Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
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12:50 - Good evening.
12:51 I’m happy to welcome all of my fellow board members
12:53 and call the August 25th, 2020 school board meeting to order.
12:56 We continue to modify meeting processes
12:58 to COVID-19 pandemic.
13:00 Public attendance is permitted on a limited basis,
13:02 allowing for 30 persons,
13:04 in addition to staff and board members to be present.
13:07 Persons wishing to make public comments
13:08 are able to make them in person,
13:10 or were able to make recorded comments,
13:12 which we will listen to at the appropriate time.
13:14 Pam, roll call, please.
13:16 - Mrs. Belford.
13:17 - Present.
13:19 - Ms. McDougall.
13:20 - Present.
13:21 - Mrs. Deskevich.
13:22 - Present.
13:23 - Mr. Susan.
13:24 - Present.
13:25 - And Mrs. Campbell.
13:26 - Present.
13:27 - The board will now hold a moment of silent reflection
13:29 in memory of one of our BPS family members
13:31 who recently passed away.
13:33 April Daniels-Lockaby,
13:34 a teacher from Space Coast Junior Senior High School.
13:53 Thank you.
13:54 Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
13:59 I pledge allegiance to the flag
14:01 of the United States of America
14:03 and to the republic for which it stands,
14:06 one nation, under God,
14:08 indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
14:15 At this time, I would like to offer my fellow board members
14:18 and Dr. Mullins the opportunity to recognize students, staff,
14:21 or members of the community.
14:23 Who would like to start us off this evening?
14:26 Ms. McDougall.
14:29 - Thank you, Madam Chair.
14:30 I have a couple of things.
14:31 First, I want to give a shout out
14:33 to Principal Jones at Audubon.
14:35 She sent me a video that she provided to the whole community
14:42 of Audubon students and parents
14:44 of what it’s going to look like when you go back to school.
14:46 It was amazing.
14:47 Well done.
14:48 So thank you, Principal Jones, for sharing that
14:50 and I so appreciate it.
14:52 I also want to remind classroom teachers
14:55 that Bright Ideas Classroom Grant is open
14:58 and it closes September 18th.
15:02 This is a grant, so if you have a great idea
15:04 and don’t have any money to fund it,
15:05 this might be a place to do that.
15:07 So don’t forget to check at Brevard Schools Foundation.
15:10 And last but not least is, quite frankly,
15:13 I want to give a shout out to our whole staff,
15:16 from our school staff to our administrative staff,
15:19 to our bus drivers, to people who keep the air conditioning
15:23 going.
15:23 This has been an amazing opening.
15:26 It’s not our typical opening.
15:28 So I want to just give a shout out
15:29 to everyone who has worked so hard,
15:31 put in so many hours to make this the best
15:33 that it can be at this time.
15:34 So thank you.
15:35 - Thank you, Ms. McDougall.
15:37 Ms. Doskovich?
15:38 - Thanks, Ms. Belford.
15:40 Of course, the entire staff, every employee is going above
15:44 and beyond right now with the different circumstances,
15:47 but I’d like to shine a little light on our ET people
15:51 at the moment because they are not only supporting
15:55 the traditional brick-and-mortar technology issues
15:58 that we traditionally have, they’ve extended that.
16:02 With the same amount of support staff
16:04 and the same amount of employees,
16:05 they’ve extended that to all the e-learning.
16:08 So they’re supporting students, they’re supporting parents,
16:10 teachers in a way they haven’t before
16:14 in a capacity they haven’t before.
16:16 I reached out to Mr. Cheatham this morning
16:18 and just asked a couple questions and he said,
16:20 “Today alone, they had 1,200 Zoom meetings going
16:23 at the same time.”
16:25 And he said, “That’s not counting Microsoft Teams
16:28 and all these other programs that they’re using.
16:30 That was just Zoom meetings going on.”
16:32 And also wanted to thank the tech associates
16:36 in each of the schools.
16:37 They’re spread really thin right now,
16:39 supporting teachers, students, parents again
16:42 within the schools.
16:43 And we recently made some adjustments that have spread
16:47 them even more thin.
16:48 So I’m still very concerned about the amount
16:50 of tech support staff that we have in the schools.
16:53 And last, the ET help desk.
16:55 Day one, they had 270 tickets they opened.
16:59 And did my voice just get louder?
17:01 Did they turn up?
17:03 Thank you back there, Mike.
17:06 So the help desk, like I said,
17:08 270 tickets they opened on day one
17:11 of issues they had to solve.
17:12 So they’re working tirelessly.
17:14 And Mr. Cheatham also suggested
17:16 that maybe I give a shout out to the staff
17:18 around the school that are filling in the gaps
17:20 for the rest of our tech specialists
17:25 that can’t get to all those.
17:26 So the front desk clerks are answering tech calls right now.
17:30 Our media specialists are all of a sudden
17:32 becoming tech specialists.
17:33 Everybody is becoming an assistant tech specialist
17:36 that is free and able.
17:38 So thank you to all those that are supporting
17:40 technology right now.
17:41 We are dependent on it and we appreciate it.
17:44 Thanks, Ms. Belford.
17:45 - Thanks, Ms. Deskovitch.
17:46 And I just have to say to add on to what you said,
17:49 I got an email from a parent the other day
17:50 that said the SRO at the school was trying
17:53 to fix a webcam on one of the computers.
17:55 So I think truly everyone on the team
17:58 has been pitching in to try to provide that support.
18:01 So thank you.
18:02 Ms. Campbell.
18:03 - Thank you.
18:04 I’m gonna piggyback a little bit on Ms. Deskovitch’s,
18:07 ‘cause I had texts on mine as well.
18:10 I got to visit 10 of my schools yesterday
18:13 on opening day and things were,
18:17 there was the whole Zoom going out
18:19 on the entire eastern seaboard thing.
18:21 But other than that, things were going really smoothly
18:23 and students were being cooperative.
18:25 But I had a conversation with one of our principals
18:28 that said, I’ve been asking about the computers
18:30 because we have that, that we talked about several,
18:33 I think Ms. Deskovitch, you asked about how many computers
18:35 were still out, right?
18:36 And one school said they loaned out 400,
18:38 this is an elementary school, 400 devices last spring.
18:42 And as of right now, they’ve gotten all back but four.
18:45 So I think that’s pretty, pretty amazing
18:48 that they’ve done so well.
18:50 And another, I talked to one of the techs at our schools
18:53 who said they still had a few left,
18:55 but they had gotten back,
18:56 15 of the ones they had gotten back were broken.
18:59 But rather than just, you know,
19:02 what’s the process we, you know, I forgot the term.
19:06 Yeah, right, DCR, he had said, okay, what can we do?
19:09 Can we piece them together?
19:10 And it actually, team had salvaged 10 of them
19:13 out of the 15 broken ones were able to kind of put parts
19:15 here and there and save 10
19:17 and so they could have devices for this fall.
19:19 So great job and great stewardship of our materials
19:24 and appreciate them at the district level
19:27 as well as the school level.
19:29 We’ve applauded our staff.
19:30 I just would like to say kudos to our students yesterday.
19:34 Every principal that I talked to talked about our students
19:37 doing such a great job.
19:38 They had a lot of challenges to deal with yesterday,
19:40 but the principal said, you know, the students walked in,
19:43 they all had a mask, they’ve been cooperating.
19:45 I saw first graders lining up in the hallway
19:47 and they were remembering to space out
19:50 and you know, just high school principal, same thing.
19:53 Students are doing a great job with it.
19:55 They’re really being cooperative.
19:57 So just wanted to give a big thank you to our students
20:00 for taking on the challenges.
20:02 The ones who are in the building and the ones who are at home
20:04 being patient and waiting on the technology to work,
20:08 but great job to all of our students
20:10 who have already come back.
20:12 - Absolutely.
20:13 Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
20:14 Mr. Susan.
20:15 - Thank you so much.
20:16 You know, the first day of school
20:17 has always been a magical one for when you’re a teacher
20:20 and the kids are coming in the hall
20:21 and even for us now as school board members
20:23 as we do it over and over again.
20:25 Sorry, this thing’s driving me nuts.
20:27 And this year it was, everybody came together
20:33 in a different way of magic.
20:34 It was the bus drivers, the crossing guards.
20:37 I stopped and thanked a couple of crossing guards.
20:39 Hey, thanks for doing everything you’re doing
20:41 all the way to the guys that deliver all of our materials,
20:45 the guys, the teachers, the administration,
20:47 everybody came together.
20:49 And I think that that’s what we do in education
20:52 and a lot of parents and people out there in the community,
20:55 we’ve been doing this for decades and this is a tough one.
21:00 And I’m just so proud of all of our people
21:02 who came together to make this happen.
21:04 And I think that a lot of people need to understand
21:07 that we all need to keep moving forward.
21:09 There’s gonna be hiccups.
21:10 I apologize.
21:11 I think the Zoom thing might’ve been
21:12 because I was uploading all my dependents
21:14 for the dependent audit.
21:15 I had so many of them going in there.
21:17 I might’ve crashed the system, but I think in general,
21:20 I think we as a school district did an amazing job
21:23 and I’m looking forward to doing everything we can
21:25 to make sure that we have their backs
21:27 and that we’re doing everything that we can.
21:28 My daughter, she started school nine years old
21:33 and she came back and I was like, honey,
21:35 she was all excited.
21:36 Talked to her before she got on the bus.
21:38 She gets on the bus, she comes home.
21:39 I talked to her.
21:40 I was like, please let this thing go right.
21:42 And she said, I loved it.
21:43 We had so much fun, all this stuff.
21:45 But dad, you gotta work on recess.
21:47 We happen to be socially distanced.
21:48 I got to wear my mask the whole time.
21:50 She was making some lobbying efforts on that end,
21:54 but loved it.
21:55 And so when you can see from the beginning
21:57 from your family as a parent all the way across the board
22:00 to seeing our teams come together,
22:02 I’m just so proud of this district.
22:03 And I just wanted to say that.
22:04 I did wanna tell the parents that are still out there.
22:06 There’s some of the parents that are still out there
22:08 trying to figure out what they’re gonna do.
22:10 Understand that we have to make financial
22:13 and economic decisions based upon what you do.
22:16 So we’d appreciate it if you did it sooner than later.
22:19 So if you can get off the fence and make a decision
22:22 on which way you’re gonna go
22:23 with the direction of the children,
22:24 let us know so that we can do that.
22:26 I wanted to thank the FSU director of football athletics
22:29 who went on a Zoom call with me
22:31 and walked me through how they clean their locker rooms,
22:34 how they take care of all of their athletic,
22:37 all the way from their equipment
22:39 to their locker rooms, to everything else.
22:41 And then I forwarded that information to Dr. Mullins.
22:44 And I think that we’re gonna be a good,
22:47 we should have some really good responses
22:49 in one of the areas that I think
22:50 is a very tentative place for the COVID.
22:54 And I wanted to also say thank you to Suhan
22:57 because we have our O’Gally locker room.
23:00 The air conditioning is on the agenda tonight
23:03 and that is a big deal.
23:05 Many people don’t know that we haven’t had air conditioning
23:08 in many of our locker rooms and we are addressing that.
23:11 So I wanted to say thank you to Dr. Mullins
23:12 for making that a promise.
23:15 And I’m excited because those kids now
23:18 will be more in tune to taking PE and everything else.
23:21 So with that, I have a couple of things later on
23:23 that I wanted to talk about, but that’s it.
23:25 Thank you.
23:26 - Thank you, Mr. Suzan.
23:27 Dr. Mullins.
23:28 - Thank you, Ms. Belford.
23:29 And just thank you to the board members
23:31 for recognizing so many diverse areas of our organization.
23:36 Many folks only see Brevard Public Schools
23:39 as the school facing reality
23:43 and that certainly is our core mission.
23:45 But behind every school are hundreds
23:47 and quite frankly, thousands of people who make schools run.
23:52 One of the things that we take for granted
23:55 until it doesn’t work is air conditioning.
23:58 And I have to just applaud
24:02 and commend our air conditioning team,
24:06 our chiller building automation and HVAC folks.
24:10 They literally worked 12 hour days leading up
24:15 to this past weekend to open schools.
24:18 I’m gonna work through the weekend,
24:20 responding to issues under Su’s leadership.
24:25 They had proactive measures.
24:27 They knew where the problem points were.
24:30 They turned air on over, I think on Saturday,
24:32 we had seven or eight buildings
24:34 that were something strange was going on.
24:38 They mitigated those.
24:39 We did have one of our schools
24:41 that continued to have some issues going into Monday.
24:44 They worked, I think, half the night last night
24:47 to get it up and running.
24:49 And just the commitment, understanding the raised necessity
24:55 of maintaining our HVAC with the increasingly lean staff,
25:00 just I wanna echo the compliments
25:02 to the teams across the district.
25:04 Mr. Susan alluded to our distribution team.
25:09 They last week distributed all of our PPE equipment
25:14 and supplies to our schools, all 80 plus schools.
25:18 And we reduced, that’s an increasingly lean team
25:23 as a result of restructuring this past year.
25:25 Our bus drivers, I had a wonderful start
25:29 to the day yesterday,
25:30 very early at our south compound and about 100 drivers
25:36 strolling in, the attitudes, the smiles,
25:39 the positivity to get back on the road and serve our kids.
25:43 It was just so impressive.
25:46 And I enjoyed visiting a few schools myself yesterday.
25:52 And our administrative teams,
25:55 the support they provided to teachers,
25:58 the positivity in the schools as I visited them
26:01 was top notch.
26:05 It was just so impressive.
26:08 The teaching staff to support everything possible
26:11 from escorting kids, the systems they had in place
26:14 because parents couldn’t escort their kids to class.
26:17 Our parents were absolutely fantastic.
26:20 They didn’t, they understood the new rules
26:23 and the procedures.
26:24 They were compliant.
26:25 They walked their kid up to the front of the school.
26:27 They said goodbye and they understood.
26:29 And we, I just want to express my appreciation
26:32 to our parents and our community.
26:34 And then our teachers took over.
26:35 They’re there in the hallway.
26:36 They take them to their classes
26:38 and just opened up their hearts to our kids immediately
26:42 as they came onto campus and even beforehand.
26:45 The virtual tours, the orientations,
26:47 the drive-through registrations,
26:50 the logistics of opening a district are enormous anyway
26:55 and our administrative teams and our teaching staff
26:57 just went above and beyond to make it all happen.
27:00 So we did, I want to share,
27:03 we did open our first new elementary school
27:06 in Brevard Public Schools in over 10 years.
27:09 And so they got off to a great start yesterday.
27:12 I want to remind our community,
27:14 we opened Viera Elementary School debt-free.
27:16 That school was paid for with impact fees
27:19 and we were only able to do that
27:21 because of the commitment of this board
27:23 and the fiscal responsibility
27:26 of the school board and our community.
27:29 So they got off to a great start yesterday as well.
27:31 I was able to spend a few minutes with them
27:33 and just a positive experience all day.
27:38 So to put it into context,
27:40 I met with cabinet at the end of the day.
27:42 We planned for a two-hour debriefing
27:44 to go over all the challenges and the issues.
27:47 We were done in 90 minutes.
27:48 I think that’s a record for a cabinet meeting.
27:50 So that’s because our team that you see in the back
27:54 were right there for their schools
27:56 to support them and to be responsive.
27:59 So my thanks to our leadership team as well.
28:02 Thank you, Ms. Belton.
28:03 - Thank you, Dr. Mullen.
28:05 First, if you all would please join me
28:08 in wishing Ms. McDougall a happy belated birthday.
28:11 She had a birthday this past weekend.
28:14 (audience applauding)
28:15 If you can imagine the stress that school board members
28:19 were feeling on Sunday as she was celebrating her birthday,
28:22 and I know that we were all anticipating
28:24 and hoping and praying that we had a smooth start on Monday.
28:27 So sorry that we were not able to be with you,
28:30 but I hope you had a very, very happy birthday
28:32 or the happiest that you could
28:33 given the circumstances of Ms. McDougall.
28:35 - Thank you.
28:38 - Like everyone else, I was out in schools yesterday
28:41 and just floored at the positivity and the excitement.
28:46 And even this weekend, talk about the preparation
28:52 for going into Monday.
28:54 This weekend, our lawn mowers were out mowing schools
28:59 to try to ensure that they were ready for students
29:02 to return on Monday.
29:03 And so not without glitches, obviously,
29:06 we had our online glitches, but I’ll tell you,
29:10 I was in schools when teachers were dealing with that
29:13 and the positivity even during that frustration
29:16 of just they were in communication
29:19 with the parents continuously,
29:20 letting them know what was going on via text
29:23 or different applications, keeping them in the loop.
29:26 I was able to see when a couple of kids
29:29 had been not able to get on for a little while
29:31 and then everyone was able to come together
29:32 and the excitement of it actually working.
29:36 Every school that I spoke to in different ways
29:40 mentioned the enormous amount of collaboration
29:43 that has gone on in our district within schools
29:46 and across schools.
29:48 Dr. Mullins and I were at Imperial
29:50 and the phenomenal music teacher there.
29:52 If you get a chance to go by
29:53 and take a look at her classroom
29:54 and the way that she’s adapted, absolutely amazing.
29:57 But she was telling us how music teachers
30:00 throughout the district came together to figure out
30:03 what do we do about singing?
30:05 What do we do about instruments?
30:06 What instruments can we play?
30:08 We can’t do the recorder anymore.
30:09 So what can we do?
30:11 How do we get those instruments?
30:14 One of our rockstar teachers at Kokina reached out to me
30:17 and shared that all of our sixth grade teachers
30:20 in Brevard County have a group Facebook page
30:23 where they’re sharing resources
30:25 and just anything to not recreate the wheel
30:31 and supporting each other and understanding technology.
30:36 There was MIMS I was at yesterday
30:40 and they were talking about the fact
30:42 that several of the teachers
30:43 who are not teaching in the e-learning platform
30:46 but have stronger technology skills
30:48 have been giving up their own personal time
30:50 to help their peers with the technology
30:52 and how to utilize everything.
30:54 So just amazing the way that everyone
30:56 has come together through this
30:58 and the amount of excitement and creativity
31:01 that we’re seeing in our schools
31:03 is great among all of the many challenges as well.
31:09 Also wanna thank we had up in the north end
31:13 North Brevard Charities.
31:18 That’s not the right name.
31:19 But anyway, we’ve had several groups
31:21 that have been doing prayers for our schools.
31:23 And so I was able to participate
31:25 in a prayer walk with astronaut high school last week.
31:27 Thursday night we’re doing Space Coast
31:30 but we’re doing the entire feeder chain.
31:32 And so we went from astronaut to Oak Park
31:36 to Madison Middle School.
31:37 And just a group of folks walking
31:39 and praying over the schools and the students
31:42 and the parents and all of us
31:44 making our way through all of this.
31:46 And I know there have been several others
31:47 throughout the county as well.
31:48 So wanna certainly thank all of those folks.
31:51 And then as if we didn’t have enough going on,
31:56 we had obviously everyone heard
31:58 about the closure of legacy.
32:00 And according to the judge’s order,
32:02 timing was bad for those families.
32:05 But I gotta tell you our team,
32:07 everyone from leading and learning ET,
32:12 Mr. Novelli from operations, you name it.
32:15 I think just about everyone on the team
32:17 has been out there to address that situation.
32:20 And our principals have been absolutely phenomenal
32:23 reaching out to each and every one of those families
32:25 and welcoming them back into our schools
32:28 to ensure that they were ready to go today.
32:30 So I have to give them a huge shout out
32:32 for taking that on top of everything else.
32:37 And then before I go into our agenda,
32:40 I wanted to take just a minute
32:42 because there’s been a good bit of conversation
32:45 around the FEA lawsuit, the order that came out this week.
32:50 So Mr. Gibbs, if you could just take a minute
32:52 to kind of explain what occurred there,
32:54 where we are so that everybody’s on the same page.
32:57 - Sure.
32:58 As everybody probably has seen on the news yesterday,
33:01 the judge in Leon County issued their order
33:05 finding that the order
33:07 that Commissioner of Education Corcoran issued
33:11 was unconstitutional in part.
33:13 And as a part of that order,
33:15 he redlined out all the parts that are unconstitutional,
33:18 which included all reopening requirements
33:21 for brick and mortar schools,
33:23 along with submitting plans to the district.
33:27 And again, yesterday, after that, before five o’clock,
33:31 the FEA, or not the FEA,
33:33 the state filed their appeal on that case.
33:36 And when a state agency files an appeal,
33:38 it acts as an automatic stay under the appellate rules.
33:42 So we are now in a holding pattern
33:44 as far as what the order means for the state and the districts.
33:49 I don’t know if the commissioner is gonna try
33:51 and issue a new order,
33:53 which would be one of his options to try and move this out
33:56 before it goes to the District Court of Appeal.
33:58 But, and I have not seen a timeline as of yet
34:01 as for scheduling hearings or anything to get it resolved
34:05 and as quickly as possible.
34:07 So I’m happy to take any additional questions.
34:12 - Anyone have questions for Mr. Gibbs on that?
34:16 I just have one quick question.
34:19 Are you suggesting that the commissioner could issue,
34:22 because the order was only based
34:25 on the specific emergency order,
34:30 are you suggesting that the commissioner
34:32 could issue a different order
34:34 that didn’t meet the judges?
34:37 - He could certainly issue an amended order
34:40 that tries to get around what the judge struck
34:44 and make it compliant.
34:45 I mean, I don’t know if he’d be successful
34:47 and might result in a, you know,
34:49 hey, we wanna challenge that as well on the same basis,
34:52 but he certainly has some options
34:55 and it wouldn’t be the first time
34:56 someone’s tried to move out an order on appeal
34:59 just to get around the court system.
35:02 - Okay, thank you, Mr. Gibbs.
35:06 Okay, that is going to bring us
35:09 to the adoption of the agenda, Dr. Mullins.
35:11 - Ms. Belford and members of the board on tonight’s agenda,
35:14 we have two presentations, administrative staff recommendations,
35:17 12 consent items, three action items,
35:20 and four information items.
35:22 The changes made to the agenda since being released
35:24 to the public in August four are as follows.
35:27 Item A7 on administrative staff recommendations
35:30 and item G24 on department school initiated agreements
35:34 were revised.
35:35 Added to this agenda are presentations
35:37 on budget and enrollment,
35:39 as well as fall athletics overview.
35:41 Also added is F12 on interlocal agreement CARES Act funding.
35:47 - Thank you, Dr. Mullins.
35:48 What are the wishes of the board?
35:49 - Move to approve.
35:50 - Second.
35:51 - Moved by Ms. Campbell, seconded by Ms. Deskevich.
35:53 Is there any discussion?
35:56 Please vote.
36:11 - I don’t have the box popping up.
36:26 - Can we do a voice vote on that, Ms. Deskevich?
36:46 - I don’t have it, I logged out and then.
37:00 - All right, the motion passes five zero.
37:03 Dr. Mullins, would you please let us know
37:05 about the administrative staff recommendation?
37:07 - Yes, there is one person on this agenda item
37:10 for the board to consider.
37:11 - What are the wishes of the board?
37:12 - Move to approve.
37:13 - Second.
37:14 - Moved by Mr. Susan, seconded by Ms. McDougall.
37:17 Is there any discussion?
37:21 Please vote.
37:34 The motion passes five zero.
37:38 Dr. Mullins, will you please tell us
37:41 about the presentations you have this evening?
37:44 - Ms. Belford and members of the board,
37:46 tonight we have two presentations.
37:47 The first is a budget and enrollment update.
37:50 Ms. Cindy Lesinski, our chief financial officer
37:53 will provide us with that information
37:55 and Chris Moore, assistant superintendent
37:57 of student services will follow
37:59 with the fall athletics overview.
38:01 Ms. Lesinski, will you go ahead
38:03 and provide the presentation of the board and the community?
38:33 - Okay, good evening board members.
38:41 Thank you for the opportunity
38:42 to keep you informed on several topics.
38:45 The first topic I wanna cover is the current
38:48 and projected impact of the coronavirus
38:51 on the state budget,
38:52 specifically reoccurring general revenue.
38:56 We will also revisit FY seven, eight state reductions.
39:02 Also would like to discuss what projected state
39:06 general revenue declines could mean
39:08 to our current budget outlook.
39:11 Talk about what steps we’re currently taking
39:14 and finally round that out with a brief on enrollment
39:18 for the first day numbers.
39:26 So the impact of the coronavirus severely impacted
39:29 the state’s general revenue collection
39:32 in the last quarter of FY 20.
39:35 They were actually, Florida was doing very well.
39:38 The state was doing very well all the way up into March.
39:41 And then the last quarter general revenue went down.
39:48 It went below the January estimate by almost $1.9 billion,
39:54 which is a 5.7% decline.
39:58 Sales tax was 6.1% below its expected level,
40:03 accounting for about 85% of the shortfall.
40:06 So tourism is something that the state of Florida depends on.
40:11 And the last quarter of 2019 took a severe hit.
40:19 On August 14,
40:21 the Office of Economic and Demographic Research
40:25 held their general revenue fund estimating conference.
40:32 There were substantial adjustments
40:34 to the earlier general revenue estimate in January.
40:37 And then you can see in 2021,
40:40 there was a $3.4 billion adjustment.
40:44 And then there was also,
40:46 which equates to a 9.9% decline compared to January estimates.
40:52 And then in FY 21-22,
40:55 the adjustment was $2 billion or a 5.6% decline.
41:01 Again, that is compared to the January estimates.
41:05 And in January, no one had any idea
41:09 that we would be where we are today.
41:12 Now, the estimates assumed several things.
41:17 They assumed a vast improvement
41:19 with the availability of that vaccine in 2021.
41:24 And it also assumed that Florida is permitted
41:26 to utilize remaining CARES Act funds
41:28 to mitigate any revenue shortfalls.
41:31 So those were the two assumptions that they used
41:34 when coming up with this forecast.
41:36 And again, it is a forecast.
41:38 And then below, you can see that the state’s adjustments
41:41 during a similar time in 2007 and ‘08.
41:46 And there, this provides context to where we are projected
41:50 to experience this year and next.
41:54 And then you can see in 2007 and ‘08,
41:57 there was an adjustment of $2 billion or a 7.5% decline.
42:10 And then finally, in mid-September next month,
42:14 there’s going to be a long-range outlook conference.
42:18 And this will include the adjusted general revenue estimates
42:22 that the EDR projected.
42:28 So they will include those.
42:30 And then when they do that,
42:31 they will create a three-year outlook.
42:34 And from that three-year outlook,
42:35 we’ll get a really good preview of what FY21-‘22 will look like.
42:40 Again, that’s going to be next month.
42:42 And then the legislature will use that information
42:47 when they reorganize following the November election.
42:52 And they’ll have a better idea that we’ll have –
42:55 again, they’ll have estimates, but they’ll have a better idea
42:57 and then come and decide what they want to do
43:00 and examine the health of the state budget.
43:03 So more to come on that.
43:09 So revisiting fiscal year ‘27 – I’m sorry –
43:14 revisiting fiscal year ‘07-‘08,
43:17 you can see that the state overall reduced the FEFP budget
43:25 by nearly $500 million.
43:29 And what they did was they took a percentage across the entire
43:35 board
43:36 of FEFP across all the districts,
43:39 and the first reduction that we took in 2007-2008 was in the
43:44 second calculation,
43:45 and you can see that was $7.4 million.
43:49 And then the Brevard took another decrease in the third
43:53 calculation,
43:53 and that was $6.1 million, equating to $13.5 million in 2007 and
44:02 ‘08.
44:03 And that just kind of gives you some context about the last time
44:06 there was a downturn in the economy and what the impact was.
44:23 So what does a potential reduction mean for BPS in FY ‘21?
44:34 You know, again, during fiscal year 2007 and ‘08,
44:38 BPS lost $13.5 million in state FEFP revenue
44:43 by extrapolating the current state revenue loss and state
44:48 variables.
44:49 The worst case for Brevard this year, the worst case scenario,
44:53 would be a 3.9% reduction, and that would equate to a $22.4
44:59 million reduction.
45:00 Now, this reduction assumes that the state does not use any
45:04 reserves
45:04 to offset their revenue shortfall.
45:08 It also assumes that they take a proportional cut across all
45:13 entities
45:13 that receive general revenue funds.
45:17 It is likely the state will use a portion of the state’s
45:21 reserves,
45:21 but conservatively, because, you know, again,
45:25 there are still a lot of unknowns out there.
45:28 The state will not know how long the coronavirus will affect the
45:33 state,
45:33 so this is my opinion.
45:36 I don’t believe they will use all their reserves.
45:38 It wouldn’t be prudent, but I believe that they will use some of
45:43 those
45:43 to offset any kind of budget reductions.
45:52 And again, the EDR has provided updated estimates,
45:54 and we don’t know exactly what the budget impact will be for BPS.
45:58 We will have a better picture following the long-range financial
46:02 conference
46:02 mid-September, and while we remain responsible and prudent,
46:06 we will focus on reopening our schools safely,
46:10 protecting our current teacher staff
46:13 and focus on delivering excellent education to every student,
46:16 and we will continue to monitor expenditures for ongoing savings
46:20 and protect fund balance to buffer any potential mid-year
46:30 revenue loss.
46:33 And then I know the board understands this next point,
46:36 but this is just something I want to say for the public to
46:39 understand.
46:40 When we talk about a budget plan,
46:43 a budget plan is based on projected revenue to cover projected
46:50 expenditures,
46:51 and it is just a plan.
46:52 It is not money in the bank,
46:55 and so when revenue comes in less than expected,
47:02 then there has to be adjustments to balance the budget.
47:06 So again, a budget isn’t money in the bank.
47:11 If we don’t collect that revenue for whatever reason
47:15 with the uncertainties that there are,
47:17 there has to be some kind of adjustment to make sure that we
47:22 balance.
47:22 And talking to CFOs across the state,
47:25 they have advised their boards to hold on to as much savings
47:30 and posture for potential mid-year reductions.
47:35 And then every dollar we save today is a dollar that can benefit
47:40 us tomorrow.
47:41 And then so what are we doing?
47:43 These are some of the prudent steps that we are taking as we
47:46 move forward.
47:47 We’re analyzing district positions as they become vacant.
47:50 We’re restricting out of county travel.
47:53 We will continue to monitor contracts for potential savings,
47:57 evaluate the use of CARES Act funds to see if we can use those
48:01 funds
48:01 to maintain workforce stability.
48:04 We’re going to do a district-wide position analysis
48:08 and also establish quarterly re-budgeting process
48:13 to continue to evaluate the lapse rate.
48:17 In that way, we will have a timely data that can give us a
48:21 better insight
48:21 of where we are with our financial position.
48:28 Are there any questions so far?
48:34 And so now we get to move into student enrollment.
48:36 And as everyone mentioned, yesterday was our first day of school,
48:41 and this is just kind of the first snapshot of the first day
48:47 count.
48:48 You can see that we were under-enrolled in the first count.
48:52 First day counts are always difficult to project.
48:54 And this year, as you can imagine, it was a bit more challenging,
48:58 from Zoom going down to late buses
49:00 and simply the human element of hand-counting kids in classrooms.
49:05 That said, we do have many kids that have not yet registered for
49:09 school,
49:09 and our administrative teams are reaching out to those families
49:12 to help get them registered.
49:15 The state anticipated these enrollment fluctuations this year,
49:19 and through the July 6th emergency order,
49:25 the DOE committed to hold school districts harmless for lower
49:29 enrollment
49:30 through at least the fall semester.
49:33 So we have some time.
49:35 And again, the first day counts are always a little bit messy.
49:40 You can see on this slide, if you compare student membership
49:45 last year to this year,
49:48 there is about 11,500 student difference.
49:53 As each day goes on, I think those numbers will balance out and
49:58 grow.
50:00 And this is just a first look.
50:02 You can see Brevard Virtual, that number increased quite a bit
50:07 from last year.
50:08 Charter schools also increased.
50:11 Home school, I’ll talk about that one at the bottom.
50:15 The home school on the top chart underneath charter schools
50:19 talks about home schoolers that receive some kind of service
50:27 from Brevard schools.
50:29 So if they receive some kind of benefit or service from Brevard
50:34 schools,
50:34 they would get on that row underneath the charter schools.
50:39 McKay scholarships went down a bit, and family empowerment
50:43 scholarships did go up.
50:44 When you look at that bottom line, the home education,
50:47 that is the one that we need to monitor and watch.
50:53 If you compare the actual from last year to this year,
50:57 you’ll see that there is a significant jump in home schooling,
51:01 and that’s something, again, that we’ll have to monitor.
51:08 Is there any questions?
51:11 Ms. Deskovitz.
51:12 The last number that I heard we were down was 7,000 students.
51:16 Are you saying we are down 14,000 students?
51:21 Ms. Deskovitz, Cindy, I’ll go ahead.
51:24 So this number represents all K through 12, pre-K to 12.
51:31 We knew we had about 7,000, I think it’s down to 5,500 now,
51:36 elementary,
51:36 that haven’t registered.
51:39 So, yes, this represents students K through 12,
51:42 so that 5,500 to 7,000 are inclusive of the 14,000.
51:48 Keep in mind that we don’t have any confidence that that number
51:53 is accurate right now.
51:54 The counting process isn’t very manual, it is completely manual.
52:01 Literally, people in buildings walk around to classrooms,
52:04 they count heads, and they put them on a piece of paper.
52:07 That piece of paper gets translated to the office.
52:09 They accumulate those and tally numbers.
52:13 Our first day count is always difficult in a normal circumstance.
52:18 The reality is we had to validate e-learning kids.
52:24 We had to see them online, so some kids didn’t log on until
52:29 later.
52:29 They got bumped off because of Zoom and we couldn’t count them
52:32 because they weren’t online.
52:34 We had parents coming into our schools all day yesterday and
52:39 today.
52:39 I know our e-learning numbers jumped over 1,000 overnight from
52:43 last night to today.
52:44 So, at this point, at this moment, working with staff, we’re not
52:51 alarmed with enrollment.
52:53 Certainly, home school increases is concerning.
52:58 That’s 1,000 students.
53:00 But we see parents coming into our schools every day.
53:04 Our next official count is Thursday and then the following
53:09 Tuesday.
53:09 The following Tuesday or Monday?
53:11 So, Monday is our third official count.
53:16 I would echo Mr. Susan’s comments earlier.
53:20 We know we have parents who are waiting to see our school is
53:23 going to stay open.
53:24 We are open and we are continuing to be open.
53:27 And we’re going to serve our parents and our kids.
53:31 I echo the sentiments of the board, the success of starting our
53:37 schools yesterday,
53:38 and the great work of our teachers to welcome our kids back and
53:43 our administrative teams.
53:44 We continue to remain ready to serve our families, both in any
53:48 one of the platforms,
53:49 e-learning or face-to-face.
53:52 And we’ll continue to reach out to our families to connect with
53:55 them and bring them into our schools.
53:59 I appreciate that you’re not panicked, but that’s a $100 million
54:04 price tag
54:04 if those families don’t enroll their children in our schools.
54:10 I think it’s okay to panic.
54:13 That changes the look of Brevard Public Schools.
54:18 If that continues to maintain, absolutely.
54:21 I just think we need to be very clear and loud about that
54:25 so that people know what this looks like down the road over this
54:30 next year
54:30 if 14,000 students do not return to Brevard Public Schools,
54:33 because I don’t think the public understands.
54:40 So I wanted to say thank you so much for your presentation.
54:44 I love the fact that we restricted out-of-county travel,
54:47 and just so that everybody knows, that includes out-of-county,
54:49 out-of-state, everything.
54:51 Out-of-county is restricted, so I wanted to say thank you to
54:54 that.
54:54 I love the fact that you are establishing quarterly rebudgeting
54:59 for the labs.
55:00 One of the most frustrating things, Dr. Mullins, that we talked
55:03 about
55:03 is at the end of the year how much money is falling to the
55:06 bottom line,
55:06 but you’re actually taking a proactive so that we can adjust
55:09 based upon the year.
55:09 So thank you so much for that.
55:12 I would say one of the areas that we could add to this – this
55:16 is just me speaking –
55:16 we have a series of speakers, consultants, and individuals that
55:20 come in
55:20 and they speak to us in various forms, right?
55:23 But we’ve never really set up a metrics to see how that impacts
55:27 directly into our education piece,
55:29 so that might be an area we look at in the future.
55:32 And that’s just the fact that sometimes we have these people
55:35 come in, they teach us,
55:36 but then how it unpacks into the schools may not be as prominent
55:40 as what we want.
55:41 So at a time when there’s this, maybe that’s some area that we
55:44 could look at, that’s all.
55:45 And then I did. I wanted to say one more time, Dr. Mullins,
55:49 parents, please,
55:51 besides the fact of trying to figure out how we’re going to do
55:54 this,
55:54 when you come in late, it impacts the staff, the teachers.
55:59 The staff has to sit down, re-register, do all that stuff.
56:02 They have to reschedule.
56:03 The teacher has to sit down and add that person to the classroom,
56:06 catch that person up.
56:08 Everything’s kind of impacted beyond that,
56:10 and we want everybody to take the time to make the right
56:13 decisions.
56:13 But at some point, please let us know.
56:15 But other than that, everything else here, I absolutely love.
56:19 Thank you so much for all your work.
56:21 Really appreciate you coming on board and doing everything that
56:24 you’ve been doing.
56:24 Just want to give her a shout-out for that. Thank you.
56:27 Thank you, Mr. Susan. Any other board members have questions or
56:31 comments?
56:31 Ms. Campbell?
56:35 Briefly. There we go.
56:37 So one of the things that you mentioned was that the executive
56:42 order –
56:42 and I think Mr. Gibbs, if you could – the part that the judge
56:46 struck just recently,
56:47 of course, we’re yet to see how – it didn’t affect the funding
56:51 part, correct, as far as them –
56:53 it doesn’t change as far as they’re saying they’ll hold us
56:56 harmless for this –
56:56 Right. He left that in as constitutional
56:58 as long as it wasn’t tied to the opening brick and mortar by the
57:03 end of August.
57:04 But I just wanted to clarify, at this time,
57:06 the state hasn’t given us necessarily a promise that that won’t
57:12 be adjusted come spring.
57:14 Is that correct?
57:15 That’s correct.
57:16 I think they still need to evaluate the numbers, but they did
57:19 promise not to hold –
57:20 they promised to hold us harmless through the fall and not to
57:24 use the October survey numbers.
57:26 Right. So our funding that we’ll get in the fall months –
57:32 I can’t remember exactly the times that it comes in, but, you
57:37 know, windows –
57:37 we’ll get according to our projections from last spring.
57:39 But there’s – like I said, there’s no promise necessary that
57:42 won’t be adjusted in the spring
57:42 as we get our numbers in the February count.
57:46 Right. That is correct.
57:48 And so one of the things that we need to look at, if numbers do
57:53 stay lower
57:53 and enrollment stays lower, is to make sure that with less need
57:58 for teachers,
57:59 because there’s less students, that we grab that lapse rate from
58:04 the teachers
58:04 and make sure that we save that funding in order to possibly
58:08 have to pay something back after the fall.
58:11 Thank you.
58:13 Ms. Campbell, just to clarify, the difference between the
58:18 district’s six-day count,
58:20 the first week of count, and our October counts, the state’s
58:25 first official count of our students is in October.
58:29 We do our counts at the beginning of the year.
58:31 That’s an internal function to then evaluate where we may need
58:36 to do some allocation adjustments in our schools.
58:40 So these numbers are just done internally.
58:43 They’re not reported to state.
58:45 That’s not done until October for what’s called October FTE, and
58:50 then again in February for second semester for February FTE.
58:53 Thank you.
58:57 And to your point, Ms. Campbell, they can guarantee our funding
59:04 through the fall semester based on student numbers,
59:07 but that doesn’t guarantee that they won’t make an adjustment,
59:11 as Ms. Lisinski referenced.
59:12 So there is the potential for an adjustment based on student
59:16 numbers,
59:16 as well as an adjustment based on state revenue as we move
59:21 forward, and I think that’s an important thing.
59:25 That is a scary point.
59:27 It is a very scary point, yes.
59:29 Just to add clarification, it is a difficult year to speculate
59:35 exactly what could happen.
59:38 In ‘07-‘08, there was not an adjustment to enrollment.
59:41 It was a statewide budget reduction.
59:45 It was a percent reduction.
59:47 That’s why we make the analysis or comparison to ‘07-‘08 when
59:55 there was a light $2 billion reduction in revenue,
1:00:00 which the state has obviously has done and could do again.
1:00:05 Adjustments in enrollment are difficult because in our February
1:00:10 FTE calculation doesn’t come back until I want to –
1:00:13 or the adjustments don’t come until April.
1:00:16 So that’s well, well into three-quarters of the year into our
1:00:21 budget,
1:00:21 which is very difficult at that time to make budget adjustments.
1:00:24 That’s why we’re monitoring it early now and carefully
1:00:30 considering what the projections are
1:00:32 and watching our numbers and looking closely at our schools.
1:00:37 Our principals are working right now to reach out to their
1:00:41 families and make contact
1:00:42 and provide them the support that they need and understand where
1:00:46 our numbers are.
1:00:47 The number that we know is impacting our enrollment is home
1:00:54 education.
1:00:55 That’s over 1,000 students higher than it was a year ago.
1:00:58 So there’s no question that that is an accurate number.
1:01:01 So that does have a significant impact on the enrollment in our
1:01:07 schools and potentially future revenue.
1:01:11 Ms. Lisinski, do you know the balance of the 3.2 percent
1:01:16 contingency that we have in reserves?
1:01:19 I’m sorry.
1:01:20 The dollar amount. Do you know the dollar amount?
1:01:22 It’s 19 million – I’m looking at Karen – 19.9 million.
1:01:30 Which, I mean, potential 22 million hit if the state reduces.
1:01:43 We have 19 million in reserves.
1:01:47 A potential 100 million hit midyear.
1:01:56 You may not be panicking.
1:01:59 This does not look good.
1:02:02 So for all of our parents out there – and, Mr. Susan, I think
1:02:05 you make a great point that people are probably still trying to
1:02:08 figure out what’s right.
1:02:08 But in the best interest of students, if they’re not comfortable
1:02:13 coming back into brick-and-mortar schools at this point,
1:02:15 we would certainly encourage them to take advantage of the e-learning
1:02:19 opportunities
1:02:19 so that we can keep them on the same pace as their peers in the
1:02:23 classrooms when they’re ready to come back to the classroom.
1:02:25 You know, that would be a smooth transition for them.
1:02:29 But the bottom line is that we currently have a lot of students
1:02:32 that we don’t know where they are or what education they’re
1:02:35 getting in.
1:02:35 So I think if we can get to a point of clearing that up, we’ll
1:02:40 be much better off.
1:02:42 Ms. Lisinski, thank you so much for your leadership in all of
1:02:46 this.
1:02:46 I know it’s been a trying time, and the information that you’re
1:02:49 putting forward certainly puts some additional stress on your
1:02:52 department to figure out how to guide us going forward.
1:02:55 But we appreciate you.
1:02:56 I appreciate that.
1:02:57 Thank you.
1:02:58 Absolutely.
1:02:59 All right.
1:03:00 Ms. Moore is next, I think.
1:03:19 All right.
1:03:20 Let’s see if I can find what I’m looking for.
1:03:29 This is it.
1:03:31 Hey, good evening, everyone.
1:03:33 How is everybody?
1:03:34 Fabulous.
1:03:36 I first want to start off by introducing our new assistant
1:03:40 assistant director for student activities, Dr. Andrew Ramjit.
1:03:44 And so he started with us July 14th, I will say, in the height
1:03:51 of everything we were trying to do and all the controversy.
1:03:55 So I first wanted to make sure to bring him up here.
1:03:58 I promised him he would not have to present today for the first
1:04:02 time.
1:04:02 But I did want everybody to lay eyes on him and to be introduced
1:04:06 to him and know that he has been a tremendous asset to student
1:04:09 services and has really owned a lot of all of the decision
1:04:12 making that we’ve had to do.
1:04:13 So so thank you personally for media.
1:04:15 Thank you. Before we start talking about fall athletics, I just
1:04:20 want to talk just very briefly about return to activity, because
1:04:25 I would be really remiss if I did not give a personal thank you
1:04:29 and a personal shout out to our athletic directors.
1:04:33 You know, everybody has opinions about the right thing to do.
1:04:38 And what we have found is we have gone through this time that
1:04:43 most, you know, 50 percent of our staff and community really
1:04:48 wanted athletics and 50 percent didn’t.
1:04:50 50 percent really wanted us to come back to school and 50
1:05:00 percent really didn’t. It was it was it is no surprise to us
1:05:03 when we try to get some feedback and we find out that every
1:05:03 decision we make is going to make somebody happy and somebody
1:05:03 angry.
1:05:03 But one of the things that we do try to do every time we make a
1:05:07 decision is go into it eyes wide open.
1:05:09 How do we mitigate all of the factors that could potentially
1:05:13 cause any risk of harm or health? And we did that with our
1:05:17 athletic directors and we sat down with the return to activity
1:05:21 plan.
1:05:21 We trained them, we trained our principals and they took it very
1:05:26 seriously. And so as we go into our fall program, I have
1:05:30 absolute confidence that our athletic directors and our coaches
1:05:35 are going to take the precautions and the mitigating factors
1:05:39 seriously as we move move into our plan.
1:05:44 It was hard work. What our athletic directors did. It was unlike
1:05:49 anything they ever had to do before.
1:05:51 And so if I could ask anything, a personal shout out to some of
1:05:55 our athletic directors at some of our schools would go a long
1:05:59 way to letting them know how much we appreciate the protection
1:06:02 that they took and wrapped around our students this summer.
1:06:06 So as we go into fall athletics, we really thank you, Andrew. We
1:06:11 really wanted to keep a couple of things in mind. And I’m going
1:06:15 to tell you that this presentation was already sent to the board.
1:06:19 I’m going to say last week, early late last week. So I’m not
1:06:23 going through the entire presentation.
1:06:25 I just want the community to know what’s in here. It’s available
1:06:29 for them to see. It’s available for them to look for their own
1:06:31 personal interests.
1:06:32 So I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time on a whole lot of
1:06:36 slides, but I am going to give an overview of what’s in here.
1:06:39 I think this slide is really important because it talks about
1:06:42 why we made the decisions that we did.
1:06:44 First off, you know, when you have a lot of people with a lot of
1:06:48 opinions, most of them just dissenting from one another, we have
1:06:51 to go to who guides us.
1:06:53 And in athletics, who guides us is FHSA, the Florida High School
1:06:57 Athletic Association.
1:06:58 And within the Florida High School Athletic Association, they
1:07:02 have a group called the Sports Medicine.
1:07:04 What does AC stand for? Advisory Committee. I just call them
1:07:10 smack.
1:07:10 But the Sports Medicine Advisory Committee also advised Florida
1:07:14 Athletics.
1:07:15 And for those of you guys who don’t know, as as is any large
1:07:20 organization,
1:07:21 they had to come together and talk and then go away and think
1:07:25 and come together and talk and go away and think.
1:07:27 And I think it was finally on the fourth meeting that they came
1:07:31 back with the Florida sports.
1:07:33 Florida high school sports may start as early as August 24th.
1:07:38 And that then left us to go, OK, we may start on August 24th.
1:07:43 What is best for our students? What is safest for our students?
1:07:47 How do we build up protections and address health concerns while
1:07:53 starting our fall athletic program?
1:07:56 So our second consideration is that Florida High School Athletic
1:08:00 Association kind of kind of said, listen,
1:08:02 as long as you play within some time period, we’re going to
1:08:06 allow your teams to be qualified for the state athletic series.
1:08:10 So we wanted to make sure we stayed within the parameters that
1:08:13 our students could still be competitive within the sports, the
1:08:17 state series.
1:08:17 And and that’s important for a lot of reasons, but none of which
1:08:22 is that least among them is that it will allow our students to
1:08:27 be seen on a competitive stage against some of some of the best
1:08:30 in the state.
1:08:31 And we wanted to make sure that that happened. It’s not going to
1:08:35 surprise you that not third on our list,
1:08:39 but one of the other areas that we really wanted to pay
1:08:43 attention to was costs.
1:08:44 We had a big board workshop. It seems like a lifetime ago,
1:08:48 but I think it was maybe six months ago about the rising cost of
1:08:53 our athletics, including a rising cost for our officials.
1:08:57 Right. Some of some other contract language has increased how
1:09:01 much it costs to run a sports program.
1:09:03 So we really tried to look at ways to minimize, minimize the
1:09:07 cost going into this year, as well as how do we minimize health
1:09:12 and safety concerns?
1:09:13 So so that was the third thing.
1:09:16 And then the last thing is that we really, really, really wanted
1:09:21 to allow our students to continue to participate in sports in a
1:09:26 way that was safe and healthy,
1:09:28 in a way that we could mitigate risks in a way that we could
1:09:33 control as much as we could for the unknown.
1:09:36 And when we get to kind of the end of the presentation, I’ll
1:09:39 talk to you a little bit about, you know, things that we’re
1:09:42 doing and concerns moving forward,
1:09:43 because the last thing we want is for athletics to impact
1:09:47 instruction.
1:09:48 And and I have to be honest and frank and say that there’s a
1:09:51 possibility that that’s going to happen.
1:09:53 And I’ll talk about that at the very end. So how is this
1:09:57 presentation set up in each of the fall sports?
1:10:01 You’re going to see a facing slide that talks about the stages.
1:10:06 So stage one talks about when we had very small groups, we had
1:10:09 less than 10 in a group.
1:10:10 That was right up until this today, the 25th, right up until
1:10:15 today for for football.
1:10:17 And then we wanted to provide them about a week to two weeks to
1:10:21 work in some larger groups, still less than 50, still
1:10:26 controlling the movement of equipment,
1:10:29 still really making sure there’s not physical contact. We are
1:10:33 building up as we go into the school year.
1:10:35 And then as we go into stage three in every single sport, you’re
1:10:39 going to see it looks like the full FHSA practice.
1:10:42 It’s full, full contact, full pads, full equipment. However, we
1:10:47 are still minimizing the teams to the minimum limit for FHSA.
1:10:53 It does mean that some students may not have the ability to
1:10:58 participate in sports as we as we have in the past,
1:11:01 in that we’re not fielding teams of 60 kids on football where it’s
1:11:05 minimum requirements, 50 kids.
1:11:07 That’s what we’re fielding. So, again, each fall sport is going
1:11:12 to have a facing page and each sport is then going to just have
1:11:15 a page that talks about what their divisions look like.
1:11:18 So some of them are divided up into Division one and Division
1:11:23 two based on both ability and crosstown rivals and minimizing
1:11:27 travel.
1:11:28 And some of them are divided into north and south. And so that
1:11:32 was the work of our athletic directors and some of our coaches
1:11:35 that got together and had those conversations.
1:11:37 And you’ll see to the right that we tried to maximize the number
1:11:41 of games that we could play in the time that we had available.
1:11:45 And in each one, you’re going to see that it is in county games
1:11:50 only. Just as a reminder, we do have a return to school plan.
1:11:53 The return to school plan was really super specific about things.
1:11:57 And when those things were already in place, we used those
1:12:00 things for our athletic program.
1:12:01 So no visitors, no visitors, no out of county field trips, no
1:12:07 out of county athletic trips.
1:12:09 This is actually as I’m even looking at this PDF, there was a
1:12:13 change to this PDF that is not accounted for here.
1:12:16 And it says no JV to be played. We are playing JV. So that I
1:12:20 apologize should have been taken off of there.
1:12:22 We are playing JV. We have that scheduled. We’re good to go on
1:12:27 that. Parents don’t panic.
1:12:28 I’ll make sure when we upload this to the board website that it
1:12:33 gets corrected.
1:12:34 So again, I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time. You see
1:12:38 volleyball has the facing page, then the division page.
1:12:40 And it is the same with all the sports. Golf, swimming, diving,
1:12:44 cross country and bowling all have the same facing page because
1:12:48 they’re all on the same calendar.
1:12:49 And then they each have different division pages. It again talks
1:12:53 about the matches in county games and whether or not there’s
1:12:57 going to be a Cape Coast Conference championship.
1:12:58 So golf, swimming and diving, cross country and bowling will all
1:13:02 have their individual pages.
1:13:04 I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on individual sports
1:13:07 because I know everybody has their own sport they’re looking at.
1:13:10 And it’s just going to be easier for you to dive in and pull
1:13:13 this off of the website and to look at it again.
1:13:15 The only changes there is JV JV sports in in the in the sports
1:13:24 that have that.
1:13:26 So here’s what I just want to spend a little bit of time on. We
1:13:30 are still holding to universal precautions and this is really itty
1:13:34 bitty tiny print.
1:13:35 But I none of this is going to surprise anybody that’s watched
1:13:39 any of our presentations.
1:13:41 What we try to do is decrease exposure as much as possible and
1:13:46 increase the protections that we can give kids.
1:13:49 A great example of that would be that when you are indoors
1:13:53 having a team meeting, we are following the return to school
1:13:57 mandate of school face of face coverings.
1:13:59 And if you are not able to socially distance. So the things in
1:14:05 here are not going to surprise you.
1:14:07 Again, the last two bullets are probably the ones that we’ve had
1:14:12 the most people write us about and want want to see one
1:14:16 explanation of and the explanation of it’s part of our return to
1:14:21 school plan.
1:14:21 No visitors, no out of county travel.
1:14:27 Continuing, we are going to ask players and coaches and and
1:14:32 officials to screen.
1:14:33 This is an extracurricular activity. They are choosing to be
1:14:38 there.
1:14:38 And so we are making sure that they are healthy as they
1:14:42 participate.
1:14:43 Face coverings we already spoke about. As you see, there’s going
1:14:48 to be some things in there that you that you think, well, I can
1:14:51 see how that works in, you know, in golf or bowling, but I don’t
1:14:54 see how that works in football.
1:14:56 And so what’s really important to know is that our athletic
1:15:00 directors are getting together. What day is that? What tomorrow?
1:15:04 They are getting together tomorrow and they’re going to start
1:15:08 looking at each of these sections and do some very sports
1:15:12 specific guidelines.
1:15:13 So, for example, face coverings on sidelines. I had a principal
1:15:18 call me today and say, Chris, I think we have I think we have a
1:15:22 solution for that.
1:15:23 You know, we’re going to get those ones that are worn around the
1:15:26 neck and the kids are going to pull them up and pull them down
1:15:28 and they’re not going to leave their face coverings on the on
1:15:31 the sidelines.
1:15:31 And they’re not and they’re going to have them available and
1:15:34 they’re the only ones that are going to touch them.
1:15:36 So schools are already thinking through these mitigating factors
1:15:41 that could protect them as much as possible.
1:15:44 So continuing on to sidelines and benches, just like I said, it’s
1:15:49 not going to surprise you to hear we want the the least amount
1:15:53 of people standing on the sidelines as we can possibly get, that
1:15:58 we want to make sure that they’re cleaned and that they’re not
1:16:02 sharing equipment.
1:16:03 You know, these are the little things that we can do that could
1:16:09 help mitigate the transmission of of really. For those of you
1:16:14 who have been in in athletics for a long time, you know,
1:16:17 wrestling season doesn’t come and go without kids getting a ringworm.
1:16:21 Some of these protections that we have in place should should
1:16:25 probably be in place all the time anyway, because I imagine we
1:16:28 could avoid a lot of a lot of infection and illness if we did it.
1:16:31 And so I think that we’re starting a great precedence for future
1:16:36 future needs.
1:16:37 Locker rooms, we are going to make sure that those are clean and
1:16:40 sanitized daily and that we are going to be looking at those
1:16:43 high touch surfaces.
1:16:44 None of this is new. This is all part of the reopening plan.
1:16:48 Locker room etiquette. We had a couple of phone calls saying, I
1:16:53 really want my child to be able to shower and dress.
1:16:57 You know, they’re going to be able to do that.
1:17:00 We’re discouraged.
1:17:01 it. If they are able, we would much rather them go home, use
1:17:05 their shower at home, you
1:17:07 know, leave their dirty clothes and sweaty clothes at home. But
1:17:11 we do understand that,
1:17:12 you know, for example, cross country runs early in the morning,
1:17:15 and they’re probably
1:17:15 going to want to avail themselves of the locker room facilities
1:17:20 before they go on to school.
1:17:22 So it’s available, just discouraged. But we do want to make sure
1:17:26 that our coaches are
1:17:27 really monitoring how many people are going in and using those
1:17:33 things. Travel I have spoken
1:17:35 about, we are going to follow the same bus transportation
1:17:39 guidelines as we have in the
1:17:41 return to school plan. And I think that could be everybody’s
1:17:44 kind of kind of running through
1:17:46 their head as we start talking about athletic decisions. The
1:17:50 very first document that we
1:17:51 go back to is what does it say in the return to school plan, we
1:17:55 can’t have one rule for
1:17:56 for instruction and another rule for athletics. Game day staff,
1:18:01 we wanted to make sure that
1:18:02 our officials understood that when they come on to our campuses,
1:18:05 and they are working with
1:18:06 us that we hold them to the same standards that we do our
1:18:10 coaches and our kids. And our
1:18:12 venues are going to be Oh, there it is, our venues, we wanted to
1:18:17 make sure to take care
1:18:18 of letting our cheerleaders, our dance teams, our mascots all
1:18:22 know they’re welcome, but
1:18:24 they are not welcome in the small area in which our players are,
1:18:29 are to be. So for example,
1:18:31 on a sideline, there’s a box along the football sideline, and
1:18:34 the players have to stay in
1:18:36 that box. We don’t need any extra people in there. We don’t need
1:18:39 we don’t need the cheerleaders
1:18:41 in there. We don’t need we don’t need anybody else in there. So
1:18:44 we’re going to make sure
1:18:45 that that that we practice social distancing as best we can on
1:18:49 the sidelines as well. Venues
1:18:52 are going to be filled to 25% capacity, and schools are going to
1:18:55 be monitoring that and
1:18:57 figuring that out. We are going to ask spectators who come to
1:19:01 attest that they are they are
1:19:04 answering the COVID verbal screening questions. They these
1:19:07 questions will be posted at each
1:19:09 venue. We are asking spectators to wear face coverings. We are
1:19:17 telling spectators they
1:19:19 are not allowed on the fields during the during events before or
1:19:23 after the events. And if
1:19:25 they are congregating in a small area, we are asking them to
1:19:28 move away from one another
1:19:30 in those areas. Just like some other events that we have had, we
1:19:37 are asking our spectators
1:19:38 to practice social distancing in the stands, they can stay with
1:19:42 their direct family parties.
1:19:43 But other than that, we want them to be socially distancing. And
1:19:47 we are going to make sure
1:19:48 that there’s signage about that. So, like Andrew said, we are
1:19:52 going to have a sports
1:19:53 Pacific guideline meeting starting tomorrow. And we believe we
1:19:57 have all the right people
1:19:58 in the room for that. This is the wrong I sent the right
1:20:04 PowerPoint slide. And then
1:20:06 no, let me correct I sent the wrong PowerPoint slide, which is
1:20:09 this one and then I sent the
1:20:10 right PowerPoint slide and then I opened the wrong one. So I do
1:20:14 we do have marching band
1:20:16 guidelines. The one that I will send you will make sure that you
1:20:19 have that so that you are
1:20:20 able to see what the marching band guidelines are. In fact, I
1:20:22 think the one I sent you had
1:20:24 the right one the marching band guidelines. Finally, the middle
1:20:28 school I’ve had a lot
1:20:29 of questions about middle school. Andrew’s been working with the
1:20:32 athletic directors for
1:20:33 the past two days. They we now have 16 athletic middle school
1:20:38 athletic directors that have
1:20:40 100% consensus on what the plan is. So we’re going to be
1:20:44 bringing that to Dr. Mullins to
1:20:46 tomorrow, and I’m sure he’ll be sharing it out to you. But what
1:20:50 I really wanted to end
1:20:51 with was the work that our coaches and our athletic directors
1:20:59 have to do. So as many
1:21:01 of you are aware, as well as having athletics fall under student
1:21:05 services, so so too does
1:21:07 the Department of Health and much of our COVID response. And so
1:21:13 we have been actively involved
1:21:16 in what it looks like when we have a case, what it looks like
1:21:20 when we have a contact
1:21:22 to a case and the impact that it might have on our buildings.
1:21:27 And so what what is absolutely
1:21:29 essential is that our coaches can tell us who’s playing and
1:21:37 where and when. Our athletic
1:21:40 directors are able to get that information to us quickly. And
1:21:45 that our parents, when
1:21:46 their children are ill, don’t send them to school. Or when there
1:21:50 is a case in the home,
1:21:53 they don’t send them to school. When you talk about a case in a
1:22:00 school, our schools have
1:22:02 been set up to really minimize the impact of that case on the
1:22:07 school. If they’re practicing
1:22:10 social distancing, and we have a case in the school, one or two
1:22:15 kids might be impacted
1:22:17 if we’re following all of our guidelines. It might be more
1:22:21 depending on what kind of
1:22:22 activities are going on in that school or the type of class. But
1:22:27 when you’re talking
1:22:28 about sports, one student is going to impact 20 to 30 to 50
1:22:34 students. And so everything
1:22:37 that we put in place is to minimize that from happening. But one
1:22:44 student showing up for
1:22:45 the good of the team, one parent wanting to see their child play
1:22:50 in a crosstown rival
1:22:51 game will shut a program down for a minimum of three weeks, two
1:22:56 weeks for quarantine and
1:22:58 one week for conditioning. And so it behooves all of our parents,
1:23:03 all of our coaches, all
1:23:04 of our athletic directors, to really understand that the pieces
1:23:09 that were put into place were
1:23:11 put into place in order to keep kids playing and safe and
1:23:17 healthy. But most, okay, healthy
1:23:21 is most important. But second to that, is to keep our schools
1:23:26 open and running and instructing.
1:23:30 Because those 20 to 30 to 40 athletes who are impacted are also
1:23:36 students in our buildings,
1:23:39 and they will be quarantined from instruction. They will be home
1:23:44 and we will end up waiting
1:23:46 to see if there’s a breakthrough case which could possibly close
1:23:50 a school. So we take
1:23:52 these things very seriously. I’ve spoken to the athletic
1:23:55 directors about taking it all
1:23:56 very seriously. And I know based on their reaction that they do,
1:24:01 based on the work they
1:24:03 did over the summer that they do. And I think that’s – I don’t
1:24:09 want to stop this presentation
1:24:12 on a negative note, but I think it’s actually positive that our
1:24:16 coaches and our principals
1:24:18 and our athletic directors understand the trust that our
1:24:23 community has put in them and
1:24:25 have stepped up to that plate. And we will continue to monitor
1:24:29 that and address each
1:24:30 issue as it arises and make sure that we are protecting the
1:24:34 safety and health of our whole
1:24:37 community by doing so.
1:24:42 » Thank you so much, Ms. Moore. Any board members have
1:24:44 questions or comments? Ms. McDougall?
1:24:45 » Well, first I want to thank you and all of our athletic
1:24:48 directors and our coaches,
1:24:50 because I have been communicating with them at various times. So
1:24:53 thank you very much.
1:24:54 Could you please once again tell our community where they will
1:24:58 find this information? I just
1:25:00 want to make sure that they – because I have people say, “I can’t
1:25:02 find something.” So if
1:25:04 you could just again let our community know where to find this.
1:25:07 » Well, sure. As soon as I make sure I have the right one, we’ll
1:25:11 be posting it on our
1:25:12 student services page. Right now, it’s going to be just posted
1:25:16 on the board agenda, and
1:25:17 then we’re going to be posting it on the student services page.
1:25:19 So if you go to the student
1:25:20 services page, we’ll make sure it’s up front and center on that
1:25:23 page. I know that one of
1:25:24 the things Andrew said on his first day here was, “How come I
1:25:28 don’t have an athletics page?”
1:25:30 And I said, “I don’t know. Why don’t you make one?” So I know
1:25:34 that that’s in his list. Unfortunately,
1:25:36 we’ve kept him really hopping since his first day here. So as
1:25:41 soon as he gets a little breathing
1:25:42 room, he’ll – he is going to add an athletic page attached to
1:25:45 our student services page.
1:25:47 » Great. Thank you.
1:25:48 » Can we also ask Ms. Hensley to post that on the COVID –
1:25:51 [ Inaudible ]
1:26:00 » And I know for a fact she has the right one, so that’s good.
1:26:04 » Mr. Susan, I think you had questions for Ms. Martin.
1:26:08 » Yeah. Thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.
1:26:13 You did kind of skip
1:26:14 over the marching band guidelines. Can you – since the public’s
1:26:17 watching, can you kind
1:26:18 of walk us through that?
1:26:20 » Yes, if you let me load them.
1:26:21 » Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know if you just want to do
1:26:24 it from a 30,000-foot
1:26:25 view.
1:26:26 » Listen, I – listen, there’s so much going through this brain
1:26:27 right now. I try not to
1:26:28 store any of it.
1:26:32 » In the interim, while Ms. Moore is pulling up the additional
1:26:36 PowerPoint presentation,
1:26:38 Andrew, I would just like to say welcome very much to the team
1:26:41 and thank you for not turning
1:26:43 around and running when you realized the insane time that you
1:26:46 were joining that particular
1:26:48 team. We appreciate all that you’re doing because we certainly
1:26:51 do understand the impact
1:26:53 of athletics to our ability to educate students as a whole. And
1:26:57 so we appreciate all the support
1:26:58 that you’re giving to our school-based athletic directors and
1:27:01 coaches and making sure that
1:27:03 we can do this as safely as possible. Thank you so very much.
1:27:06 » Andrew, that’s all great, what she just said, but is that an
1:27:09 FSU mask you’re wearing?
1:27:10 Okay, that’s much better than everything she just said. Thank
1:27:13 you.
1:27:14 » Priorities.
1:27:15 » I think that was his introduction to Dr. Mullins as well. So
1:27:20 I’m going to slow down
1:27:22 and talk about marching band a little bit. Thank you for forcing
1:27:26 me to go back in, and
1:27:27 it is in the presentation. So as some of you guys who have had
1:27:32 students in band know, not
1:27:34 all of them want to march, but they all have to march. It is
1:27:39 part of the curriculum of
1:27:40 band. And so this year and this year only, marching is going to
1:27:46 be optional for students.
1:27:49 We don’t want parents to get used to that. It is part of the
1:27:51 program. It is part of the
1:27:52 curriculum. It is the expectation, but for this year and this
1:27:56 year only. Band directors
1:27:58 in consultation with their principals will have the opportunity
1:28:00 to consult about their
1:28:01 level of participation, meaning how many kids are going to go
1:28:05 out onto the field or not,
1:28:07 how many performances they’re going to do or not. Every single
1:28:12 band program is different.
1:28:15 And some are going to be heavily, you know, they may have a
1:28:18 great drum section and they
1:28:20 may want to go everywhere because drum is safe and, you know,
1:28:23 there’s no respiratory
1:28:25 droplets in drum. And so they’re going to work a different
1:28:28 program than maybe a school
1:28:30 that has a heavy horn section. And I’ve just pretty much
1:28:33 exhausted my knowledge of musical
1:28:35 instruments. So jump in anytime you want. You did pretty good.
1:28:43 We are going to maintain
1:28:44 social distancing guidelines per the instrument used. Our new
1:28:49 music person, I don’t know that
1:28:50 she’s been introduced to you guys. Her name is Minnie Orr. She,
1:28:55 yes. Oh, there you go.
1:28:59 Great choice. She’s wonderful. I will tell you, she came down to
1:29:03 my office. She was smart.
1:29:04 She was decisive. She was on it. She had great feedback from the
1:29:10 band directors and most
1:29:12 of this, the vast majority of it came from recommendations from
1:29:16 the band directors. So
1:29:18 she has been using the UC Boulder study for determining what the
1:29:22 guidelines are going
1:29:23 to be per instrument. And so that has already been shared with
1:29:28 our marching bands. Each
1:29:29 school is going to have to determine how they’re sitting and
1:29:32 performing in the stands. You
1:29:34 know, some bands are really bigger than others and they may want
1:29:38 to be in the stands. Some
1:29:40 may want to be on the field. Some may want to come out and
1:29:43 perform and leave. So, you
1:29:45 know, it’s hard for us to dictate that from on high. And so we
1:29:48 want our band directors
1:29:49 to work with our schools in determining that. Although
1:29:53 volunteers are prohibited with the
1:29:55 reopening plan, we do ask that our teams have a chaperone of one
1:30:00 to, I think it’s one to
1:30:02 10, if my memory serves me correctly, because these kids are
1:30:06 going to be in the stands and
1:30:07 they do need to be, I mean, they’re lovely. Band kids are lovely,
1:30:11 but you know, all kids
1:30:12 when they get together need a little supervision. And so we are
1:30:16 going to allow chaperones for
1:30:18 those events. Listen, I don’t know what protective coverings for
1:30:25 bells of brass and wood instruments
1:30:27 are, but many did. And so we will make sure that we use those.
1:30:34 We will ask that marching
1:30:35 bands wear masks at all times when playing wind instruments,
1:30:38 when social distancing is
1:30:40 not possible. Again, Mr. Susan, I have no idea what that looks
1:30:44 like, but many seemed
1:30:46 certain that it could happen and I trust her. Band directors
1:30:50 will work with principals on
1:30:51 the schedule for custodial services, because as you guys know,
1:30:57 when a band performs at
1:30:58 a halftime show, they take up, you know, the band room, the
1:31:02 chorus room, the hallway, and
1:31:05 then they’re out at the football game the entire time and they
1:31:07 may still be in those
1:31:09 same rooms at 11 p.m. So we really want our band directors to
1:31:12 work with our principals
1:31:13 to say, “I need a custodial staff, you know, to be in here first
1:31:17 thing Monday morning,
1:31:18 because I’m going to have kids in here first thing Monday
1:31:20 morning.” And so we have asked
1:31:22 for that to happen. We do know that bands run concession. We
1:31:27 wanted them to be able
1:31:28 to continue to do so if they desire to do so, but we do want
1:31:31 them to coordinate with
1:31:33 BPS food services to determine if there’s any new food safety
1:31:38 guidelines. Period at
1:31:41 the end of that sentence. And bands will not be going to away
1:31:45 games. And that was by consensus
1:31:47 with the band directors. So that’s what we have right now for
1:31:51 band. I will tell you that
1:31:52 with all things COVID, and I consider this COVID, as we get into
1:31:56 it, we discover things
1:31:58 that we missed, things that we forgot, things that we have to
1:32:01 ruminate on. This was no different.
1:32:03 We put this out and immediately I got a text that said, “Hey,
1:32:05 what about middle school
1:32:06 sports?” And I acted like I remembered. And then I said, “Hey,
1:32:10 listen, we’re on it.
1:32:12 We’re on it. We’re talking about it tomorrow.” And we did. And
1:32:15 we were. And we have a plan
1:32:16 ready to go by tomorrow.
1:32:18 » Awesome. So I had a quick question because this came up and
1:32:22 part of the discussion was
1:32:23 if I’m a coach that’s normally on board at the band and I’m not
1:32:28 paid, are we allowing
1:32:30 – sometimes like on football, we had coaches that literally
1:32:33 were just great guys. They
1:32:35 said, “Hey, I don’t need to take a supplement.” They’d been
1:32:38 there 10 years. And I’m sure it’s
1:32:40 the same way in the band. Are we allowing that to be the chaperone?
1:32:44 » Chaperone is determined by the band director as it fits
1:32:46 within our district security guidelines.
1:32:48 » Okay. And then in the event that there’s a way that – say
1:32:53 that the issue is, is that
1:32:55 – and I’m just speaking out. One of the things we used to do
1:32:59 was you could take and divide
1:33:00 your supplements, I think. So like if I’m a – if you wanted to
1:33:05 give two coaches on
1:33:06 the freshman staff, you could give them one of the freshman
1:33:09 supplements and divide it
1:33:10 in half maybe. Would that signify if they wanted to divide one
1:33:13 of the supplements to
1:33:15 allow more people to be a part of the band?
1:33:17 » I would have to refer that question to Dr. Thetty.
1:33:19 » Okay. But that is the – I guess that’s the difference is
1:33:21 that you’re saying that
1:33:22 unless they’re paid, they’re out. But if they are paid a
1:33:25 supplement that they can be a part
1:33:26 of the band.
1:33:28 » Well, they’re really – I don’t want to get into supplements,
1:33:32 but I – they’re – they
1:33:36 do have a supplement for an assistant band director and for a
1:33:39 band director, but oftentimes
1:33:41 what they’re paying in band is not a supplement. It’s a stipend
1:33:45 based on instrument and they
1:33:47 pay somebody to come in and help. It’s not a supplement through
1:33:51 our HR.
1:33:52 » Yeah. Sorry. I just thought of that while you were doing that.
1:33:54 And then the decision’s
1:33:55 left up to the school on what they want to put on their field,
1:33:58 what they want to do.
1:33:59 That’s all up to the school. And from what I’m sounding like, it
1:34:01 sounds like there’s
1:34:02 only going to be one band that actually plays at every game
1:34:05 because the visiting team’s
1:34:07 no longer going to be traveling.
1:34:08 » That is correct.
1:34:09 » Okay. And then – okay. So that’s good on marching band. Now
1:34:13 we all know that 25%
1:34:15 is going to reduce the cost and we’re going to be in a financial
1:34:18 need for our athletic
1:34:19 programs. And we know that football pays for all the other
1:34:22 athletic programs. Dr. Mullins,
1:34:24 you want to speak to where we’re going with that?
1:34:26 » Yes. I’ve already met with Ms. Moore and we’re looking at
1:34:29 analyzing gate receipts from
1:34:31 past years and the projected costs of this season because it’s
1:34:35 shorter and truncated
1:34:37 and not as comprehensive. So we’re doing an analysis to
1:34:40 determine what assistance our
1:34:42 teams would need to accommodate this season.
1:34:47 » Got it. And then what time would that – just as an idea,
1:34:50 maybe you don’t have an answer,
1:34:52 but I know that a lot of the operational needs of each one of
1:34:56 these athletic programs is
1:34:58 pretty quick, right? So if there’s any way to make those
1:35:01 decisions based upon the need
1:35:02 of the schools on what they’re going to get, you know what I
1:35:05 mean? That would be good too.
1:35:07 » Well, just as a reminder, all of our schools start off
1:35:10 without those gates. So they are
1:35:13 – they’re operating now as they always have on last year’s
1:35:16 funds. So they’re not starting
1:35:18 behind other than they wouldn’t have had spring gate.
1:35:22 » Right.
1:35:23 » But as you said, spring gate doesn’t drive athletic programs.
1:35:27 It’s fall gate.
1:35:28 » Absolutely.
1:35:29 » And so, yeah, they’re not operating from behind right now,
1:35:32 but they will be as they
1:35:34 move into the winter sports.
1:35:35 » One of the issues, though, that I would bring to the
1:35:38 attention is that they haven’t
1:35:39 been able to fundraise at all. And our booster clubs are the
1:35:42 ones that drive the cost. I
1:35:44 mean, if we look at the athletic budget and the gate as a
1:35:47 percentage of what the athletics
1:35:48 and activities are playing, it’s a small fraction of what they
1:35:51 go and fundraise for, right?
1:35:53 And they haven’t been able to fundraise at all. So literally,
1:35:55 they’re flat lined right
1:35:56 now. Programs, everything. So I know that in a normal
1:36:00 environment, we would wait until
1:36:02 the gates and everything else, but there is a sense of urgency.
1:36:05 And I know, Andrew, you
1:36:06 know about that and everything else. And I’m sure those athletic
1:36:08 directors, they’re like
1:36:09 the Somali warlords. I know that they make their issues needed.
1:36:14 But if it’s a board,
1:36:16 I would say that that would be an issue for me.
1:36:18 » And then 25%, are we sticking there? Or is there like a
1:36:22 metric that says that we can
1:36:23 open it to 50? I had some questions on that. I didn’t know what
1:36:26 your thoughts were there.
1:36:27 » Just like the reopening plan, we’re going to be evaluating it
1:36:30 this semester.
1:36:31 » Okay, so each semester might be an opportunity or throughout,
1:36:35 hey, we can move, open it.
1:36:36 Okay. And then the temperature checks was interesting. Are they
1:36:40 allowed to opt out of
1:36:41 that? Or is that something that they’re forced to do?
1:36:44 » Yeah, this is an extracurricular activity. So they are
1:36:47 choosing to participate as opposed
1:36:48 to a school, which they are mandated by state law to participate
1:36:52 in. So yeah, we are doing
1:36:54 temperature checks.
1:36:55 » Okay. And then you were right about when you talked about the
1:36:59 ringworm from FSU, or
1:37:00 I’m sorry, when you talked about the ringworm, FSU said, what
1:37:05 they had said was they have
1:37:07 not done anything in the last eight years differently to deal
1:37:11 with the COVID. They are
1:37:12 doing the exact same thing that they’ve done in the past. So I
1:37:15 did want to say that you’re
1:37:16 100% right. But it brings me to the other level is that we need
1:37:21 to make sure because
1:37:22 I know that the, I mean, ringworm, staff, everything that’s
1:37:25 inside those things, some
1:37:27 of these kids don’t wash their uniforms for like weeks. And they,
1:37:30 I mean, are we going
1:37:32 to be able to allow them as part of the COVID revenue to
1:37:35 purchase the cleaning and the sanitizing
1:37:38 and all the stuff that they need inside there? Are we allowing
1:37:41 the athletic teams COVID money
1:37:42 for those sanitation needs?
1:37:45 » We did not budget that, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t
1:37:49 look at it with new funds.
1:37:51 » Do you need anything, do we need to have a discussion?
1:37:55 Because when I was looking at
1:37:56 that, that seemed like one of the areas that was a cause for
1:37:59 concern for me was them not
1:38:01 having the needs and things that they have inside that room to
1:38:04 sanitize because those
1:38:05 kids coming in, one of the things that FSU does is that they use
1:38:08 a mister and everything
1:38:10 else.
1:38:11 » Yeah, I want to clarify, I’m sorry. And I don’t mean to
1:38:13 interrupt because I was in
1:38:14 my brain, I was still on the dirty laundry piece. But yes, they,
1:38:19 we actually did budget
1:38:21 for additional cleaning supplies for sports. We matter of fact,
1:38:26 the way we even figured
1:38:28 out how much to, how many thermometers to give and how many was
1:38:32 based on kind of sports
1:38:34 and what was happening in the summer. So yeah, they do have
1:38:37 supplies. I imagine they’re going
1:38:39 to need more supplies. The schools have gotten a separate budget.
1:38:43 And again, we just got
1:38:44 some additional CARES Act money that may or may not, I don’t
1:38:48 know where we’re at with
1:38:50 that. When is that due, Dr. Sullivan, do you know? She’s not
1:38:58 happy with me. I’m sorry,
1:39:00 Dr. Sullivan.
1:39:01 » It’s okay, I didn’t mean to.
1:39:02 » I’m giving her an evil eye, that’s true.
1:39:03 » She is, I’m so sorry.
1:39:04 » So the cleaning allocations and supplies were by schools,
1:39:07 primarily by classrooms and
1:39:08 by space. And so we would expect that all schools would use
1:39:15 their general COVID related
1:39:18 things in spaces like weight rooms and things like that, because
1:39:24 that’s part of the school
1:39:26 experience. And so there was not an extra allocation for
1:39:31 athletics in, out of our CARES
1:39:33 Act, because it was not designed that way, the CARES Act was
1:39:37 primarily for resuming school.
1:39:41 Separately we did receive CARES Act number five a week ago that
1:39:47 was designed to offset
1:39:49 the DOE’s over expectation that much of PPE could be reimbursed
1:39:58 by FEMA. Last Thursday,
1:40:00 Dr. Mullins, they recognized that they overstated that and
1:40:06 basically were wrong. And so we received
1:40:11 a much smaller allocation right now. Our BPS allocation is about
1:40:17 771,000 and I have about
1:40:20 1.6 million already encumbered. And so basically we’ll be moving
1:40:26 some of what we expected from
1:40:28 FEMA reimbursement over to the CARES Act number five, which we
1:40:32 are affectionately calling
1:40:35 the CPR fund, but that’s gonna really offset some of what we’ve
1:40:41 already purchased. I’m
1:40:43 sorry, one more, that being said, Ms. Moore is correct. The
1:40:46 schools were given individual
1:40:49 allocations to buy additional supplies and we’ve bought tons of
1:40:53 them and wanted to remind
1:40:55 you that each school did get a MRSA and so there would be no
1:40:58 reason why that school shouldn’t
1:41:00 use those MRSA in those common spaces like the band rooms and
1:41:02 the locker rooms and things
1:41:04 like that. So those spaces aren’t excluded. In our mind, they’re
1:41:08 part of the school. So
1:41:10 we would expect them to be using those MRSA quite regularly in
1:41:14 those large common spaces.
1:41:16 - Thank you. Yeah, ‘cause when we had an outbreak at Space Coast
1:41:19 and we decided that we were,
1:41:20 this was not an outbreak of COVID, but back in the day we had
1:41:22 staff and we had some other
1:41:24 stuff and the coaches were using buckets of bleach and it rusted
1:41:27 out all the clips. As
1:41:28 long as we’re not going that route and a lot of them have the
1:41:30 available things that they
1:41:31 need to do it properly, I commend you.
1:41:34 - So I just wanted to say, although Dr. Sullivan gave me the
1:41:37 evil eye, I think it should be
1:41:39 said, she has borne the heavy load of the CARES Act and the next
1:41:45 CARES and the next
1:41:46 CARES and the next CARES and nobody knows it better than she
1:41:50 does. So I defer to her
1:41:51 expertise. She has been outstanding.
1:41:54 - Awesome. And then I think one of the things that I noticed is
1:41:57 that when I was coaching
1:41:59 before, some of the kids, just for something to keep an eye on,
1:42:02 some of the kids, that
1:42:04 was the only shower they got and they needed that. So if we don’t
1:42:10 make it so hard on them,
1:42:12 some of those kids, that’s all they went before they go home.
1:42:15 They bring their clothes. So
1:42:16 just something to think about. And then I’d also like possibly
1:42:19 in the next school board
1:42:21 meeting to talk about the media, I would like to talk about what
1:42:25 access that looks like
1:42:26 and everything else, because we have some really good programs
1:42:29 all the way from Florida
1:42:31 today and other options that would like to cover some of our
1:42:33 sports and being the fact
1:42:34 that now 25% aren’t out there, we need to give them as many
1:42:37 options as possible. That’s
1:42:38 all. So just something to think about and I’m good. And I wanted
1:42:41 to say thank you for
1:42:42 everything that you put together. Thanks for keeping our kids
1:42:46 playing and trying to come
1:42:47 up with options to keep them safe. Thank you.
1:42:52 » Thank you, Mr. Susan. Any other? Ms. Campbell?
1:42:55 » So first of all, since the question was asked, how is band
1:42:58 going to work, I’ll just
1:43:00 tell you that I just got a text from my daughter a little while
1:43:02 ago. Hey, Mom, on the way home,
1:43:03 can you pick up some hosiery to go over the end of my instrument?
1:43:07 And then our band directors
1:43:09 are being very creative and having mothers and families, I’m
1:43:12 going to say mothers could
1:43:14 be fathers too, families so little bags to picture clarinet and
1:43:20 saxophone in. It’s very
1:43:22 interesting. You should Google it. It’s wild. Oh, and also, Mom,
1:43:26 I need a mask so that I
1:43:27 can cut a slit in so I can play my instrument through the slit.
1:43:30 So they’re getting very
1:43:31 creative and all that is based off the Boulder study that has
1:43:35 been waking its way around
1:43:37 all the music programs. So thank you. I don’t necessarily have a
1:43:41 question, but I just want
1:43:43 to add to what you said. I very much appreciate the athletic
1:43:49 directors and the coaches taking
1:43:50 this seriously. I just want to put out the challenge to our
1:43:54 students and families. Because
1:43:57 the truth is, there is what we must do as a district, which is
1:44:00 educate kids, and there’s
1:44:01 what we don’t really have to do, which is athletics. But it is
1:44:07 very important. You know,
1:44:10 I’m a band orchestra choir mom, but those are extracurriculars
1:44:14 as well. And I understand
1:44:15 the value of our kids’ belongings and learning the team and
1:44:19 adulting and all kinds of things
1:44:21 that they learn. And so, but I just, you know, we’ve, I’ve had
1:44:25 some comments, oh, hey, well,
1:44:27 if the NBA and the NFL and NCAA, well, let’s just talk about
1:44:31 some numbers. Just so you
1:44:32 know, my husband’s a huge sports fan, so he was a good resource
1:44:35 for me. The NBA is spending
1:44:36 $150 million to be in their bubble in Orlando. The NFL has boatloads
1:44:42 of money, and they have
1:44:43 put their own testing site at all 32 team sites. And so they
1:44:48 test every day, and they
1:44:50 test, you know, and they’re going through all that and getting
1:44:52 the results back immediately.
1:44:53 So, you know, money, right? And they’re adults, and they can,
1:44:58 that’s their focus. The NCAA,
1:45:00 I actually was really pleased to see several interviews in the
1:45:04 last few weeks of some college
1:45:05 athletes and coaches. I won’t mention the teams, because I don’t
1:45:10 know why I need to
1:45:11 boo. But one of them was Alabama. But who talked about what they’re
1:45:16 doing. These athletes
1:45:17 want to play so badly, they want this season to come off here in
1:45:21 the SEC and the ACC, who
1:45:22 are actually having a season, that they have said, we go to
1:45:26 class, we go to practice, and
1:45:29 we go home. And they’re taking it seriously, because they want
1:45:32 to play so bad, they know
1:45:33 how serious it is. And so they’re going to class, they’re going
1:45:37 to practice, and they’re
1:45:38 going home. And I’d like to think that our high school athletes
1:45:41 and our middle school
1:45:42 athletes would have the same level of seriousness. That’s a lot
1:45:48 of faith. So we’re going to take,
1:45:50 it’s going to take our families to join them. And the other
1:45:52 thing is our college athletes,
1:45:53 when they go, when they say they go home, they generally go to
1:45:57 live, you know, to their
1:45:58 apartment where they live by themselves or their dorm, or they
1:46:00 go to an athletic dorm,
1:46:01 like football players all live and study and work together. They’re
1:46:06 not going back to families
1:46:07 who are all, in general, who are also going all different places.
1:46:11 So I just, so that our
1:46:13 athletes and our families really understand the impact that they
1:46:16 would have, they could
1:46:17 actually shorten their season or eliminate it, or, you know,
1:46:22 worse, have a disruption
1:46:24 to our schools. We just, I just implore all our athletes and
1:46:28 their families to take this
1:46:30 absolutely serious, because if we want to have this, we want to
1:46:33 have it successfully,
1:46:35 it is going to be dependent on their behavior, not only in
1:46:38 practice and on the field, but
1:46:41 at home. And so please take your cue from our professional and
1:46:44 college level athletes
1:46:46 and just realize what you do outside of school and outside of
1:46:50 practice is greatly going to
1:46:52 affect how we do school and how we do practice and games. And so
1:46:57 I just really want our families
1:47:00 all the ones who have contacted me, I’ve tried to add that into
1:47:03 my email. If there’s some
1:47:04 I’ve got still sitting in my inbox, just say, “Hey, we need you.
1:47:07 We need you to help. If
1:47:08 this is going to be successful, you’ve got to be on board.” So,
1:47:11 but thank you, thank
1:47:13 you for the work that you have done and your team and your new
1:47:17 protege here, right, for
1:47:19 all things athletics and student services. Very much appreciate
1:47:22 the work that you’ve
1:47:23 done with them. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Anyone else have
1:47:30 questions, comments for Ms. Moore?
1:47:30 I will just say thank you so very much. I know that you have
1:47:35 been, you’ve been carrying
1:47:37 a lot through this and I know you’ve been very dedicated to
1:47:41 making sure that we are
1:47:43 making the decisions that keep us as safe as possible. So we
1:47:47 appreciate you. All right.
1:47:51 We are now at public comments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
1:47:55 Speakers could record
1:47:56 comments through advanced registration or maybe here in person.
1:47:59 If we already have 30
1:48:01 public attendees inside the boardroom, additional speakers may
1:48:04 be waiting outside, which I do
1:48:05 not believe we do. So we have seven speakers scheduled in person
1:48:13 this evening, and then
1:48:13 we have one recorded comment. So our first three speakers will
1:48:18 be Robert Ray, Brian Watts
1:48:19 and Anthony Colucci. Mr. Ray, if you’d like to approach the
1:48:22 microphone in the center please,
1:48:25 sir. Dr. Mullins and thank you. I’m Robert Ray. I’m one of your
1:48:33 substitute teachers.
1:48:34 And the last time I was here, I asked what can we do to prepare
1:48:38 better. And Dr. Headey
1:48:40 and her team prepared a beautiful PowerPoint presentation just
1:48:44 in time for us to start
1:48:46 the work. Anyway, so thank you for that PowerPoint presentation.
1:48:49 It really helped out. I just
1:48:51 thought I’d tell you a little bit about what happened the last
1:48:53 two days. I’m on an extended
1:48:55 AP history assignment over at Cocoa Beach High. And first of all,
1:49:00 my room, it was really
1:49:02 fantastic. There were 21 desks. They were nicely placed apart.
1:49:07 And I took a measurement
1:49:08 of the room and it was 30 by 30. So it was really good. And it
1:49:12 was more than adequate
1:49:13 for all the students that I had. And I was really pleased when I
1:49:16 went in this morning.
1:49:17 Everything had been cleaned very, very nicely. A few things had
1:49:21 been moved, but it was okay.
1:49:23 Also the 90-minute blocks that they’re doing for the secondary
1:49:26 schools is really, really
1:49:27 a very effective thing. It’s really nice to be able to stretch
1:49:31 out an activity and, you
1:49:32 know, for 90 minutes as opposed to what usually happened. The
1:49:37 masks, the kids have been fantastic
1:49:39 about the masks. A lot of peer pressure going on. If somebody
1:49:43 doesn’t have their mask on
1:49:44 like I don’t right now, the other kids will say, “Hey, you know,
1:49:47 put your mask on,” which
1:49:49 is really, really good. The sanitizers, there’s sanitizers in my
1:49:54 room and I’m really, I tell
1:49:56 the kids to use them. I’m not so certain that it’s really
1:50:00 happening all the way in all of
1:50:02 the areas of, I didn’t see much anyway. As far as social distancing
1:50:06 is concerned, very,
1:50:09 very good. The kids really take care to stay six feet apart. And
1:50:16 it’s really nice to be
1:50:18 back. Thank you. It’s been long since March. It’s just nice to
1:50:21 be working with kids again.
1:50:22 Thank you.
1:50:23 Thank you, Mr. Ray. All right, Mr. Watts.
1:50:31 Good afternoon. I recently applied for the substitute teacher
1:50:40 position. I’ve had some
1:50:44 issues with the process. Just wanted to be clear that I
1:50:49 substituted in Orlando so I thought
1:50:51 it would be challenging. I’m not doing anything. Haven’t worked
1:50:56 for a few years. I’m retired.
1:50:58 So it indicated that you needed supervisor references. And I was
1:51:06 advised that was a statute.
1:51:09 I had emails I traded with Beth Vetti and then she had, I also
1:51:16 spoke with Cordia Patterson.
1:51:20 So we got past the requirement for supervisors. The statute
1:51:26 doesn’t say that, but that’s fine.
1:51:28 So, then I had an issue with, I don’t have my high school
1:51:33 diploma. So I got a letter
1:51:35 emailed to me from my high school in New York and that was not
1:51:40 accepted. So I understand
1:51:43 you have a shortage of substitutes and I’m just advising you
1:51:47 that, you know, the pay
1:51:49 isn’t very high. I wasn’t doing it for the money, but, you know,
1:51:53 these little challenges
1:51:54 are going to make it difficult for almost anybody. So I’m
1:51:57 retired for a few years. I
1:51:59 was with the police department for over 30 years in New York. So
1:52:02 even getting supervisor
1:52:03 references, that wasn’t possible for that position. So I’m just
1:52:07 saying this is what
1:52:08 I’ve run into. So the application is probably going to be listed
1:52:13 as incomplete. I did the
1:52:14 online test, all of that stuff. So I just wanted to bring that
1:52:20 to your attention as
1:52:21 well as, well, the salaries. I wasn’t doing it for the money,
1:52:27 but the salary is just inadequate.
1:52:30 So I just wanted to mention that. Since I was here and I saw
1:52:33 your budget presentation,
1:52:35 I will say that that is a little concerning that you have an
1:52:40 actual and a projected difference
1:52:43 of 14,000 students. So I think the questions that some of you
1:52:48 folks are raising are legitimate.
1:52:50 So I hope the board, and I didn’t come here for this, but I hope
1:52:54 the board will be proactive.
1:52:57 And when you get real numbers, I mean, I think it’s a stretch to
1:53:00 think you’re going to find
1:53:01 13,000 students. So all I’m saying is, I know how budgeting
1:53:06 works and you don’t want to
1:53:08 wait until the last minute. You might want to start planning
1:53:13 because nobody likes surprises.
1:53:15 And I’m sure the districts don’t. I’m sure the students and the
1:53:17 teachers aren’t going
1:53:18 to be happy either. Taxes are fine. I’m okay with taxes going up
1:53:22 a little bit, but nobody
1:53:22 likes surprises. And I think that is a little area of concern.
1:53:27 Thank you. I appreciate it.
1:53:29 Thank you, Mr. Watts. We appreciate you coming. Mr. Colucci.
1:53:41 My name is Anthony Colucci. I’m the president of the Brevard
1:53:45 Federation of Teachers. Yesterday,
1:53:47 Judge Charles Dodson granted the Florida Education Association’s
1:53:51 motion for a temporary injunction
1:53:53 against Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s
1:53:57 executive order. In his decision,
1:54:00 the judge noted the order is unconstitutional to the extent it
1:54:04 arbitrarily disregards safety,
1:54:07 denies local school boards decision-making with respect to reopening
1:54:10 brick and mortar
1:54:11 schools, and conditions funding on an approved reopening plan
1:54:15 with a start date in August.
1:54:17 The judge noted that the evidence was clear that teachers want
1:54:20 to get back in school,
1:54:22 but teachers are being told they must go back into the classroom
1:54:26 in unsafe conditions. There
1:54:28 are some signs that the spread of COVID in Brevard is heading in
1:54:31 the right direction,
1:54:33 and that is good news. However, science tells us that with
1:54:37 schools reopening, our numbers
1:54:39 are likely to start heading in the wrong direction. While the
1:54:42 case will continue to be argued
1:54:44 in court, I’m calling on this board to direct staff to start
1:54:48 developing contingency plans
1:54:50 that could offer more than just brick and mortar or e-learning.
1:54:54 We strongly believe
1:54:55 that it is time for the board to have a staggered schedule plan
1:54:59 in place. If we get to a situation
1:55:02 where this board can actually decide for itself without the
1:55:05 state threatening to take funding,
1:55:07 a staggered schedule appears to be a way to offer mitigation
1:55:11 efforts such as social distancing,
1:55:13 bubbles, and contact tracing, while still providing some face-to-face
1:55:18 instruction and
1:55:19 the ability to meet students’ social, emotional, and physical
1:55:23 needs. We ask that this plan
1:55:25 was developed months ago, but it was overshadowed by the
1:55:28 governor and commissioner of education
1:55:30 bullying districts into five days a week of brick and mortar. Do
1:55:34 not wait. Develop this
1:55:36 plan in case our numbers start heading in the wrong direction. A
1:55:39 neutral judge said
1:55:41 five days a week disregards safety. Because this board chose to
1:55:46 comply with this order,
1:55:47 it can be said that you’ve disregarded safety. If, if FEA
1:55:51 ultimately prevails in the lawsuit,
1:55:54 the Brevard County School Board will not be able to point a
1:55:57 finger at the governor. It
1:55:58 will be solely your decision that puts kids and staff in harm’s
1:56:03 way. While we are still
1:56:04 in brick and mortar five days a week, I cannot stress enough,
1:56:07 not only to our teachers but
1:56:09 to our entire community, do not let your guards down. We are
1:56:13 smarter than the virus, but the
1:56:15 virus is more patient than we are. Wear your mask, social
1:56:19 distance, proper, practice proper
1:56:21 hygiene, and stay home if you’re sick. Thank you.
1:56:25 Thank you, Mr. Calucci. Next up, we have Mr. Savage, Ms. Skipper,
1:56:29 Mr. Hilliard, and then
1:56:31 our last in-person speaker will be Laura DePauw. Mr. Savage.
1:56:46 Do we have, could we get a white print, please? Nah, you’re good,
1:56:57 Ms. Belford. Thank you.
1:57:01 You can have my hand sanitizer when you’re done, Mr. Savage.
1:57:16 Thank you, Ms. Belford. Thank you, the board. Thank you, Dr.
1:57:19 Mullins. I needed that. I just
1:57:22 want to start out by saying my two sons started school yesterday
1:57:26 at Cape View Elementary and
1:57:28 I felt like a kindergarten parent all over again. I was nervous
1:57:32 that they were going
1:57:33 to be safe. I was nervous that they were going to have a good
1:57:36 time. I was nervous that they
1:57:38 were going to want to go back tomorrow. So I just want to give a
1:57:42 huge shout out to our
1:57:43 teachers in Brevard because they made my kids have a wonderful
1:57:46 day. I didn’t know what to
1:57:48 do on Tuesday. They knew they want to go back to school. And
1:57:50 because of our teachers, and
1:57:52 I know that just didn’t happen in two classrooms, that happened
1:57:55 in classrooms all throughout
1:57:56 Brevard. So a huge shout out to our teachers and the elementary
1:58:00 leader in learning, secondary
1:58:01 leader in learning has done a lot. Thank you. I’m going to
1:58:06 change up my speech a little
1:58:08 bit. Looking at those enrollment numbers, there’s a problem.
1:58:12 Like we can hope 13, 14,000
1:58:14 kids are coming back, but I’m a season ticket holder for Orlando
1:58:19 city. I still have season
1:58:20 tickets for this season. They’re sending me emails to try to go
1:58:23 to a game tomorrow. Guess
1:58:25 where I’m not going tomorrow? To a game because I don’t feel
1:58:28 safe. So we have to do everything
1:58:30 possible to make our schools feel safe. If we, we can argue if
1:58:35 COVID, the mortality rate
1:58:37 of COVID, how many people will die from COVID. It doesn’t matter.
1:58:40 If somebody doesn’t feel
1:58:41 safe, they’re not going to go to our schools. So I intended to
1:58:45 come up here and talk about
1:58:46 how in the CARES grant, there’s about $4 million that was just
1:58:51 held for the exact word and
1:58:53 was held for held in reserve at the state on our behalf so that
1:58:57 we can revisit once
1:58:59 the funding picture is more clear. We need to spend every dollar
1:59:03 available for PPE for
1:59:04 our class. Right now, I believe the district gets about 80%
1:59:08 reimbursement from FEMA on
1:59:10 PPE. Is that wrong now? You get zero. Dr. Sullivan can address
1:59:16 that directly. I’ll keep
1:59:17 speaking because I know that’s not appropriate. I’m sorry. We
1:59:21 need to be doing everything
1:59:22 possible. If a teacher needs best partitions, we need to be
1:59:25 looking at that. I do know every
1:59:27 teacher got one partition to start school, but I don’t think
1:59:30 that’s adequate. If teachers
1:59:31 need more thermometers, we need to be doing that. If we can
1:59:35 check temperatures for football,
1:59:36 I’m sure we can check temperatures on more of our students when
1:59:39 they come in. Because
1:59:40 at the end of the day, our families need to be safe. In some
1:59:43 ways, we need to look at
1:59:44 it as a rush on our business. If every student that comes in,
1:59:48 yes, we need to care for our
1:59:50 students, but on the budget side, that’s money. So we need to be
1:59:54 doing everything possible.
1:59:55 And I think missing that many students just says that our reopening
1:59:59 plan kind of missed
2:00:01 the point a little bit, and we need to revisit that and see how
2:00:04 we can attract parents. Thank
2:00:05 you.
2:00:06 - Thank you, Mr. Savage. We appreciate you. Ms. Skipper.
2:00:13 - Good evening, members of the board. First of all, I just want
2:00:22 to say that lawsuit win
2:00:25 wasn’t just our win. I feel like it was your win too, because
2:00:29 the one thing that really
2:00:31 irritated me about that executive order is I knew it was
2:00:34 unconstitutional because you
2:00:36 guys are elected to do a job and you were hamstringed into
2:00:40 making decisions when you
2:00:42 should have been able to do what was right for our district. But
2:00:45 that’s not actually
2:00:46 my speech tonight. Our teachers are doing what they probably
2:00:53 never imagined they would
2:00:55 do. And while they are all stepping up to the plate to do this
2:01:01 hybrid approach to e-learning
2:01:04 with kids in the classroom at the same time, I’m watching what’s
2:01:07 happening at home because
2:01:09 my son is doing e-learning. While at the same time I’m getting
2:01:13 phone calls and emails, teachers
2:01:15 are frustrated, not because they think it’s too much work, even
2:01:21 though they do, but because
2:01:24 they don’t believe that they’re going to be able to give their
2:01:28 students the same educational
2:01:30 experience that they have in the past. And they feel like those
2:01:35 kids that are e-learning
2:01:36 may be missing out because they’re not able to, in a sense, be
2:01:42 two places at once. We
2:01:45 could do a lot better for students and for teachers if we had a
2:01:52 complete one-to-one district
2:01:57 because the students in the classroom could be online with the
2:02:01 students at home using
2:02:03 Zoom and everybody could be having the same experience. I was a
2:02:09 little discouraged, although
2:02:12 I want to say I’m completely in support of renewing the half
2:02:15 cent. I was very discouraged
2:02:17 to hear that a good bit of that was not going to go to putting
2:02:22 one-to-one in our classrooms.
2:02:24 I want to read you a quote from the superintendent in
2:02:28 Indianapolis Public Schools who said this
2:02:31 about their decision to be ready to go one-to-one right now,
2:02:36 said this in March. “It’s a massive
2:02:39 investment, the right investment, but a massive investment. We
2:02:44 know that in the fall, we need
2:02:46 to be very nimble and flexible and prepared to exist in both a
2:02:51 virtual home learning world
2:02:52 and hopefully in our school facility world. And to do that well,
2:02:58 it requires each of our
2:03:00 students to have access to technology. We have students who are
2:03:05 getting computers sent
2:03:07 home to them for e-learning that don’t have webcams or audio. We
2:03:13 have a principal who
2:03:14 said if you don’t have a computer at home, then you should be
2:03:19 here attending school.
2:03:21 I don’t see how these parents are going to actually vote for
2:03:26 extending a tax if we’re
2:03:27 not actually providing things that we should be providing them
2:03:31 at home and making them
2:03:33 successful in the classroom and at home and making our teachers’
2:03:38 jobs not only easier,
2:03:40 but allow them to feel that they’re reaching every student.
2:03:42 Thank you.
2:03:42 - Thank you, Ms. Skipper. Mr. Hilliard.
2:03:48 - Good evening. I’m Jonathan Hilliard, second vice president of
2:03:56 the Brevard Federation of
2:03:57 Teachers. I really want to recognize our teacher heroes this
2:04:02 evening. They are the ones that
2:04:04 are the backbone of this entire situation that we’re dealing
2:04:08 with in our school systems.
2:04:10 They’re the ones that are making this whole thing work. The load
2:04:15 falls on them. I’d like
2:04:17 to read a quick leadership quote. It says, “One of the tests of
2:04:21 leadership is the ability
2:04:23 to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” One of
2:04:30 the things that the leadership
2:04:31 that we provided from Brevard Federation of Teachers was 500 KN95
2:04:36 masks for our teachers
2:04:37 before they entered the school. We wanted to make sure our
2:04:41 teachers were protected.
2:04:42 We wanted to make sure that they felt safe going into harm’s way.
2:04:46 Another thing that
2:04:47 we did, we’re providing 150 plexiglass carousels, just like the
2:04:53 kind that we used to use with
2:04:55 FSA testing, the testing carousels about 24 inches high. We’re
2:05:00 going to provide these
2:05:01 so that resource teachers, ESC teachers can do one-to-one
2:05:06 instruction with our students
2:05:07 and provide that academic support. One of the other things that
2:05:13 is very concerning right
2:05:14 now, and Ms. Skipper had brought it up, is our teachers are
2:05:19 receiving computers without
2:05:22 audio or video capabilities. I had a teacher call me about this,
2:05:27 and she said this is how
2:05:28 she learned about it. She learned about it from a parent who
2:05:32 actually was an IT person,
2:05:33 and they said, “Do you know that the computer that you gave my
2:05:37 child doesn’t have video
2:05:38 capability or a speaker or a microphone?” She was like, “Well,
2:05:45 let me look into this.”
2:05:47 She looked into it, and she found out that the district said, “Oh
2:05:50 yes, we know that that’s
2:05:51 going out, but we expect you to just live chat with those kids.”
2:05:57 That’s the stress that
2:05:59 our teachers are under. Ms. Skipper alluded to it. What stresses
2:06:03 our teachers out the
2:06:04 most is their passion and desire to provide that high-quality
2:06:11 education to their students
2:06:14 that they’ve been accustomed to providing, but now they feel
2:06:18 hand-tied. That’s one issue
2:06:20 that’s going on. Another is the class size. I had a first-grade
2:06:27 teacher tell me, “Jonathan,
2:06:29 I have 24 kids face-to-face in my class.” She’s a veteran
2:06:37 teacher. She knows what she’s
2:06:38 getting into. She knows how to organize her classroom, but she
2:06:41 tells me, “I can’t do social
2:06:43 distancing, and these are six-year-old babies. We sing. I got
2:06:48 them trying to wear their masks,
2:06:50 but they can’t do it because they’re just six.” That’s what’s
2:06:54 going on right now. I’m
2:06:55 very happy that we’ve all been optimistic, but these are the
2:07:00 real concerns going on in
2:07:02 our schools right now with our teachers. We need that leadership
2:07:06 to see and recognize
2:07:08 that problem before it becomes an emergency. Thank you.
2:07:11 Thank you, Mr. Hilliard. Our final in-person speaker this
2:07:16 evening is Laura DePaul.
2:07:18 Thank you. Thank you for having me. I have waited months to be
2:07:39 here in front of you.
2:07:42 We are a Merritt Island family. I have three elementary-aged
2:07:46 children attending Tropical
2:07:48 Elementary this year in person. We moved to New Hampshire last
2:07:55 year for one year, and
2:07:57 while we were there, I started substitute teaching. I loved it.
2:08:02 I told myself I will
2:08:03 do it till my youngest, who starts kindergarten this month,
2:08:06 graduates. For the next 12, 13
2:08:11 years, she will be in school. I will be a substitute teacher for
2:08:15 you consistently. I
2:08:17 have a great background. I’m passionate about it. I have made so
2:08:22 many memories as a substitute
2:08:24 the one year I did it in New Hampshire that it made me want to
2:08:29 do it full-time, but I’m
2:08:31 not sure that the … I know you guys all know, but the general
2:08:36 public probably doesn’t
2:08:38 realize in Brevard County, I will get paid less than McDonald’s.
2:08:45 You base the pay on
2:08:47 your background in New Hampshire, and I’m not sure that anyone
2:08:51 would even know how other
2:08:52 states operate. They’re very fairly paid equally. It doesn’t
2:08:58 matter where you came from. If
2:08:59 you passed your background check and you’re reliable, they have
2:09:03 a flat pay. They pay $37.50
2:09:06 for a half day, $75 for a full day, and they offer full-day
2:09:10 substitutes, a free lunch.
2:09:12 I loved it. I was happy with that. I was a full-day sub. It wasn’t
2:09:17 big money, but it
2:09:19 was better than making minimum wage. I truly believe we are not
2:09:24 further from minimum wage.
2:09:27 Right now during coronavirus, something has changed. Low risk,
2:09:32 reliable substitute teachers
2:09:34 should be considered essential workers. There are teachers, I’m
2:09:39 being told, on Merritt Island
2:09:41 are looking for safer lines of work. I would show up and sub for
2:09:45 them every single day
2:09:46 confidently, but if you have a high school diploma for anyone
2:09:53 out there listening, families
2:09:56 at home, $8.56 an hour. Here’s the real shocker. I have an
2:10:02 associate’s degree, plenty of other
2:10:04 careers in the past. I was a stay-at-home mom. Now I want to be
2:10:07 part of the school district
2:10:08 and do more than just volunteer, but I’m making $8.75 an hour.
2:10:14 This is what bothers me. In
2:10:15 Brevard County, if I had a bachelor’s degree, most likely I’d be
2:10:20 looking for full-time work.
2:10:22 I know people, friends of mine, moms in the community, same
2:10:28 county as I, same availability,
2:10:31 making $4 more an hour. Why? Why am I getting paid $4 an hour
2:10:38 less than a bachelor’s degree?
2:10:41 But with a high school diploma, I’m making 20 cents more than a
2:10:45 high school diploma.
2:10:46 I can’t understand. There’s a shortage of subs. I’ve talked to
2:10:51 human resources-
2:10:53 - Ms. DePaul, thank you so much for joining us this evening. I’m
2:10:55 sorry, but we’re limited
2:10:56 to three minutes per speaker. That’s your alarm going off there.
2:11:00 - Oh my gosh. Okay. I hope you guys can come up with a solution.
2:11:04 - Thank you. And thank you for supporting our schools. We
2:11:08 appreciate it. Okay. And we
2:11:11 have one call-in speaker that we still need to hear from this
2:11:16 evening.
2:11:17 - In consideration of the current health and safety concerns
2:11:25 during the COVID-19 emergency
2:11:29 guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as
2:11:32 well as executive order
2:11:34 20-91 issued by Governor Sanders, it has been necessary to
2:11:37 modify our procedures for public
2:11:39 comment. Tonight, your comments will be recorded, and we will
2:11:42 play them back under the public
2:11:44 comment section of the board meeting tomorrow. Our speaker is
2:11:47 limited to three minutes. Our
2:11:48 moderator will keep track of your time and ask you to conclude
2:11:51 your comments when you
2:11:52 have reached three minutes. Always keep in mind that reasonable
2:11:55 decorum is expected at
2:11:56 all times. Please keep your comments appropriate for our
2:11:59 children who may be watching or listening
2:12:01 from home. Before speaking, please state your name, the
2:12:04 organization you represent, if any,
2:12:06 and identify the topic you will be discussing. We won’t be
2:12:08 answering questions on tonight’s
2:12:10 call, but our staff will follow up with you if you have a
2:12:13 question or need a response.
2:12:14 Ben, please go ahead with our speaker.
2:12:16 - All right. Thank you. So go ahead and press zero now, and
2:12:21 Donna will bring you through
2:12:22 to make your comment. Go ahead and press zero now, and Donna
2:12:24 will bring you through to make
2:12:25 your comment. Okay. Kathy, go ahead and state your first and
2:12:31 last name and your comment,
2:12:32 please.
2:12:33 - Yes. My name is Kathy West. My question is, right now, do they
2:12:43 plan on paying teachers
2:12:46 and staff for hazard pay because we’re going into the classroom
2:12:55 in a crisis situation where
2:12:59 we’re already in this situation, and this just adds to the issue.
2:13:08 And also, we’ve been
2:13:13 waiting on, subs have been waiting on a raise that we keep, we
2:13:19 are kept being told that
2:13:21 it’s on their radar. It’s been on their radar for a whole year.
2:13:25 There has been no pay increase
2:13:28 in that year. All I’ve heard is lip service for the past year.
2:13:33 Nothing has been done,
2:13:36 and now we’re in another crisis, facing two crises, and nothing’s
2:13:42 being done.
2:13:44 - Okay. Thank you very much for your comment. Go ahead, student,
2:13:49 close out.
2:13:50 - Okay. Thank you, Ms. West. I appreciate your comments tonight,
2:13:53 and we’ll play that
2:13:54 back for the school board tomorrow night’s meeting under the
2:13:57 public comment section.
2:13:58 Thank you very much. And thank you, Ben. Good night.
2:14:01 - Good night.
2:14:02 - All right. That concludes our public comments for this evening.
2:14:05 Did any board member wish
2:14:06 to respond, give direction, anything like that on any of the
2:14:12 public speakers this evening?
2:14:15 I will ask, Dr. Mullins, I’ll ask you, and since you are up here
2:14:19 and your mic is a little
2:14:20 bit clear, but if you need to punt to Dr. Sullivan, please feel
2:14:24 free. Mr. Savage had
2:14:25 brought up the FEMA reimbursement, and it was discussed a little
2:14:29 bit when Ms. Moore
2:14:30 was at the mic, but I think that’s kind of important for our
2:14:33 public to understand what
2:14:35 happened there with the FEMA reimbursement. Is that something
2:14:38 that you can speak to, or?
2:14:40 - Yeah. Well, I could give it an attempt, but Dr. Sullivan
2:14:44 certainly is most familiar
2:14:46 with the process. Essentially, we were led to believe that FEMA
2:14:49 would be reimbursing us
2:14:50 at 87 and a half percent of those purchases, and then we were
2:14:55 then told about a week, maybe
2:14:57 a week and a half ago by the state, that they didn’t anticipate
2:15:00 that that was going to come
2:15:01 through and that they were allocating additional dollars for us
2:15:04 to charge against. But it sounds
2:15:08 as though that now is being stepped back by the state as well.
2:15:11 Dr. Sullivan, do you want
2:15:11 to provide additional update?
2:15:12 - Yeah, you were pretty accurate, except that it was five days
2:15:18 ago that they told us. They
2:15:20 had originally in the information put out by the DOE had
2:15:24 recommended districts do a
2:15:26 split as we did and following that directive. And then on
2:15:31 Thursday in about a five minutes,
2:15:34 oh, by the way, mentioned, we now know that that’s not working,
2:15:38 so we’re putting out another
2:15:40 CARES Act grant and you’ll get it this afternoon. So we did
2:15:43 receive that this afternoon. We
2:15:45 are in the midst of writing that CARES Act grant and it will
2:15:52 offset about a little over
2:15:55 half of what we had anticipated from FEMA reimbursement. So at
2:16:02 this point, my expectation
2:16:04 is to convert most of that over to that CARES Act grant, and
2:16:10 then continue to work with
2:16:13 risk management to submit ones that we can’t move over in the
2:16:17 event we do get some reimbursement.
2:16:20 So we’ll take the first 777,000, move it to new CARES Act, the
2:16:26 rest of the PPE cleaning
2:16:28 surprise and FEMA eligible items that are in ESSER, we will
2:16:33 submit for reimbursement
2:16:35 through FEMA in hopes of getting that, but knowing that we may
2:16:41 or may not get that reimbursement.
2:16:45 If that made any kind of sense, that would be surprising because
2:16:48 this whole process makes
2:16:49 no sense. So hopefully that helps. - Thank you, Dr. Sullivan. I
2:16:54 know that you
2:16:55 have been deep in juggling all of this and we appreciate all the
2:16:58 work that you’re doing.
2:16:59 And I appreciate that explanation. I think it’s important for
2:17:03 everyone to know some of
2:17:04 the challenges that we’re facing with some of the promises that
2:17:07 are being made at different
2:17:08 levels. So thank you so much for that explanation. - Yeah, no
2:17:12 problem.
2:17:13 - And Dr. Thede, I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but we’ve
2:17:15 had a couple of people
2:17:16 talk about, of course Ms. West has been talking to us about
2:17:19 substitute pay increases. Ms.
2:17:21 DePaul spoke tonight about substitute pay as well. I know that
2:17:28 we obviously have been
2:17:29 talking about how to address our substitute shortage in lots of
2:17:33 different ways, but do
2:17:35 you have at the top of your mind, I know there’s been so much
2:17:39 going on. We did a substitute
2:17:40 survey last year. And if I recall correctly, we asked
2:17:46 substitutes if they preferred to
2:17:48 have a per hour pay raise, or if they preferred to get a daily
2:17:53 increase, if they were working
2:17:56 at priority schools, can you just brief us on that? ‘Cause I
2:18:01 think it’s important to
2:18:01 know that we’re not ignoring the issue, but we did not have
2:18:06 consensus that everyone preferred
2:18:08 to have a pay raise over the other options. Is that correct?
2:18:11 - That is correct. The preferences that our survey last year
2:18:15 indicated, one was an additional
2:18:17 supplement for those who worked 60 days in the school year. That
2:18:22 was highly desirable.
2:18:23 Another was additional pay to work at priority schools, because
2:18:27 that came out to be more
2:18:28 than an hourly rate increase. There was not consistency on what
2:18:34 everybody wanted. We put
2:18:35 out the lunch as well as something that was an option. We also
2:18:39 put out the reimbursement
2:18:41 for all the fees that substitutes have to pay to become
2:18:45 substitutes. Fingerprinting,
2:18:47 drug testing, the certification, and reimbursing that as well.
2:18:51 And that was also desirable
2:18:53 for the substitutes. But the one comment about the difference
2:18:57 between a high school diploma
2:18:58 and an associate’s degree, that is spot on with change in hourly
2:19:03 rate. That has compressed
2:19:05 the pay between those two ranges. So our last speaker, or our
2:19:09 second to last speaker spoke
2:19:10 to that, and that is correct.
2:19:12 - Thank you so much for giving us those details. I appreciate it.
2:19:15 And certainly not to overlook
2:19:17 any of the other speakers that we heard tonight. Thank you, Mr.
2:19:21 Savage, Ms. Skipper, Mr. Hilliard
2:19:24 and Mr. Colucci for bringing forward some of the concerns as
2:19:27 well. We certainly don’t
2:19:29 mean to make it sound as though everything went perfectly on day
2:19:33 one, but we know that
2:19:35 we have some issues to work through. And I’m quite confident
2:19:37 that our team in the back
2:19:38 has been taking note of the things that you brought up and they’ll
2:19:40 be reaching out to
2:19:41 try to address those. So, all right, with that, we move on to
2:19:46 the, did you have something,
2:19:47 Mr. Susan?
2:19:48 - I just want to say, Mr. Ray, thank you for coming in and
2:19:50 saying such positive things.
2:19:52 You got a couple of friends, you guys want to come here more
2:19:55 often? We’d enjoy it. You
2:19:56 know, I’m thinking, I’m thinking about possibly making the
2:19:59 Robert Ray award for the greatest
2:20:01 speech at here, you know, when this guy came down here to tell
2:20:05 us good stuff and, you know,
2:20:06 not that we need good stuff. We actually, we need good stuff. So
2:20:10 anytime Robert, I think
2:20:16 Dr. Mullins, you can make stuff like that happen. He’s the guy
2:20:18 that makes that happen.
2:20:19 - I mean, he came two weeks ago with a concern. The concern was
2:20:22 met and he came through back
2:20:24 to report and said, there you go.
2:20:27 - But I just wanted to say, thank you for coming down here. That’s
2:20:30 all. And I think
2:20:31 I am going to have some fun with this Robert Ray award thing.
2:20:34 - Yes. Thank you, Mr. Susan. I had meant to address that
2:20:37 directly as well. Okay. Moving
2:20:40 on to our consent agenda, Dr. Mullins.
2:20:44 - There are 12 agenda items under this category.
2:20:48 - Thank you, Dr. Mullins. Does any board member wish to pull any
2:20:51 item from the consent agenda?
2:20:54 Seeing none, then I will entertain a motion to accept the
2:20:56 consent items as presented.
2:20:58 - Move to approve.
2:20:59 - Second.
2:21:00 - Moved by Mr. Susan, seconded by Ms. Deskevich. Is there any
2:21:03 discussion?
2:21:04 - Yes, I have a bit.
2:21:05 - Ms. McDougall.
2:21:06 - I just want to give a shout out because it’s finally here that
2:21:10 Merritt Island High
2:21:11 School will get a restroom on their ball field. This is a work
2:21:16 in the process has taken about
2:21:18 eight years. And I want to thank Sue Han and principal Rehmer.
2:21:24 And of course the Merritt
2:21:26 Island community who supported and gave money to this. This has
2:21:30 been ongoing, and I’m very
2:21:32 excited that we are moving ahead. So thank you.
2:21:35 - And we’re excited for you, Ms. McDougall. Thank you so much.
2:21:38 Any additional discussion
2:21:39 on the item? Or on the agenda?
2:21:42 - On number 12, our inter-local agreement CARES Act funding.
2:21:47 Just don’t want to blow
2:21:48 past that without recognizing that the Board of County
2:21:51 Commissioners, you might want to
2:21:52 just give us a little more details. But the Board of County
2:21:55 Commissioners has agreed to
2:21:56 share some of the county-wide CARES Act funding that’s come with
2:22:00 the school district. We don’t
2:22:03 know the amount on that yet, right?
2:22:05 - Yes. So the county received their own allocation of CARES Act
2:22:11 grant funding, considerably larger
2:22:15 allocation than Brevard Public Schools received. However, they
2:22:20 reached out to Frank Abate,
2:22:22 my manager, and asked, “Might the school district qualify as a
2:22:26 nonprofit to apply for consideration
2:22:29 of those funds?” And he came back and said, “Yes, thank you,” to
2:22:32 the county commission.
2:22:33 They voted unanimously to include us as a nonprofit agent to
2:22:39 apply for funds. We have
2:22:41 submitted, I believe, seven requests totaling well over $3
2:22:47 million, three and a half million
2:22:50 dollars of requests. A couple of the items include additional
2:22:54 hours for our health techs
2:22:56 in our schools. So rather than miss more, are they currently six
2:23:02 and a half hours? Five
2:23:04 and a half hours. We requested funding to staff them for eight
2:23:08 hours in our school so
2:23:09 that we would have a health tech full-time for semester. We also
2:23:14 requested additional
2:23:15 funding for mental health services for our students, funds to
2:23:23 cover all of the individual
2:23:27 food wrapping that’s required in our food service program. Miss
2:23:33 Moore, can you think
2:23:34 of some of the other requests?
2:23:36 - Yeah, hotspots.
2:23:37 - Hotspots for our students.
2:23:40 - Help with our before and after care. We asked for help with,
2:23:47 like you said, the mental
2:23:48 health program. That one, it was not acceptable given the
2:23:53 parameters of that grant. And then
2:23:56 the last one was nurses. There was the last one. There was
2:24:03 another one. But they’re supposed
2:24:06 to be getting back with us probably one day this week to
2:24:08 determine if we’re able to move
2:24:10 forward with that.
2:24:11 - Good. Well, I just wanted to thank the county commissioners
2:24:14 for allowing us to have that
2:24:16 additional funding. It is very much needed and appreciated.
2:24:19 - The interlocal agreement is just a acknowledgement that if
2:24:22 funds go unused, they have to be returned
2:24:24 to the county for the grant.
2:24:27 - I did remember the last one. It was for 20 additional social
2:24:30 workers in our schools.
2:24:32 - Very good. Thank you. Any additional discussion on the consent
2:24:37 agenda? All right, then please
2:24:46 vote. And the motion passes 5-0. All right, that is going to
2:24:56 move us into our action agenda,
2:24:58 Dr. Mullen.
2:24:59 - Ms. Belfort and members of the board, there are a total of
2:25:02 three action items for us to
2:25:03 go through. Item G23 is on procurement solicitations.
2:25:07 - What are the wishes of the board?
2:25:08 - Move to approve.
2:25:09 - Second.
2:25:10 - Moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Ms. McDougall. Is there any
2:25:11 discussion? Please vote.
2:25:11 - Thank you.
2:25:12 - Ms. Bellford, members of the board, there are a total of three
2:25:13 action items for us to
2:25:13 go through. Item G23 is on procurement solicitations.
2:25:14 - What are the wishes of the board?
2:25:15 - Move to approve.
2:25:16 - Second.
2:25:17 - Moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Ms. McDougall. Is there any
2:25:17 discussion? Please vote.
2:25:29 - The motion passes 5-0, Dr. Mullens.
2:25:33 - Item G24 is department school initiated agreements.
2:25:36 - What are the wishes of the board?
2:25:38 - Move to approve.
2:25:39 - Second.
2:25:40 - Moved by Mr. Susan. Seconded by Ms. Deskevich. Any discussion?
2:25:43 - I’d just like to point out that in a couple of these items,
2:25:47 our team is already working
2:25:49 hard to cost save. If you look through some of the items that
2:25:53 are in here, the SAT in
2:25:54 different areas, I know that we had a speaker, the gentleman,
2:25:58 one of the substitute seats.
2:25:59 Some of the substitute teachers speakers mentioned that we need
2:26:03 to start now preparing, and I
2:26:05 just wanted to point out that even on tonight’s agenda, there
2:26:08 are areas that staff and Dr.
2:26:10 Mullens is looking for every single dollar to save and tuck away.
2:26:15 - Thank you for that clear presentation Ms. Deskevich. I think
2:26:18 that’s important as well.
2:26:20 Any additional discussion? All right.
2:26:21 - All right. Please vote. The motion passes five zero. Dr. Mullens.
2:26:39 - G25 is for the ratification of emergency procurements related
2:26:43 to COVID-19.
2:26:44 - What are the wishes of the board? Thank you, ma’am. Motion by
2:26:52 Ms. Campbell, seconded
2:26:53 by Ms. McDougall. Any discussion? Please vote. The motion passes
2:27:08 five zero. We’ll move on
2:27:12 to the information agenda, which includes items for board review
2:27:14 and may be brought
2:27:15 back for action at a subsequent meeting. No action will be taken
2:27:17 on these items tonight.
2:27:19 Dr. Mullens.
2:27:20 - There are four items under the information category.
2:27:22 - Does any board member wish to discuss any of the four
2:27:26 information items?
2:27:28 - I just have a question on the personnel allocations. Are these
2:27:33 based on, I’m guessing
2:27:35 maybe this is for Dr. Dutty, are these based on projected
2:27:40 enrollment or are these based
2:27:43 on actual enrollment? And at what point does this change?
2:27:47 Usually we approve it for the
2:27:49 year and it has to stay that way. I’m wondering if we’re 14,000
2:27:54 students down, how this looks
2:27:55 different mid year.
2:27:58 - These allocations have not changed over the last few years.
2:28:01 They are the same. They’re
2:28:02 based on our enrollments. The allocation factors are contingent
2:28:07 upon student enrollment. So
2:28:10 we’ll have to look at that closely as we go through our six day
2:28:16 count.
2:28:16 - So we haven’t made any adjustments in here for COVID either. I
2:28:20 mean, it’s a separate
2:28:21 question because it seems like, anyway, have we made any
2:28:26 adjustments?
2:28:27 - We have not made any adjustments for COVID, no.
2:28:31 - Any additional questions on any of the information items? All
2:28:38 right, seeing none, we will move
2:28:40 on to board member discussion. Does any board member have
2:28:43 anything else they would like
2:28:44 to report at this time, Mr. Susan?
2:28:46 - Thank you. Just wanted to give the board a heads up. So we
2:28:51 keep having these pre-K
2:28:53 issues over and over again. First it’s best and brightest, then
2:28:56 it’s retirement, then
2:28:58 it’s this, then it’s that. And then even with our reopening plan,
2:29:01 the stuff was coming out
2:29:03 of Office of Early Learning and there was delayed. And it’s just
2:29:07 like every single time
2:29:08 we talk about pre-K, we find that they’re not respected to be a
2:29:13 part of our K-12, right?
2:29:14 So one of the things is, as many know, like I was in Tallahassee
2:29:17 with them, we were pounding
2:29:18 away, we got some headroom, we changed some of the, we educated
2:29:22 a lot of people on some
2:29:23 of the issues and we got some stuff moving. But the problem is,
2:29:25 is we just keep coming
2:29:26 up with stuff. So when I was talking to Debbie Mayfield, Thad
2:29:30 Altman, Placencia and the rest
2:29:33 of them, and I said, look, I said, instead of us just trying to
2:29:35 fix this thing like one
2:29:36 at a time, I think that we need to come up with a pre-K
2:29:40 commission. Ask the legislature
2:29:43 to sit down and just evaluate it as an early learning coalition,
2:29:47 put it together as how
2:29:48 it ties into K through 12 and address all the issues that we
2:29:51 have with pre-K. So I called
2:29:53 Jane Goodwin from the Florida School Board Association and some
2:29:55 of the other groups and
2:29:56 said, hey, would this be something that you would think about
2:29:58 possibly putting on our
2:29:59 agenda? So what I was going to ask, now’s not the appropriate
2:30:03 time, but think about
2:30:05 possibly being one of our legislative issues that we have coming
2:30:08 up. And in the meantime,
2:30:09 I’m going to go try to bird-dog some of the other legislators to
2:30:13 tell them, hey, would
2:30:14 you think about this? So that it’s, one of the issues we have is,
2:30:17 is that we establish
2:30:18 our thing, everybody gets elected, then all of a sudden session
2:30:20 happens and it’s just
2:30:21 so fast, right? So if I can put it in their ear now, if I can
2:30:24 start aligning some of the
2:30:26 issues, so I just wanted to tell you guys that. And then one
2:30:29 little note, Dr. Mullins,
2:30:30 is that our reopening plan says K through 12. If we can add pre
2:30:34 to the whole front of
2:30:35 that, that’d be good too. And that’s it. I just want to tell you
2:30:38 guys that. So if you
2:30:39 hear me moving around, you know my direction and what I’m trying
2:30:42 to do, but I do know that
2:30:43 that, as far as a district, that comes up for us to discuss, but
2:30:46 I’m going to try to
2:30:47 push it personally. All right? Ms. Klein is requesting attention.
2:30:52 Uh-oh. What happened?
2:30:54 Mr. Susan, the pre-K plan is a totally separate plan. So our
2:31:00 plan is our K through 12 plan
2:31:03 and we have a separate pre-K and there were, there have been
2:31:09 every day this week, Marilyn
2:31:12 Chappie has sat on a Office of Early Learning coalition meeting
2:31:17 and they’re making additional
2:31:20 adjustments to the pre-K opening plans. Thank you, Ms. Klein.
2:31:32 Any additional items for discussion
2:31:35 this evening? I’ve got something I wanted to share. I believe I
2:31:39 shared last, pre-COVID,
2:31:42 I don’t remember how long ago, that the city of Palm Bay was
2:31:47 wanting to host a Palm Bay
2:31:49 STEAM day and they were going to invite the schools, especially
2:31:53 schools who have STEAM
2:31:54 academies or programs to come and be a part, you know kind of
2:31:59 all got put on the back burner
2:32:01 for the last several months, but they are, I met with the youth
2:32:04 advisory board last night
2:32:05 and Deputy Mayor Johnson shared that they are moving forward
2:32:09 with that. They’re changing
2:32:11 plans instead of an indoor venue. It’s going to be at Fred Poppy
2:32:14 Park, but the date is
2:32:15 November the 14th from 10 to 3. They’re going to do it outside
2:32:19 and you know all the precautions
2:32:21 and everything, but they’re moving forward and real excited to
2:32:24 have this opportunity
2:32:25 for our students who would like to come out and get to see, you
2:32:31 know, science, technology,
2:32:34 engineering, arts, and mathematics all in motion and what it
2:32:37 would look like and inspire
2:32:38 them to pursue careers in those areas. That will be on November
2:32:42 the 14th and I’ll send
2:32:43 out some more information as we get closer to the date. And then
2:32:48 also just wanted to
2:32:49 remind everybody who may not have done your census, they have
2:32:54 extended the deadline for
2:32:55 getting your census information to October, so if you’re still
2:32:59 waiting out there, you
2:33:00 don’t want people to come knocking on your door, then go online
2:33:04 and fill out your census
2:33:06 information so that we can, because every dollar counts, every
2:33:10 person counts and we
2:33:11 want to make sure that Brevard County is actually looking really
2:33:14 good compared to the state
2:33:15 and the nation, so keep it at Brevard and go get counted, but
2:33:19 those deadlines have been
2:33:21 extended to October. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Any other board
2:33:24 members have any issues to
2:33:26 address? Dr. Mullins, anything else to report this evening?
2:33:28 Seeing no further business,
2:33:30 this meeting is adjourned. Have a great night.
2:33:41 [Music]