:00 their pregnancy has been celebrated and not judged or condemned.
2:50:05 The students report that participating in this program keeps
2:50:08 them focused and motivated on continuing to pursue an education.
2:50:12 They state that the knowledge gained is invaluable in their role
2:50:15 as a new parent.
2:50:17 The student parent program is classified as a dropout prevention
2:50:20 program and targets at-risk students.
2:50:23 In the past four years, I have watched 25 young adults receive
2:50:27 their high school diploma and essentially prove that success can
2:50:30 be achieved while parenting a young child.
2:50:33 The senior class of 2020 achieved a 100% graduation rate despite
2:50:37 their existing parenting challenges coupled with the pandemic
2:50:40 and emergency distance learning practices put in place.
2:50:44 A study conducted by Arne Duncan, the former US Secretary of
2:50:47 Education, shows that the graduation rate of student parents
2:50:51 without educational support was 33% and that only 10% of mothers
2:50:56 graduate on time.
2:50:58 In addition to the parenting instruction that the students
2:51:00 receive, their classroom experiences include connecting students
2:51:04 with community resources and agencies such as WIC, Healthy Start,
2:51:08 Safe Sleep, the Early Learning Coalition, and many more.
2:51:12 Students receive help navigating prenatal appointments and well
2:51:15 checks for their new babies as well as hospital and home visits.
2:51:19 These services are particularly valuable to students who lack
2:51:22 parental support at home and find it difficult to navigate adult-oriented
2:51:26 systems.
2:51:28 On June 8th, I received notification that the student parent
2:51:30 program at Titusville High School would be closing and students
2:51:34 would receive services at Cocoa High School.
2:51:37 Within hours of receiving that phone call, two students
2:51:40 returning for the 2020-21 school year contacted me for fear of
2:51:44 the upcoming year.
2:51:46 Both students expressed apprehension at the thought of having to
2:51:49 leave their THS community.
2:51:51 Both students similarly said that they would need to figure out
2:51:53 alternative options for completing their education because they
2:51:57 would not transfer to Cocoa High School.
2:52:00 They fear the extended amount of time required to travel by
2:52:03 school bus would impact their ability to continue working after
2:52:06 school and to be connected to local agencies.
2:52:09 Another fear is whether transportation to Cocoa High School
2:52:11 would be provided to fathers choosing to participate in the
2:52:15 program.
2:52:16 In my time at Titusville High School, five male students have
2:52:19 benefited from the program and gained vital parenting and life
2:52:22 skills knowledge through classroom instruction and hands-on
2:52:25 experiences.
2:52:27 I welcome conversations and dialogue pertaining to potential
2:52:30 scenarios which might include cutting expenses or increasing
2:52:34 income in order to continue operating this invaluable investment
2:52:38 in the future of not only our young moms and dads but in their
2:52:42 children, the future.
2:52:44 Thank you for your time.
2:52:46 » Thank you very much. Before I get to our next one, please,
2:52:50 anybody who hasn’t yet, press zero now and Donna will get you
2:52:54 into the queue for us to take your comment. Press zero now if
2:52:57 you have not if you just joined us.
2:52:58 Our next one is going to be Ashley. Ashley, go ahead with your
2:53:01 comment, please.
2:53:03 » Hello. My name is Ashley Skank and I’m the guidance counselor
2:53:07 at Fairside Elementary and I wanted to take an opportunity to
2:53:11 address the board regarding the transfer of our principal Lori
2:53:15 Masterson. As many of us were and still are, I continue to be at
2:53:16 a loss for understanding regarding the decision to tear Ms.
2:53:18 Masterson away from our school community.
2:53:20 I understand that principals move throughout the district to
2:53:22 wherever is needed. However, continuity and stability along with
2:53:26 leadership is what our school needs during this uncertain time.
2:53:28 Our school needs what we have. We need Lori Masterson.
2:53:33 I worry about my students emotional health from a counseling
2:53:35 perspective. This past year, our school has dealt with a
2:53:39 devastating loss of our sixth grade teacher where Ms. Masterson
2:53:43 and our staff supported our families, our children and our
2:53:48 community.
2:53:49 Soon after, the district along with the state of Florida decided
2:53:53 to move to distance learning amid the pandemic. As of right now,
2:53:57 our students have not been in school since March, not been able
2:54:00 to complete the year that they had hoped, though no fault of the
2:54:04 district, but to return to a school and a new grade with a new
2:54:08 teacher in a new school year, but to also be faced with a new
2:54:13 administration who won’t know their name by their faces on the
2:54:16 first day to greet them back after so long.
2:54:19 Our students have grown up with Lori Masterson as their
2:54:24 principal and as their champion. This last semester, we were
2:54:27 asked to handle our students and families with grace and
2:54:29 flexibility.
2:54:31 So should the board not only extend the same grace and
2:54:33 flexibility to our administration, our staff, and our families,
2:54:38 I ask the board to reconsider their decision to keep Lori
2:54:41 Masterson where she is needed. Thank you so much, and I hope
2:54:46 everyone stays well.
2:54:50 Thank you very much. Our next person we are going to take is
2:54:52 going to be Katie. Katie, go ahead with your comment, please.
2:55:00 Hi, my name is Katie Walters, and I would like to speak to you
2:55:02 about the importance of keeping the current student parent
2:55:05 programs open. I have a master’s degree in early childhood
2:55:09 special education where I specialized in early childhood
2:55:12 development.
2:55:14 As an educator with 10 years experience, I can speak to the
2:55:17 importance of a quality early education program. The student
2:55:21 parent program works with children from birth to age three. This
2:55:25 is a critical time for brain development.
2:55:28 The Academy of Pediatrics reports that between birth and age
2:55:31 three, the brain makes more than 1 million neural connections
2:55:35 each second. Before a child’s first birthday, their brain
2:55:38 doubles in size, and by their third birthday, their brain is 80%
2:55:41 the size of an adult’s brain.
2:55:44 With this much growth and such a short period of time, it comes
2:55:47 with no surprise that a quality early childhood program can
2:55:50 profoundly impact a child’s future.
2:55:53 The study went further looking into long-term effects of child
2:55:57 care on the child’s future. Poor quality environments at home or
2:56:02 at a center show that they are less prepared for school demands
2:56:06 and social-emotional needs, resulting in an expulsion rate three
2:56:10 times higher than that of their peers in kindergarten.
2:56:14 As a society, we have seen the importance of social-emotional
2:56:18 education, and as a district, we’ve seen an increase in students
2:56:23 needing physical intervention or behavior referrals, and I would
2:56:29 like to not see that continue by removing this great resource.
2:56:34 Other national studies have shown that socioeconomic status and
2:56:38 the mother’s education play a large role in the child’s academic
2:56:43 future. These students enter kindergarten at one standard
2:56:46 deviation below their peers in academics and one and a half
2:56:49 standard deviations below in social skills.
2:56:53 We refer to this as the path of dependent model cumulative
2:56:57 advantage, and the earlier the disadvantage begins, the more
2:57:02 time it has to accumulate. The program provides students with
2:57:05 the ability to mitigate this disadvantage.
2:57:08 They also provide the parents with the skills they need to be
2:57:10 their child’s first teacher, while ensuring they can graduate
2:57:14 and strengthen their family’s future.
2:57:17 They are provided with a constant positive relationship, which
2:57:20 research unequivocally demonstrates that these relationships
2:57:24 build structure and functional brain development, impacting
2:57:27 their intelligence, ability to regulate emotions, and building
2:57:32 problem-solving skills.
2:57:34 As an itinerant teacher, I’ve seen many of the daycare options
2:57:37 in the North Area, and with this knowledge, finding a place for
2:57:41 my children was a challenge.
2:57:44 They do not have good intentions. They do not have the skillset
2:57:47 the staff at THS possesses. Higher quality centers are either
2:57:51 full or extremely expensive, and for our students to receive
2:57:57 assistance from ELCs, the wait can be up to two years.
2:58:02 Before my time is over, I would also like to discuss with the
2:58:06 board how busing would work for students who are sick and need
2:58:11 to go home.
2:58:13 In a period of a pandemic, and if a child is fine in the morning
2:58:16 but sick in the afternoon, which we all know can happen as
2:58:20 parents, I see there being a great struggle for the lower SES
2:58:24 students to find a ride that is 44 miles round trip in over an
2:58:32 hour so that they can get home in time.
2:58:37 Thank you, and I hope you reopen the discussion to save this
2:58:39 critical program.
2:58:42 Thank you, Katie. Before we take our next one, let’s talk about
2:58:44 a couple more people joining the call. If you have just joined
2:58:47 the call and haven’t pressed zero yet to get your comment in,
2:58:51 press zero now, and Donna will get you in line to give us your
2:58:55 comment.
2:58:57 Next, we’re going to go ahead and take Krista. Krista, go ahead
2:59:00 with your comment.
2:59:02 Hello, my name is Krista Register. I’m an ESE teacher at Titusville
2:59:05 High School, and I’m here today to ask you to reconsider the
2:59:08 closing of the student care program at Titusville High School.
2:59:12 My three children have been a part of this amazing program. They
2:59:14 learn more than the academics. They learn to manage their
2:59:18 emotions and use words to communicate with peers effectively.
2:59:22 They learn tolerance, forgiveness, turn-taking, culture, and the
2:59:25 list goes on. Every child in the program learns and practices
2:59:28 these essential life skills to give them a solid structure to
2:59:32 begin their lives and to become contributing members of society,
2:59:36 a beginning not every child will have without this program.
2:59:40 If you are a parent, you know the challenges of daily life.
2:59:42 These teachers have supported me, encouraged me through those
2:59:45 rough times, and cheered me on with my accomplishments.
2:59:49 They are my support system. I’m a better parent because of this
2:59:51 program. Think about the impact they have on the student parents.
2:59:56 Imagine being a teen parent and facing these challenges each day.
3:00:00 The students and their babies at Titusville High have a support
3:00:03 system and have established a strong rapport with the teachers.
3:00:06 They are taught how to be parents, as some do not have that at
3:00:09 home.
3:00:11 Now, you are requiring these teen parents to change schools,
3:00:13 child care, and their whole routine. They are already on a bus
3:00:17 for up to an hour and a half each way, and now that will even be
3:00:20 longer.
3:00:22 Imagine that ride twice a day with a baby or toddler. These
3:00:25 students will also have new teachers to establish a rapport with
3:00:28 and new child care teachers to trust.
3:00:31 They will have to meet new friends, be successful students at
3:00:33 school, and be the best parents they can be each day. In
3:00:37 addition, they must overcome the setbacks of COVID-19 and
3:00:40 distance learning and get back on track with their own academics,
3:00:43 just like everyone else will be.
3:00:46 They are being forced out of their community into another one to
3:00:49 start all over and leave behind their support system, the only
3:00:52 support system some of these teen parents have.
3:00:56 This is an at-risk group, and this program is a dropout
3:00:58 prevention program. Our students deserve better. We are talking
3:01:02 about the whole North Area population that will be forced to go
3:01:05 all the way to Cocoa High.
3:01:07 To take this program away from our students and force them to
3:01:10 start over is not right. I ask you to please revisit this
3:01:13 decision, have a thorough discussion, and ask questions.
3:01:17 Like, will the students’ fathers be transferred and bussed as
3:01:19 well? What happens when a baby comes sick during the day? How
3:01:22 will they get all the way back home?
3:01:25 Can Cocoa High take on the numbers with their school footage and
3:01:27 their current staff, or will additional staff have to be hired?
3:01:32 Will the increase to teachers’ childcare costs help bridge the
3:01:36 gap? Can the money collected or allocated from COVID-19 help
3:01:40 save this dropout prevention program?
3:01:43 I’m not sure of the answers, but please give these students the
3:01:45 best shot at life and keep Titusville High School’s student-parent
3:01:48 program open. Thank you, Dr. Mullen and school board members.
3:01:52 Thank you very much, Krista. Next, we’re going to go ahead and
3:01:55 go with Jessica. Jessica, go ahead with your comment, please.
3:02:00 Hello, good evening, and thank you, Dr. Mullen and the board. My
3:02:02 name is Jessica Parrish, and I’m an instructional assistant with
3:02:05 the student-parent program at Titusville High School.
3:02:08 It has recently been brought to our attention that our program
3:02:10 has lost all funding effective immediately. In the spirit of
3:02:13 full transparency, I wish it to be known that this is not an
3:02:16 attempt to merely save my job.
3:02:19 This is a plea for district to restore funding to a much needed
3:02:22 dropout prevention program that provides an invaluable service
3:02:26 as well as support system to a highly at-risk group within our
3:02:29 school system.
3:02:31 A program that I wholeheartedly believe in, but a job that I
3:02:33 would be willing to step down from if I knew it would free up
3:02:36 the necessary finances in order for it to continue at THS.
3:02:41 The majority of our students come from a subset of a
3:02:43 socioeconomic group that already faces challenges that many
3:02:47 other students could never dream of. Support from family as well
3:02:50 as community is difficult to our students to come by, which is
3:02:52 why programs like the Titusville High School student-parent
3:02:55 program are critical at finding these students, supporting these
3:02:58 students, and keeping them from falling through the cracks.
3:03:02 Studies have consistently shown that educational support,
3:03:05 especially within at-risk groups, can mitigate graduation rates,
3:03:08 and students who receive their high school diplomas go on to
3:03:10 earn significantly more than those who do not.
3:03:14 Programs such as the student-parent program prove incredibly
3:03:16 beneficial in lessening future dependence on assistance programs
3:03:20 while acting as a launchpad for success.
3:03:24 Some of our students become first-time high school diploma
3:03:26 holders within their immediate families, which helps put an end
3:03:30 to a cycle of low value of academic achievement while creating a
3:03:33 newly established positive view, which places emphasis on the
3:03:37 importance of education related to future success.
3:03:41 Current challenges such as busing times ranging upwards to an
3:03:44 hour and a half to two hours one way for our teen parents to
3:03:47 travel with their child to and from their local school can only
3:03:49 be expected to increase exponentially when facilities within
3:03:52 their area are closed, forcing them to make the decision to
3:03:56 travel further within their district, to switch to adult
3:03:59 education, or to drop out altogether.
3:04:02 Infant care within our area ranges upwards of $200 weekly, a
3:04:05 financial figure that is challenging for double income two-parent
3:04:09 homes, and waiting lists to be eligible for assistance programs
3:04:12 such as ELC can be two years or more.
3:04:15 Many students do not have access to assistance and support,
3:04:17 financial and otherwise, necessary to achieve success through
3:04:21 adult education programs.
3:04:24 These factors are proof that programs such as ours play a
3:04:28 critical role in the success of our teen parents. The Brevard
3:04:32 public school system cannot confidently say that we are serving
3:04:33 every child with excellence when we insist upon cutting funding
3:04:35 and denying opportunities for our underrepresented, already
3:04:39 underfunded at-risk youth.
3:04:42 I am extremely grateful to have been given this opportunity to
3:04:44 speak on behalf of the student parent program at Titusville High
3:04:47 School, and I implore you to revisit and reconsider the decision
3:04:51 to remove our funding.
3:04:53 Please, kids, and I know you do, too. I thank you greatly for
3:04:55 your time.
3:04:57 Thank you very much. I want to make one more ask. If you have
3:05:00 not, press zero to get in line to ask a question or to make your
3:05:03 comment. Please press zero now, and Donna will make sure you get
3:05:07 your name and get in line to make your comment. Please press
3:05:12 zero now.
3:05:14 Next, we are going to take Laura. Laura, go ahead with your
3:05:16 comment, please.
3:05:19 I am calling regarding the removal of the media assistant
3:05:22 position. Media specialists have many different roles during the
3:05:24 day. Many of these roles fall outside of what you would expect,
3:05:27 and most are very time-consuming.
3:05:30 A media assistant provides the media specialist with assistance
3:05:32 with the day-to-day tasks that could be a drain on the media
3:05:36 specialist’s time and would lead to less time for the media
3:05:39 specialist to do so many of their “duties as assigned.”
3:05:44 Personally, I am responsible for many items that often require
3:05:46 me to be outside of the media center during the school day. By
3:05:49 having a media assistant, that means the library can remain open
3:05:52 for student and teacher access.
3:05:55 A media assistant, at a minimum, handles students who come in to
3:05:57 return books from individual classes during the day. They assist
3:06:01 teachers, answer phones, shelve books, delamination, and general
3:06:04 maintenance, cleaning, and straightening of the library.
3:06:08 These things help media specialists in so many ways, including
3:06:11 allowing us to work with classes. When I have classes in the
3:06:14 media center and my assistant leaves at 3, I really struggle
3:06:17 with giving those students during the last hour and 15 minutes
3:06:20 of the day the same quality of instruction as earlier classes
3:06:23 had.
3:06:24 I have to answer phones and address students and adults who
3:06:25 enter the media center. We are instructional personnel, and our
3:06:30 ability to be such is hindered by an absence of a media
3:06:33 assistant.
3:06:35 Because of simple tasks, a good media assistant is absolutely
3:06:38 priceless to the media specialist. I have had assistance that I
3:06:41 could trust with cataloging my collection, processing books,
3:06:44 reading titles from lists, and many more duties.
3:06:48 As you do away with the media assistant, you will be losing a
3:06:50 very important part of the instructional functionality of the
3:06:53 media specialist. Thank you for your time.
3:06:56 » Thank you very much. I want to let you know that we have one
3:06:59 more person online to comment, and the call will be ending after
3:07:02 that comment, unless you press zero now and get in line to make
3:07:05 a comment.
3:07:07 So next, we will go ahead and take Anna. Anna, go ahead with
3:07:10 your comment, please.
3:07:13 » My name is Anna Woodbury, and I am the media specialist at
3:07:15 Hoover Middle School. I am speaking today regarding the current
3:07:18 recommendation to eliminate the position of media center
3:07:21 assistant.
3:07:23 As the media specialist, I know our fully staffed media center
3:07:26 provides instruction at least four days each week, maintains
3:07:30 open status for all students daily before, during, and after
3:07:33 school, and offers extended morning hours.
3:07:37 The media assistant is vital to the quality operation of the
3:07:40 school media center. She assists students in finding books,
3:07:44 helps implement reading promotion programs, volunteers to the
3:07:48 student-parent book club, reads current young adult literature,
3:07:52 tutors students, helps manage the makerspace material, and helps
3:07:54 maintain daily media center operations.
3:07:56 One person cannot provide instruction meeting information
3:07:59 literacy learning standards and enhance the instruction of
3:08:03 district priority standards while operating an effective media
3:08:06 center that supports literacy, research, self-discovery,
3:08:10 collaboration, and technology.
3:08:13 If it is the district goal to ensure minimal impact on
3:08:16 classrooms and students with a focus to maintain quality
3:08:20 instructional programs once schools reopen, it is vital the
3:08:23 media assistant position stays intact.
3:08:27 The media center is a classroom, a room where instruction takes
3:08:29 place while remaining open for those students who need to access
3:08:32 print and electronic materials.
3:08:35 Our mission is to serve every student with excellent access
3:08:38 standards, but we cannot do that when the library classroom is
3:08:42 compromised. On Thursday, June 11th, it was brought to my
3:08:44 attention that media assistance are being cut after 2020-2021.
3:08:50 I appreciate the district providing media assistance with
3:08:52 advanced notice so they may plan. It is my understanding that
3:08:55 the operating budget and this decision, along with others, will
3:08:57 be discussed at this board meeting.
3:09:00 With this information being shared over the summer and so close
3:09:02 to today’s board meeting, it makes it much harder for our voices
3:09:05 to be heard.
3:09:07 Is the decision to eliminate the media assistant position final?
3:09:11 I do have concerns regarding how this will impact the safety and
3:09:14 security of the media center, health and physical safety.
3:09:18 River Middle School finally had cameras installed while school
3:09:22 was closed for distance learning. Now there will be one less
3:09:25 adult supervising and helping to maintain the safety of the
3:09:29 environment. It will be even more difficult now to obtain
3:09:30 willing parent volunteers, further compromising student safety.
3:09:34 There will also be the additional task of maintaining student
3:09:36 health and keeping the media center space sanitary. This
3:09:39 decision will have a direct impact on students and their
3:09:42 learning, and they have already experienced too much
3:09:45 instructional loss.
3:09:47 I understand all of our district leaders and board members are
3:09:49 very busy with important and difficult decisions, and I
3:09:52 appreciate the time you give to hear the community. Thank you
3:09:54 for your service. I appreciate your time, consideration, and for
3:09:58 hearing my concerns.
3:10:01 This is Sue Hamm, and I just wanted to say thank you to all of
3:10:03 our speakers tonight. I appreciate your patience and your
3:10:05 thoughtful comments. Thank you again, and that’s all for tonight.
3:10:15 All right, conclusion of public comments. Before we move into
3:10:19 the consent agenda, anyone want to respond or give direction? Mr.
3:10:24 Susan?
3:10:25 I’ll just take a second. I wanted to thank Anthony Colucci for
3:10:29 promoting your budget and what you presented, and also if I
3:10:35 could get him to get us those survey results because that’s
3:10:39 telling for some of our stuff that we need, I think that the
3:10:41 collaboration for that would be good.
3:10:44 And some of the stuff that he said. I also wanted to reach out
3:10:48 to the parents, the people that are a part of the teen programs
3:10:52 at Titus Billing at O’Gally, and as a teacher at O’Gally, my
3:10:56 daughter used to use that program, and I was a Santa Claus for
3:11:01 some of the Christmases for those kids.
3:11:06 There was 40, 50 kids that were inside there, and I really did
3:11:10 little, built little things for them, and it was just an amazing
3:11:13 thing. Unfortunately, just as I’m going to say for something
3:11:16 else, state budgets are killing us, and I’m sick and tired of
3:11:21 sitting in here fighting over tracks and not having provided for
3:11:25 those kids, fighting for these kids that are in these afterschool
3:11:29 programs or even in the pregnancy programs, our media assistance
3:11:32 and everything else.
3:11:35 What it boils down to is that it’s one of the many things that
3:11:38 are on our chopping block, but in the bottom line is is that our
3:11:42 education funding sources need to change, and I think that I’m
3:11:46 going to take an advocacy role at the state level to try to push
3:11:50 that more this year.
3:11:52 But I did want to say my heart goes out to the media specialists
3:11:55 and the teen pregnancy program because I have some friends in
3:11:59 both, and it’s a sad thing. Thank you.
3:12:04 » Thank you, Ms. Susan. Ms. Campbell, you look like you want to
3:12:07 speak?
3:12:08 » Just to clarify for the public that’s listening, we had the
3:12:15 email that we received from Dr. Thede last week about the parent-student
3:12:21 program listed the numbers. I’m not sure if she has the numbers
3:12:23 for the other two programs that will remain, Palm Bay High and
3:12:28 CoCo, but the Titusville program was going to involve two
3:12:30 students, and the Oak Alley program was going to involve one
3:12:33 student.
3:12:34 So just to clarify for the public, it looks like the fathers as
3:12:38 well sometimes were involved, but we were talking about two
3:12:42 students in Titusville and one student in Oak Alley, and I’m not
3:12:44 sure how that compares to our other programs that are continuing
3:12:47 to go.
3:12:49 And then also, if I could just ask the question, if we have a
3:12:52 student currently at – this is only Fort Worth High School. We
3:12:56 have 16 high schools. If a student has a need like this at, say,
3:13:00 Mill Hire, Viera, Rockledge, at the current time, are they busing
3:13:04 or have taken – they’re also not having the program in their
3:13:07 own school, right? They’re having to go outside of their own zoned
3:13:11 school to one of these other programs if they want to take
3:13:14 advantage of it.
3:13:16 Ms. Campbell, I believe you’re correct, but the experts are on
3:13:18 their way.
3:13:20 Good. I figured y’all would come through the door if I asked the
3:13:23 right question.
3:13:25 It’s like magic.
3:13:40 So I think I heard your whole question, and so I’ll address your
3:13:44 question, maybe some other potential things, but I would be remiss
3:13:48 if I’m getting the opportunity for the microphone to emphasize
3:13:52 that these are incredible programs, and I had the opportunity to
3:13:56 work directly with one for 10 years, and they are really
3:14:00 terrific for our students.
3:14:03 However, I consider it a blessing that we no longer need four
3:14:07 programs, and at one time in this district, all four programs
3:14:11 were really robustly enrolled.
3:14:15 To include fathers and mothers, I heard that question a bunch of
3:14:18 times. We always try to capture fathers as well, and they, of
3:14:22 course, can utilize the program and take advantage of all the
3:14:25 services.
3:14:27 Through a lot of work that I would suggest in our schools,
3:14:30 through our families, our community agencies, we no longer
3:14:33 require four programs in our district for the enrollment.
3:14:38 And fortunately, two of our really strong programs are really
3:14:42 well located at Cocoa and Palm Bay, and so to answer your
3:14:47 question, yes, each of those sites serves a rather large
3:14:51 community. It’s not uncommon for a student from Cocoa Beach or a
3:14:55 different area to get transported.
3:14:59 We’re very good at it. Our transportation department does a
3:15:02 wonderful job, and so the schools are accustomed to working
3:15:05 really closely with students from all over, sometimes even
3:15:09 middle school students.
3:15:11 I can remember a time in this district where there was a need,
3:15:14 very clearly. We’ve been working, Dr. Thetty, and last year, we
3:15:18 actually were addressing the enrollment issues.
3:15:23 And the programs, because of NACI requirements for accreditation
3:15:28 and the Department of Health requirements, have a staffing
3:15:32 requirement that has five and six assistants at each site, plus
3:15:39 the full-time teacher.
3:15:41 The full-time teacher’s supposed to be the teacher of record for
3:15:45 the teen parents, and we’re in about a handful of those and
3:15:49 lower at our schools, and then the daycare workers care for the
3:15:53 children and, of course, work with the teen parents one period a
3:15:56 day.
3:15:58 And so what was happening is staff utilization of the daycare
3:16:04 program was not being tracked properly, and so it was blurring
3:16:10 the numbers.
3:16:13 Last year, we worked with the school, we corrected the tracking
3:16:18 of it. In fact, I believe Ms. Belford was involved in that
3:16:22 discussion, and so we found ourselves in a situation for two,
3:16:27 three, four students staffing an entire daycare program with all
3:16:32 of the state guidelines for it.
3:16:36 So we very much want those students to take advantage of the
3:16:39 opportunity at the program at COCO. COCO and Palm Bay are our
3:16:42 two largest programs, but they have capacity as well.
3:16:46 And so they have room, they’re happy to serve them, the teachers
3:16:50 are wonderful, and we love the program. We love the service it
3:16:54 offers.
3:16:56 There’s not one thing anybody said that we don’t agree with the
3:16:59 value of it. We simply don’t require four programs anymore.
3:17:05 So, yes, fathers, yes, all the other sites take students from
3:17:09 different areas, and the teachers do a tremendous job of really
3:17:13 tracking student graduation.
3:17:16 - Thank you. - Yeah.
3:17:20 - Anyone else, comments, questions, with regard to public
3:17:22 comments? All right, then that will move us into our consent
3:17:26 agenda. Dr. Mullins.
3:17:31 - There are 22 agenda items under this category.
3:17:35 Any board member wish to pull any items?
3:17:39 All right, then I will entertain a motion to accept the consent
3:17:40 items as presented.
3:17:43 - Move to approve. - Second.
3:17:45 - Moved by Mr. Susan, seconded by, who was the second? - Trustee.
3:17:49 - Katie Campbell.
3:17:51 Any discussion? Ms. Escobar, could you please call for the vote?
3:17:56 - Mrs. Belford? - Aye.
3:17:58 - Mrs. Deskevich? - Aye.
3:18:00 - Mrs. Campbell? - Aye.
3:18:02 - Ms. McDougall? - Aye.
3:18:04 - Ms. Susan? - Aye.
3:18:07 - Motion passes 5-0.
3:18:10 We will now move on to the action agenda. Dr. Mullins.
3:18:13 - Ms. Belford, there are four items under this category.
3:18:18 - What’s our first action item?
3:18:22 - The first action item is to submit the extension of the one-half
3:18:25 cent school capital outlay resolution to the Board of County
3:18:29 Commissioners for placement on the November ballot.
3:18:33 - Move to approve. - Second.
3:18:35 - Moved by Mr. Susan, we’re going to give that one to Ms. McDougall
3:18:38 on the second. Any discussion? Ms. Deskevich?
3:18:45 - So, I’ve got quite a few things to say, sorry. I’ll be as
3:18:49 brief as I can be.
3:18:52 A few weeks ago, we heard from Ms. Pan some stats and statistics
3:18:55 and kind of an overview of our capital budget situation.
3:19:00 She shared with us that over 62% of our schools are over 50
3:19:04 years old.
3:19:06 She shared with us that $40 million of our capital budget,
3:19:08 roughly $40 million, goes straight to debt payment.
3:19:13 That’s not a debt that anyone in this room took on. None of us
3:19:16 were here when a school decided the idea to go $400 million in
3:19:21 debt.
3:19:23 To me, that is a mess. That’s something that’s bothered me since
3:19:26 I even ran for school board that we had that much debt that we
3:19:28 had to keep up with.
3:19:30 Unfortunately, it’s our responsibility to clean up this mess
3:19:33 that’s been left.
3:19:36 This school board has not taken on one dollar of new debt.
3:19:41 We have a school in Viera going up. We’ve done a lot in the last
3:19:44 four years and we have not taken on one single dollar of new
3:19:47 debt.
3:19:49 We just heard from Dr. Mullins that we’ve cut $27 million over
3:19:52 the past four years from our operating budget.
3:19:56 I believe we’ve been extremely fiscally responsible and I value
3:19:59 that.
3:20:01 That is important to me that as a school board member that I’m
3:20:03 responsible with our budget, that I’m fiscally accountable and
3:20:06 responsible.
3:20:08 We have a responsibility to maintain our 12.8 million square
3:20:11 feet of facilities.
3:20:14 We have a responsibility to keep our buses up to date, our
3:20:16 warehouse, and all our facilities.
3:20:21 I believe it would be fiscally irresponsible of us to not
3:20:24 support moving this forward and giving the voters an opportunity
3:20:28 to maintain the investments that we have as a community.
3:20:33 These school buildings and these facilities are public
3:20:35 investments.
3:20:37 They’re where we send our children to school and it’s important
3:20:41 that we keep them up to date.
3:20:45 If we don’t invest in their maintenance over the next six years,
3:20:48 it’s going to be a long-term fiscal problem for the next school
3:20:51 board.
3:20:52 I don’t want to kick the bucket down the road and have a school
3:20:54 board look back at us and say, “They made the mess and now we
3:20:57 have to clean it up.”
3:20:59 That’s not responsible.
3:21:01 I’m not a supporter of taxes in general. I’m not a supporter of
3:21:04 increasing taxes or continuing taxes that are not needed.
3:21:10 But I do believe this is one that we have to ask the public to
3:21:13 continue to support until we can get to a point where either
3:21:18 that debt is paid off or until we can get to a point where our
3:21:24 capital revenue is allowed to rise so that we have funds to
3:21:28 maintain our buildings.
3:21:31 I know we’ve all kind of questioned if Tina Deskevich was going
3:21:35 to vote yes today on moving forward the sales tax to the voters.
3:21:40 And for all those reasons, I will be supporting it. Thank you.
3:21:45 Thank you, Ms. Deskevich. Any additional discussion?
3:21:48 Thank you for putting that in towards Ms. Deskevich. I couldn’t
3:21:50 agree with you more.
3:21:58 I will just second the feedback very nicely put together and I
3:22:01 think so many important points there that you bring forward.
3:22:04 Thank you, Ms. Deskevich.
3:22:06 Ms. Escobar, would you please call the vote?
3:22:08 Mrs. Belford? Aye.
3:22:10 Mrs. Deskevich? Aye.
3:22:12 Mrs. Campbell? Aye.
3:22:14 Ms. McDougall? Aye.
3:22:16 And Mr. Susan? Aye.
3:22:18 The motion passes 5-0. Dr. Mullins?
3:22:24 Next, we have Department School Initiated Agreements.
3:22:27 What are the wishes of the board? Move to approve.
3:22:30 Moved by Mr. Susan, seconded by Ms. Deskevich. Any discussion?
3:22:35 Ms. Escobar, would you please call the vote?
3:22:37 Mrs. Belford? Aye.
3:22:39 Mrs. Deskevich? Aye.
3:22:41 Mrs. Campbell? Aye.
3:22:43 Ms. McDougall? Aye.
3:22:45 And Mr. Susan? Aye.
3:22:47 5-0. Dr. Mullins?
3:22:49 Our next item is on Procurement Solicitations.
3:22:52 What are the wishes of the board? Move to approve.
3:22:54 Second.
3:22:56 Seconded by Ms. Campbell.
3:22:58 Any discussion?
3:23:01 Ms. Escobar? Mrs. Belford? Aye.
3:23:03 Mrs. Deskevich? Aye.
3:23:05 Mrs. Campbell? Aye.
3:23:07 Ms. McDougall? Aye.
3:23:09 Mr. Susan? Aye.
3:23:11 The motion passes 5-0. Dr. Mullins?
3:23:13 Our last action item is on Administrative Staff Recommendations.
3:23:16 There are 17…
3:23:18 What are the wishes? Sorry.
3:23:20 That’s alright. There are 17 persons on this item for the board
3:23:21 to consider.
3:23:23 What are the wishes of the board? Move to approve.
3:23:25 Second.
3:23:27 Moved by Ms. Campbell, seconded by Ms. McDougall on that one.
3:23:32 Any discussion?
3:23:34 Oh, sure, if I can. There’s so many, so many on this, but I’ll
3:23:37 just be brief.
3:23:39 I just want to congratulate Ms. McNutt.
3:23:41 Looks like she’s officially going to be the principal of Hoover
3:23:42 Middle School.
3:23:44 I know the community will be thrilled that she is stepping
3:23:46 permanently into that role instead of just an interim.
3:23:50 And also we want to welcome, I know we heard some comments about
3:23:57 us getting a new principal at Surfside during our public
3:24:00 comments today,
3:24:01 but Ms. Ehrenstauf will be the new principal at Surfside
3:24:04 Elementary School, and I hope the community will embrace her.
3:24:11 She seems to be an amazing woman that I think will serve the
3:24:13 community well, so thank you.
3:24:17 Very good, thank you.
3:24:19 I’d like to thank, I’d like to congratulate Mr. Tim Powers.
3:24:25 I taught with Tim in 2012 at O’Gally, and one of the unique
3:24:28 things about Tim was he not only motivates the kids, but he also
3:24:32 was a kid at O’Gally.
3:24:34 And all of his lift records and all of his records are up on the
3:24:35 wall inside the weight room.
3:24:38 So to see that turn and cycle of individuals who not only go to
3:24:40 school here, but end up teaching, coaching, and then take
3:24:44 leadership here,
3:24:46 you own a little bit more when you grew here. And I think that’s
3:24:49 something to say, and I know there’s a lot of that in Titusville,
3:24:53 but Tim Powers represents that for our district, and I want to
3:24:55 say atta boy and good luck.
3:24:58 Very good. Any additional comments, discussion?
3:25:02 Alright, Ms. Escobar, if you would please call the vote.
3:25:05 Mrs. Belford? Aye.
3:25:07 Mrs. Deskevich? Aye.
3:25:09 Mrs. Campbell? Aye.
3:25:11 Ms. McDougall? Aye.
3:25:13 And Mr. Susan? Aye.
3:25:15 Information items, the six items on the agenda this morning are
3:25:17 all policies which will be voted on at our next board meeting.
3:25:21 We held a work session on some of these policies this morning.
3:25:24 We have to revisit that at the end of today’s board meeting in a
3:25:26 rural development workshop this morning.
3:25:29 Does any board member wish to discuss any of the items on the
3:25:31 information agenda at this point?
3:25:34 Alright, does any board member have anything further to report?
3:25:39 Dr. Mullins, you’re still doing your presentation.
3:25:42 Dr. Mullins, please provide the board and viewing audience an
3:25:46 update on school reopening.
3:26:04 Thank you, Ms. Belford, members of the board and viewing public.
3:26:08 I appreciate the opportunity to provide the board just a quick
3:26:11 update of the work that is going on with our reopening task
3:26:14 force.
3:26:16 I did earlier in the meeting make acknowledgement and
3:26:17 recognition of the work that they’ve been doing.
3:26:20 Fourteen members and three cabinet members. That includes
3:26:24 community health officials as well.
3:26:28 They have been meeting regularly both on the clock, off the
3:26:31 clock, after the clock and so on because the task ahead of us is
3:26:35 great.
3:26:39 The task force has identified priorities that are consistent and
3:26:42 aligned with the same strategies we employed and committed to
3:26:46 during the actual school closures and COVID.
3:26:50 Ensuring that our student and staff, safety and well-being,
3:26:53 identifying and addressing continuity of learning, innovating
3:26:57 and to promote excellence and eliminate opportunity gaps.
3:27:02 Deepening our partnerships to provide the full range of supports
3:27:05 and services required for healthy growth and development.
3:27:10 Adapting logistics and operations to our new realities and
3:27:14 strategically deploying reduced resources as well as revising
3:27:18 and enhancing systems to prepare students for college careers
3:27:22 and life.
3:27:24 So this is far more than a logistical process of how we will
3:27:27 reopen schools, move students from one place to another, but
3:27:31 also how do we ensure high quality learning opportunities for
3:27:35 all of our kids.
3:27:38 The task force launched a robust community input and stakeholder
3:27:43 feedback process that included the community portal where any
3:27:48 individual in our community can provide feedback and input.
3:27:53 This is a process that we’ve received over 10,000 individual
3:27:57 pieces of feedback and staff are collating and collecting the
3:28:01 information. All of the feedback remains on the website for full
3:28:04 transparency so others can see what is being submitted.
3:28:09 In addition, we’ve reached out to our school advisory councils
3:28:12 at every one of our schools and requested our principals and
3:28:16 administrative teams bring their school advisory councils
3:28:19 together for input and feedback that will be completed here this
3:28:24 week by June 19th.
3:28:26 And administrators are required to provide the feedback to the
3:28:28 task force which is being utilized for considerations going
3:28:32 forward.
3:28:34 And then as well, we have identified 31 different teacher type
3:28:39 groups that represent our schools across the district.
3:28:45 So you might say, “I thought a teacher was a teacher.” Not
3:28:47 really, because we have teachers in a teenage parent program, we
3:28:50 have teachers in an automotive program, we have teachers that
3:28:54 teach U.S. history and teachers who teach medical services.
3:28:59 And then we have teachers who are teaching our littlest ones in
3:29:03 pre-K, kindergarten and so on. So the needs and the perspectives
3:29:07 of our teachers really span the range of possibilities.
3:29:12 So the task force felt it critical that they reach out to every
3:29:14 type of teacher represented across the district to get their
3:29:18 feedback and input and they’ve been in the process of collecting
3:29:21 that.
3:29:26 Here we have some of the trends that have emerged in the
3:29:29 feedback that has been received and has been reviewed.
3:29:34 The feedback has been reviewed that nearly all groups want to
3:29:36 see very clear guidelines prior to the start of the school. So
3:29:39 you see that represented in the green column of lists there.
3:29:44 Things such as attendance and medically fragile precautions, how
3:29:48 we’re going to manage blended learning, transportation, as well
3:29:52 as cleaning protocols and procedures for our food service
3:29:55 program.
3:29:57 At the same time, feedback is also clear that our community does
3:30:00 not share consensus on many other key points that is represented
3:30:04 in the yellow box of information.
3:30:08 Differing opinions on how and when schools should open, student
3:30:12 and staff wearing masks, how to modify schedules or maintain a
3:30:17 traditional schedule, medical screening and then the overall
3:30:20 student classroom experience.
3:30:23 So the task force is using all of this information to chart a
3:30:25 path forward and will be bringing more information to the board
3:30:29 in the coming weeks.
3:30:34 In addition to stakeholder input, the task force is utilizing
3:30:38 publications or available resources from the Florida Department
3:30:42 of Education to the Florida Department of Health and so on that
3:30:47 is guiding and providing best practices for consideration.
3:30:52 The most recent of which we received from the Florida Department
3:30:56 of Education just last week, late last week, outlining or
3:31:00 providing guidelines for reopening Florida schools as well as
3:31:04 the CARES Act.
3:31:06 So the team has already participated in webinars to review that
3:31:10 information.
3:31:13 The DOE has prioritized and communicated that it is essential
3:31:17 that we mitigate disproportionate impact of long term school
3:31:21 closure.
3:31:23 There is specific focus on closing the achievement gaps and
3:31:26 being prepared to help our students overcome the challenges that
3:31:31 may come about or existed while they were in distance learning
3:31:35 or during our school closures.
3:31:39 Academic progress monitoring is going to be critical as we don’t
3:31:42 have our traditional standardized test assessment data.
3:31:47 Our team is looking at aligning our progress monitoring tools to
3:31:50 ensure that we can quickly and with fidelity measure and assess
3:31:55 our students’ academic progress over the last year.
3:32:00 Standing up rapid credential programs to accelerate economic
3:32:03 recovery, you may be aware that the governor has earmarked and
3:32:07 allocated specific dollars for rapid credential programs through
3:32:11 CTE and so on.
3:32:13 And we’re in the process of learning more about what that is
3:32:15 since we just received that information last Thursday.
3:32:20 The DOE guidelines and priorities identified at local districts
3:32:23 are to develop the plans to maintain in-person learning.
3:32:28 With expansion of programs in July in preparation for full
3:32:31 capacity in August.
3:32:33 And I believe I referenced that earlier in the meeting where we’ve
3:32:35 received a specific allocation to support summer learning,
3:32:38 summer in-person learning that is required to include
3:32:42 transportation and food service for our students.
3:32:45 So our elementary and secondary leading and learning programs
3:32:48 are evaluating how we can maximize those dollars and begin
3:32:51 transitioning students into our schools for in-person learning
3:32:55 as soon as in July.
3:32:58 To overcome any learning gaps.
3:33:01 In addition, and of course, protecting our students who are
3:33:04 medically fragile and having a response plan for an instance
3:33:08 where there may be a confirmed case in a classroom or a school.
3:33:13 I want to take this opportunity to remind the board, I know you’re
3:33:17 aware and are watching public, and please share this news that
3:33:22 we are continuing to support and expand our high quality Brevard
3:33:27 virtual school program.
3:33:30 We are seeing some growth and enrollment in our BVS program and
3:33:33 we do have the capacity to not only receive those students but
3:33:37 also the capacity to grow the program if parents are in a
3:33:40 position or situation where they feel like a virtual learning
3:33:44 environment.
3:33:46 A comprehensive virtual learning environment is best suited for
3:33:50 their child.
3:33:52 So please take the opportunity to explore and consider our BVS
3:33:54 Brevard virtual school program.
3:33:58 I want to remind our public that when you select BVS over other
3:34:01 virtual school opportunities, your tax dollars stay in Brevard
3:34:05 and help educate Brevard students.
3:34:09 Other options such as Florida Virtual School actually take Brevard’s
3:34:12 tax dollars away from our community to other private programs.
3:34:20 I want to provide the board a timeline of what to expect and our
3:34:22 community as well.
3:34:25 The team is working towards a draft to the board and cabinet by
3:34:28 July 7th of what our reopening plan will look like and the
3:34:32 guidelines that will be in place.
3:34:36 And a formal presentation to the board is planned for the July
3:34:38 14th board meeting.
3:34:41 And we’re preparing to extend deadlines for enrollment as
3:34:45 necessary.
3:34:51 At this time I’m happy to answer any questions or bring any one
3:34:54 of the members of the task force to the podium if the board has
3:34:58 questions.
3:35:00 Just real quick, the deadline for Florida, I think that’s
3:35:02 important, I’ve had lots of calls and questions and I didn’t
3:35:05 even get it.
3:35:07 The deadline, the published deadline is actually July 17th, but
3:35:10 they’re prepared to extend it.
3:35:18 Ms. Belfort, thank you Dr. Mullins for presenting that
3:35:22 information to us.
3:35:25 One of the things that I have been reading and hearing is
3:35:28 different people who say I want to place on that task force or
3:35:33 why don’t you have this parent, a teacher, whatever on the task
3:35:37 force.
3:35:39 I just want to clarify that it’s not a matter of the people on
3:35:41 the task force, their opinions matter more or they count more.
3:35:47 The people who are on this task force are the people who are
3:35:50 going to be getting the work done based on the guidelines from
3:35:54 the state and CDC and all this and the input from the community.
3:36:00 So we absolutely value the input from our parents and from our
3:36:03 teachers and thank you for showing all the different ways and
3:36:07 for taking that.
3:36:09 I don’t know how you collate 10,000 opinions. I’ve already been
3:36:12 reading through the first five or six hundred, that’s where I am
3:36:15 in the 10,000 and they’re so varied.
3:36:20 But I just wanted to make that clear that it is not that the
3:36:22 task force opinions count more, their opinions really aren’t
3:36:26 part of it.
3:36:27 They’re trying to figure out how do we with this community input,
3:36:30 how do we make this plan work for our community.
3:36:34 So I appreciate the great work that they are doing and just
3:36:37 wanted to make that point of clarification as far as who gets to
3:36:41 be on that team.
3:36:44 Great, clarification Ms. Campbell, thank you.
3:36:47 I would just reiterate Ms. Campbell to that point, our task
3:36:49 force is reading every piece of input.
3:36:53 I believe it’s Kathy Whittle, support staff in secondary leading
3:36:56 and learning that is actually working to align comments that are
3:37:01 of similar feedback.
3:37:04 So that the team has it all collated, but all of the feedback is
3:37:08 very transparently provided on the portal.
3:37:12 So I just want to assure those that are providing input, we are
3:37:15 looking at every single input.
3:37:18 And the public can see it as well. If they go back to the portal
3:37:20 page, there’s a link to every spreadsheet comment as they’re
3:37:24 coming in, they’re putting them up a thousand at a time.
3:37:28 So if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, you’re welcome to
3:37:30 go read through it.
3:37:32 Well, and to that point, I would encourage people to go and look
3:37:35 because I think sometimes we think that everyone thinks the same
3:37:38 as us.
3:37:39 And so, you know, because I think something should be done this
3:37:41 way, I get frustrated and don’t realize that this is an insurmountable
3:37:48 task really in trying to find something that works for everyone
3:37:52 because people are so divided.
3:37:54 So yes, encourage them to go take a look at that. Mr. Susan.
3:37:58 I just wanted to give you guys a quick update and I’m going to
3:38:00 ask a couple of questions in a second, Dr. Mullins.
3:38:03 So there’s a school board association task force for kind of
3:38:05 giving some questions that each one of the school board members
3:38:09 in different school boards should be asking their districts to
3:38:12 make sure that they’re being covered.
3:38:15 In our district, we have a massive team that’s moving out and
3:38:16 they’re trying to do everything, but you can understand that
3:38:19 some of our small local rural districts don’t have the access or
3:38:24 don’t have the expertise that some of us have.
3:38:27 So we’ve gone through the facilities portion and some of the
3:38:30 other stuff so far. And as that document comes together next
3:38:34 week, I’ll get it to you guys.
3:38:37 It’ll go out to all school board members by June 30. But I do
3:38:38 want to say it’s a way of just asking to make sure that we’re
3:38:42 following with each one of the pieces.
3:38:46 It’s not recommendations. It’s not saying you should do this,
3:38:47 you should do that. It’s saying have you thought about the
3:38:50 transition of the students if they’re tested positive?
3:38:54 Those kind of processes. Are you wearing masks? Those kind of
3:38:56 things, right? So that’ll come out. I just wanted to let you
3:38:59 guys know about that.
3:39:01 And it wasn’t daunting to just get it to figure out how to put
3:39:03 it into words to get it moving.
3:39:06 So with that, the questions that I had, Dr. Mullins was Miss
3:39:10 Bentley who sent us an email about the graduations that we have
3:39:15 in July.
3:39:17 She was very passionate about her speech, but one of the things
3:39:20 was is that she wanted to make sure that we were on pace to do
3:39:22 in-person graduations as of now.
3:39:25 And I think that that is something that we’ve made part of our
3:39:27 plan and we’re moving forward and there’s no directional
3:39:30 difference in that, correct?
3:39:33 We’re continuing to evaluate what that looks like. I believe the
3:39:37 first alternate July graduation date was July 18th.
3:39:44 I don’t have that with me, but I believe it was the 18th. So we’ll
3:39:46 be reevaluating that very soon and providing further direction
3:39:49 to the community.
3:39:51 One of the things that we were doing is we looked at it and if
3:39:54 you take the socially distanced model of, and this goes into my
3:39:57 next question, is the socially distanced model of six feet,
3:40:01 right?
3:40:02 And you apply that to a football field or activities or whatever,
3:40:07 you can put 1,000 people on a football field at six foot
3:40:12 distances. You can take and double the CDC’s recommendation to
3:40:16 12 feet and you can put 500 people on a football field.
3:40:22 I was just saying that, and that was one of the things I was
3:40:25 going to ask Dr. Mullins and I keep bringing it up, is right now
3:40:29 we currently are at a 10 person per group with some kind of
3:40:33 variation to allow our programs to kind of get more kids on a
3:40:38 football field and track, kind of.
3:40:41 I was wondering if you could talk to that real quick. And then
3:40:43 the other piece is that we have some of the, and that’s for
3:40:47 athletics, but then also for band, and I’m kind of touching your
3:40:50 area.
3:40:52 I think there’s a band in this county that has less than 50
3:40:54 people, right? So how are we going to allow them to move around
3:40:57 and train and stuff like that?
3:41:00 And then volunteer coaches I’ll just touch on, and that’s it. So
3:41:02 Dr. Mullins, if you could tell us what that looks like for
3:41:05 multiple groups on a field or something.
3:41:09 Yeah, I would probably, Ms. Moore, if you’re, it’s like magic.
3:41:14 Ms. Moore, if you would come and provide the board additional
3:41:19 information about returned activity.
3:41:39 And I got to be honest, for the first of what you say, then we
3:41:42 got into a conversation about that. Thank you. And I missed the
3:41:46 second half, so if you could repeat, I’d appreciate it.
3:41:50 So the three areas that I was going to touch on, the first one
3:41:51 was graduations, and Dr. Mullins answered that. The second one
3:41:55 was the number of students that can participate in the athletics
3:41:59 on the field, the football field, open areas.
3:42:03 And then the other one that I was going to ask you about was we
3:42:07 have in both football and sports and in band, you have volunteer
3:42:13 coaches.
3:42:15 Many of them don’t get paid, but they’re committed just the same,
3:42:17 have done the background checks just the same, and they’re an
3:42:20 integral part of those operations.
3:42:23 When I coached, there was at least five or six guys that
3:42:24 volunteered their time every year and never took a supplement.
3:42:29 What are we doing for those individuals, both with band, because
3:42:32 there’s expertise that’s there, along with football that’s there?
3:42:36 Are they allowed to be a part of it, that kind of stuff, that’s
3:42:37 all. So the first one was, what are the justifications, what are
3:42:41 the gray areas as far as, okay, you can have 10 kids on a field,
3:42:44 but a football field is this big.
3:42:46 We can put 1,000 kids there socially distanced. How do we work
3:42:47 that? And then the other one is, are we allowing those
3:42:50 volunteers to come on? Thank you.
3:42:54 So the first part is, let’s talk about the football field, and
3:42:57 let’s talk about the guidelines and also what our students are
3:43:00 coming back from.
3:43:02 I haven’t done the math. I can’t attest that you can fit 1,000
3:43:04 kids on a field with six-foot distance, but I don’t doubt that
3:43:07 you have.
3:43:09 So we actually didn’t say that you can only have one group of 10
3:43:12 on the field. What we said is that you can look at your larger
3:43:16 areas and divide them up into sections or segments that will
3:43:19 accommodate the activity that you’re doing.
3:43:23 So our example was that you could divide a football field into a
3:43:26 track area and divide the half into one group of 10 on one half
3:43:30 of the 50-yard line and the other group of the students on the
3:43:32 other half of the 50-yard line.
3:43:35 That kind of takes into account both the movement that’s gonna
3:43:37 be on the field and the number of kids that can be supervised by
3:43:40 any given adult on that field.
3:43:43 What we took into consideration was not just the guidelines, but
3:43:46 the fact that our students are coming back after not being in
3:43:49 our buildings for quite some time, and we’re going to be
3:43:52 introducing them back into a structured setting that they may
3:43:57 not have one of two scenarios.
3:44:01 They may not have interacted with their friends during this
3:44:03 entire time, in which case we need to control that interaction,
3:44:07 right?
3:44:09 In some cases that they may be very much interacting with their
3:44:11 friends during this time without masks, without social distancing,
3:44:14 without following any of the guidelines.
3:44:17 We’re responsible now for protecting them and keeping them safe
3:44:19 as much as possible following the health and safety guidelines.
3:44:24 And so we wanted to bring them back in a way that was controlled,
3:44:26 in a way that was safe, in a way that we controlled the movement.
3:44:31 So it’s not just about following the guidelines, it’s also about
3:44:35 the nature of kids and the nature of adults and making sure that
3:44:39 some of the practices that may be being followed or not followed
3:44:43 in these past three months that we can control for in a way that’s
3:44:48 safe bringing kids back into school.
3:44:51 So I don’t know if that answers your question about fields and
3:44:54 gyms and back areas of schools and how they can be divided up.
3:45:00 But it wasn’t just 10 kids on a football field. It was what’s
3:45:05 reasonable, how can you divide this up, how can you monitor it,
3:45:08 and how can you ensure that we’re moving kids safely from place
3:45:10 to place.
3:45:12 Yeah, and so many of our rural counties have come back fully. I
3:45:17 mean, they’ve got full football practices and stuff like that in
3:45:20 Union, Bay, other areas, they’re physically practicing.
3:45:25 And part of the concern is exactly what you said about them
3:45:28 congregating.
3:45:30 Right, because they’re not practicing, right?
3:45:33 Well, anyways, the same thing is that they are coming back and
3:45:35 it is difficult for some of the coaches to try to keep them
3:45:39 separated.
3:45:41 Absolutely, yeah.
3:45:43 I heard that comment. Can I ask you this, and I know I’m kind of
3:45:45 getting into a gray area, are they allowed, because we used to
3:45:49 run what’s called a circus, it was a circuit of 10 kids socially
3:45:54 distanced by 75 feet, right?
3:45:59 But you could have one, two coaches running the workout. So you
3:46:02 utilize the field, you’re 50/50, right?
3:46:06 If you had, say, five groups of 10, but they were 25 yards apart
3:46:10 and they moved in pods across that, would that be something that’s
3:46:14 socially acceptable for our plan?
3:46:17 I don’t know about socially acceptable, because I don’t know
3:46:19 what they’re doing, but they’re absolutely within the guidelines
3:46:22 if they keep the kids apart, if they can monitor them, if they
3:46:26 can control the movement, if they keep themselves safe.
3:46:29 And that any equipment, so for example, the example you gave
3:46:33 about circuits presupposes that you’re moving them kind of
3:46:37 rapidly around the circuits.
3:46:40 One of the things we built in, especially in phase one, is 15
3:46:41 minutes in between circuits, because if they have any equipment
3:46:44 that needs to be cleaned, if they have any area that needs to be
3:46:48 wiped down, that has to happen before another group of students
3:46:51 can enter into that area, whatever that may be.
3:46:54 But if they don’t have any equipment that needs to be moved down,
3:46:57 they can move between. And as long as they are keeping the
3:46:59 social distance of the groups, you can have more than two or
3:47:03 three groups of 10 on a football field.
3:47:07 Our recommendation is three on a football field. We make that
3:47:09 recommendation. Schools are responsible for the implementation.
3:47:15 Okay. And I’m sorry, I’m just trying to visualize this thing. If
3:47:18 I’m at Vieira High School and I’ve got three groups of 10 on the
3:47:21 field, and then I’ve got another coach on the practice field in
3:47:24 the back, he can have three groups of 10 over there.
3:47:28 And then they can run in between, right? So they can get an
3:47:31 entire football team in there with two coaches.
3:47:35 Sure. And then you have the area of the weight room, and you
3:47:37 might have a third coach in there running the weight room.
3:47:41 Yeah. Yeah, I think. Okay. And then in our weight room that we
3:47:45 talked about, we said that we use the guidelines for the Florida
3:47:48 High School Athletics Association, or the national.
3:47:52 The national, correct.
3:47:54 It talks about three phases. It talks about the first phase, no
3:47:56 spots, second phase, spots on the sides of the bars, that kind
3:47:58 of stuff. We’re in that same…
3:48:01 Yeah, and we deliberately took the word “phase” out of our plan
3:48:03 and put “stage.” We didn’t want it confused with the governor’s
3:48:07 plan.
3:48:08 But yeah, we followed the same exact guidelines. That was kind
3:48:10 of our model, is that plan.
3:48:13 Okay. So then as far as activities for band, they’re under the
3:48:16 same direction?
3:48:19 They’re under the same staging in terms of coming in. However,
3:48:21 we know that we needed to add a supplement to that, so Bill McHarris,
3:48:26 Cindy Johnson have been working on that supplemental list.
3:48:29 You know, band has unique needs. So just so that our band
3:48:33 parents are aware they’re included in activity, we’re looking at
3:48:38 a 22nd, a July 22nd kind of stage one return and what that looks
3:48:43 like.
3:48:44 And then we’re going to be putting out a supplement to our band
3:48:45 directors so that they can ensure that they’re bringing the kids
3:48:48 back safely.
3:48:50 So you’re saying that the band will not come back until July 22nd
3:48:53 to condition?
3:48:56 June 22nd. I apologize. I apologize.
3:49:00 Just so that everybody on the call can do that.
3:49:02 Yeah, correct me. I appreciate that.
3:49:04 No, no, no. That’s okay. And I applaud you for going out and
3:49:06 getting the temperature checks and getting all the forms. That
3:49:09 was amazing.
3:49:10 Like when you sent that to me, I was so excited because that is
3:49:11 one of the major things that we’re seeing with research is
3:49:13 testing that and everything.
3:49:16 Yeah, and I just, you know, again, and I appreciate Ms. Bell for
3:49:17 doing the shout out.
3:49:19 Robert Gissen, procurement has done an amazing job. All of her
3:49:23 team has done an amazing job. Dr. Sullivan in leading and
3:49:26 learning, matter of fact, they’re distributing the thermometers
3:49:29 today.
3:49:30 And yesterday I saw Sarah Robinson picking up her thermometers
3:49:32 this morning for her school.
3:49:35 So there’s a lot, there’s some real cross divisional work that’s
3:49:38 going on with every single thing we’re doing now.
3:49:43 You can’t move item A without affecting item B in anything that
3:49:46 we’re doing.
3:49:48 In terms of any person that comes through that door to talk
3:49:51 about any of the recovery plans, they are representing every
3:49:54 division in this building.
3:49:56 Beautiful. And then the volunteer portion.
3:49:59 Sure. So we have some non-paid, but they’re really like coaches.
3:50:01 What are we doing for those poor people?
3:50:05 So, you know, our goal is to serve our students first and
3:50:07 foremost. And we understand that there are community coaches
3:50:10 involved.
3:50:12 So what we’re asking them to do is to file their official
3:50:13 paperwork with the schools.
3:50:16 Period the end, because we have a lot of unofficial people out
3:50:19 helping.
3:50:21 And those unofficial people are going to, are just one body too
3:50:26 many.
3:50:28 We can control for a lot of things, but we can’t control if we
3:50:30 involve extra people onto our campuses.
3:50:33 In a time when we’re really, again, trying to very tightly
3:50:36 control the movement in and out of buildings.
3:50:40 In fact, you know, as we look at our return to school plan, we’re
3:50:44 tightly controlling visitors on campus.
3:50:48 So it would be a real disservice to our schools to say, “Anybody
3:50:50 can come in June and July and help the kids, but be careful. We’re
3:50:55 not going to let you back in in August to volunteer.”
3:50:58 So we’re talking about that now, but what we ask is that you
3:51:00 officially do the paperwork with the secretary so we can say, “Yes,
3:51:04 you are a community coach, and no, you are a parent who is
3:51:07 standing on the sidelines.”
3:51:10 That’s all we’re asking.
3:51:12 No, that’s great, and that works both for a community coach for
3:51:14 football and a community coach for band, is that correct?
3:51:18 Band doesn’t have community coaches. They have parent volunteers,
3:51:22 and right now we’re tightly controlling for that.
3:51:26 Okay, so we don’t, so the band director can only use the
3:51:30 individuals that are paid as band, and how many is that per band?
3:51:37 We have consultants that come out for band during…
3:51:41 So those people can come help?
3:51:43 Absolutely. They’re part of the band program that works with the
3:51:44 band over the summer.
3:51:46 Okay, so they can, just not the parent volunteer pieces?
3:51:49 Not as yet.
3:51:52 Okay.
3:51:54 Again, you know, our goal in all of this, we would love to be
3:51:56 able to say to parents, you know, “We’re ready to open, period
3:52:01 the end, no restrictions.”
3:52:04 We would love to be able to say that.
3:52:06 With the 10,000 respondents we have, I can’t say we’re evenly
3:52:09 split 50/50, but there is a voice on every side saying, “You’re
3:52:13 going too fast, you’re doing too much, and you’re going too slow.
3:52:16 Why aren’t you doing enough?”
3:52:18 So the line that we’re walking is, “What can we do for our kids
3:52:23 that’s appropriate, that’s safe, without that tipping point of
3:52:28 introducing practices that open the door for unsafe practices
3:52:34 and health risks?”
3:52:37 And a lot of our comparisons over what we do is to surrounding
3:52:40 districts and like districts because rural districts have
3:52:43 different, like, for me to say that there’s practicing and all
3:52:46 that stuff is not fair to us because we’re a different type of
3:52:49 district and we have different regulations. I holistically agree
3:52:52 on that.
3:52:54 What if the governor comes out and moves to phase three early
3:52:56 July and the other surrounding counties start moving in a
3:52:59 different direction, would we come back and reevaluate at that
3:53:03 point the different pieces?
3:53:06 Given the plan we say that we’re going to reevaluate with all
3:53:08 the new information that comes out, if we get new governor
3:53:11 directive, if we get new CDC guidelines, if we get something new
3:53:15 from the DOH, we are open to coming back, not just open, we will
3:53:18 come back and reflect both on the activity plan, whether that
3:53:22 means scooting things forward.
3:53:25 More importantly, and I think this is important for our public
3:53:28 to know, if that means pushing things back.
3:53:32 So it’s going to depend on the data that’s available to us at
3:53:35 the time and we’re open to, and we even say in the plan, we are
3:53:38 going to reevaluate as new data comes available to us.
3:53:42 Governor goes down to phase one again, we reevaluate. Governor
3:53:44 goes up to phase three, we reevaluate.
3:53:47 The DOH comes out with new guidelines, the CDC comes out with
3:53:51 new guidelines, the governor’s plan, FHSAA, FHSAA might push
3:53:55 back their fall season, in which case, you know, so do we, so we
3:54:00 have to be aware and open to as things change, so do we.
3:54:06 That has been probably the biggest challenge during this time,
3:54:09 we’ll work for days and months on a, well not months, we haven’t
3:54:12 had months to work on anything, we’ll work for days, I mean, you
3:54:15 know, 15 hours for two or three days in a row on a plan, that’s
3:54:19 beautiful.
3:54:21 And then one press conference later, it’s all out the window.
3:54:24 So we have learned to be, you know, I know everybody talks about
3:54:28 grace and flexibility, we’re like yoga masters in there, so we
3:54:31 appreciate the patience that you’ve had with us in getting some
3:54:35 of the information out.
3:54:38 And so that transfer from down or up should happen pretty
3:54:40 quickly just because we already have them in place and it
3:54:43 shouldn’t take like a week or something to reevaluate or
3:54:47 something like that, should be a pretty quick switch because we’ve
3:54:49 already put together kind of a plan.
3:54:52 It’s not so much agreed, but we have to understand it’s not just
3:54:56 the process of changing the plan, it’s the process of
3:55:00 communicating and training and getting us all on the same page.
3:55:04 So I could rapidly get together the five or six people that we
3:55:06 worked with to design the plan, but then we have to get together
3:55:09 with the 30 principals and make sure they understand the changes,
3:55:13 and we have to get together with the 30 ADs and make sure they
3:55:16 understand the changes.
3:55:18 And if that missed those two meetings, we got to catch them up,
3:55:21 so we got to notify the board and we got to get cabinet all.
3:55:25 So it’s the changing the plan isn’t the difficult part, the
3:55:27 making sure we’re all on the same page and we’re communicating
3:55:30 it to not just our staff, but the public.
3:55:34 That’s what, you know, takes two or three or four days at the
3:55:37 end of the day.
3:55:39 - Thank you. - Yeah.
3:55:41 - Thank you, and I’m sorry to kind of rapid fire at you.
3:55:43 - No, I’m good. - I really appreciate it.
3:55:45 - Listen, this one I know.
3:55:47 And then I did want to say thank you to Dr. Mullins.
3:55:50 He, I told him, I said, I have all these things that are from
3:55:53 the Florida School Board Association that I wanted to express,
3:55:55 and he said, absolutely, sit down with us.
3:55:59 Let’s work all those things out as far as what your concerns are
3:56:01 about graduation and everything, so I wanted to say thank you,
3:56:03 Dr. Mullins, for being open to that, thank you.
3:56:07 That’s it, sorry.
3:56:09 I don’t have any questions if you guys have, kind of stole the
3:56:10 whole thing.
3:56:12 You may not want to go just yet, and I don’t know if you’re the
3:56:15 right person or not, but I’ve been getting a lot of constituents
3:56:20 reaching out to me saying, okay, so you’re opening for our
3:56:24 students to work.
3:56:27 What about my swim club?
3:56:29 What about my, so where are we with that?
3:56:33 - Sure, actually, and I’ll speak on behalf of Robin Novelli, but
3:56:36 it’s him and his team that’s working on it, but we’ve talked
3:56:39 about it extensively.
3:56:41 Every year, we have to relook at the facility use agreement and
3:56:43 agree that it’s appropriate.
3:56:46 This year, we knew that it wasn’t appropriate because there’s
3:56:48 gonna need to be more cleaning after events.
3:56:52 We need to assure our parents that if the community uses our
3:56:55 building on Sunday, that we’ll have custodians in there Sunday
3:56:58 night or first thing Monday morning to do a deep clean into the
3:57:02 area that students are entering into.
3:57:05 So we needed to add additional custodial hours into our facility
3:57:08 use agreement.
3:57:10 We discussed this on Monday.
3:57:12 That should be done by July 1st, and from that date to everybody’s
3:57:18 agreement, it will be done by July 1st.
3:57:22 And after that date, outside community partners will be able to
3:57:25 fill out the form, send it into principals, and principals will
3:57:30 be able to evaluate it, as they do in the past.
3:57:33 The process hasn’t changed.
3:57:35 We’re just asking all of our community partners to wait until
3:57:36 July 1st when the new form is available.
3:57:39 Thank you.
3:57:41 Yeah, you bet.
3:57:43 Anything else?
3:57:45 Ms. Mora, thank you so much for being on the ready for us all
3:57:46 the time.
3:57:48 We appreciate it.
3:57:50 All right.
3:57:52 Is there any further business before we adjourn this meeting and
3:57:55 reconvene our policy work?
3:57:59 All right.
3:58:01 That being said, the board meeting is adjourned.
3:58:03 Good job, Dr. Mullins.
3:58:09 [Music]