Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 (upbeat music)
0:23 - Good afternoon.
0:24 The March 22nd, 2022 board work session is now in order.
0:27 Call, roll call please.
0:30 - Ms. Belford. - Present.
0:31 - Ms. McDougall. - Present.
0:33 - Mr. Susan. - Present.
0:34 - Ms. Jenkins. - Present.
0:35 - Ms. Campbell.
0:38 - Campbell will be joining us.
0:39 There was not to come our way here shortly.
0:42 Would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?
0:48 - I pledge allegiance to the flag
0:51 of the United States of America,
0:53 and to the republic for which it stands,
0:56 one nation, under God, indivisible,
0:59 with liberty and justice for all.
1:05 - During this afternoon’s work session,
1:06 the board will be provided updates
1:07 on budget priorities and capital projects funding.
1:10 We’ll now begin budget priorities with Ms. Blasinski.
1:20 - So hi, good afternoon.
1:23 So Sunday morning, I told my daughter, who’s nine,
1:27 if you guys don’t know, she’s in fourth grade.
1:30 I said, “Give me an hour.
1:33 “I need to go through my budget presentation
1:35 “and kind of figure out what I’m gonna do, okay?”
1:38 And probably every 10 minutes she came out,
1:42 “Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, I need this, I need that.
1:45 “Look at this dance step, look at this.”
1:48 And finally I said, “Madison, you know,
1:52 “I have to present this on Tuesday to the board.
1:56 “And, you know, how would you feel
1:58 “if you were writing an essay for class for a grade
2:03 “and someone kept on interrupting you?”
2:06 And then she said, “Oh, okay, what’s your hook?”
2:09 (audience laughing)
2:13 And then at that moment I thought,
2:16 “Why, I am so incredibly lucky to have an amazing teacher
2:21 “like Madison has in fourth grade
2:24 “that that’s the first thing that she thought of.”
2:28 But I do want to kind of tell you a story about, you know,
2:32 her, how her first grade worked out with her teacher
2:37 and it wasn’t the same picture.
2:38 I was in a different state, I may say that a couple times,
2:41 so if people are listening,
2:42 they don’t think that’s happened in Brevard.
2:45 But, you know, in kindergarten the teacher said,
2:47 “You know what, Madison is a leader.
2:51 “She gives voice to kids that are kind of unsure
2:55 “and she’s just an amazing personality.
2:57 “She has an amazing spirit and it’s gonna go a long way.
3:02 “Just an amazing leader.”
3:04 And then she goes into first grade
3:06 and the teacher said, “You know what?
3:09 “Madison is too happy.
3:11 “Madison is too fidgety.
3:13 “Madison is too social.
3:17 “Madison just, she’s too disruptive.”
3:20 And so Madison was that kid that had to sit in the back
3:25 in a desk by herself.
3:27 Madison was that kid that, you know,
3:31 well, when she’s a desk by herself,
3:33 when they said, “Okay, let’s turn and discuss something,”
3:35 she had no one to turn and talk with.
3:38 And she was the one that was always on that floor
3:42 that, you know, you’re the bad kid
3:44 and you’re in the bucket or whatever.
3:47 And she was always, had to miss recess
3:51 and she just became a very, very unhappy child.
3:56 And so it was heartbreaking actually
4:01 and then you felt guilty dropping her off at school
4:04 and this school was supposed to be
4:05 one of the best in the state.
4:07 It was a magnet school that she tested into
4:09 and, you know, it was supposed to be the best school
4:12 and my daughter is not having the best education right now.
4:16 And then it was really kind of amazing.
4:21 I noticed that once the head custodian would see Madison
4:25 then she would take her hand and they would walk and talk.
4:28 And then the lunch lady would always come by,
4:32 sit with Madison, make sure she’s eating,
4:35 making sure she’s doing okay.
4:37 And, you know, and that brought, you know,
4:42 that’s who Madison really cared about, about school.
4:46 And then one day she was one of those days
4:48 that she did get to go to recess,
4:50 there were some girls that were kind of making fun of her
4:53 and teasing her about her hair.
4:55 And the principal was there and Madison started crying.
4:59 She’s very sensitive, she was in first grade
5:02 and the principal couldn’t bring her down,
5:04 couldn’t calm her down.
5:05 So I got called in and told that if she continues
5:09 to act this way, she can’t continue to go to that school.
5:13 And I thought that was kind of crazy.
5:17 And then there was a day that she was actually,
5:23 or there was a week that she was actually on a Friday
5:26 and she got through the entire week
5:28 without getting any barks on the board.
5:30 And the one thing that she wanted,
5:32 it was to be a terrific tiger.
5:34 So once a week, you know, the announcements
5:37 of who the terrific tiger is,
5:39 and she always wanted to be that terrific tiger.
5:41 The kids made fun of her and teased her, said,
5:43 “You’re never gonna be a terrific tiger, never.”
5:46 And she believed that, she believed that she was a bad kid.
5:50 That’s how she described herself, “I’m a bad kid.”
5:53 And again, it was heartbreaking.
5:58 So she got all the way through Friday
6:02 and in her mind, I haven’t gotten a mark,
6:04 I might be terrific tiger.
6:06 And it was almost the end of the day
6:09 and I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t there,
6:11 but she got a mark on the board.
6:16 So she’s not gonna be terrific tiger in her mind.
6:19 And then she started crying and she got another mark
6:24 for not paying attention or not obeying.
6:27 And then she couldn’t stop crying.
6:29 So they called in the security guy to take her out
6:33 and she ran and hid under a table
6:36 and she got another mark for disrespect
6:39 and it was just a mess.
6:41 And then she got an in-school suspension
6:43 because of that incident.
6:46 And at this point, I reached out to the school district,
6:49 not in the state, asking for help because this is crazy.
6:55 I want my daughter to be in the best school
6:57 and get the best education yet, this is awful.
7:00 And they sent out a behavior expert
7:02 and that person sat with the teacher
7:07 and they came up with new strategies.
7:09 They got rid of that bad kid board.
7:11 They gave new incentives and things are starting
7:17 to look a little bit better.
7:18 But she had that week of being in school suspension.
7:22 So she’s in a little conference room
7:24 and the vice principal would come in and check in on her.
7:28 And then the ladies in the front office would check in on her
7:31 or the school nurse would check in on her.
7:33 And they really grew to really be rooting for Madison.
7:42 And the vice principal said, Madison,
7:48 if ever you feel like you can’t hold it in
7:52 because I asked her, what’s wrong?
7:53 She goes, I can’t help it.
7:55 I just can’t help it.
7:56 I can’t help talking.
7:57 I can’t help fidgeting.
7:59 I can’t help it.
8:03 So that anytime you’re gonna cry or anything,
8:05 just come and see me.
8:07 So every day after lunch, she would go to the front office,
8:14 talk to the ladies in the front, get a mint,
8:16 go to the nurse, say hi,
8:18 and then go get a hug from the vice principal.
8:20 Things got a lot better.
8:22 And then her teacher, oh, by the way,
8:25 all the other enrichment teachers
8:27 didn’t have a problem with Madison.
8:29 But so at the end,
8:34 there her teacher never, she never got terrific tiger.
8:38 But in the end, the teacher sent me a note
8:41 and asked that if Madison and I would write a poem
8:45 for Black History Month, that she could read on the,
8:49 over the intercom in the morning at school.
8:52 So we did that.
8:54 And she wrote a, we wrote a poem about Ruby Bridges.
8:59 And then when I went to go pick her up that day,
9:03 I was in the car loop.
9:04 And I know this because I was surrounded
9:07 by all the ladies in the front office
9:10 and the principal and the vice principal.
9:12 And they were just telling me that she brought them to tears
9:17 that it was just, she did an amazing job
9:19 and they were so proud of her.
9:21 And that Friday, there was an,
9:26 when they announced the terrific tigers,
9:29 that her teacher did not put her in,
9:32 but the principal, the one that was gonna kick her out,
9:35 decided to create a special terrific tiger award.
9:39 And we still keep this.
9:43 So I guess this whole long story is to tell you
9:47 that education is so incredibly important
9:52 and it’s just everybody, you know?
9:55 And when you talk about serving every student,
9:58 I freely admit my daughter does not have
10:02 teacher pleasing skills in some classrooms.
10:05 Some classrooms it works.
10:07 They like her sass or spunk and others are like, oh no.
10:14 So we need everyone and we need to recognize everyone
10:18 and it’s just an amazing mission.
10:20 And then when we put a budget together,
10:22 we have to think about all those things
10:24 and how important it is that we fund
10:29 and take care and recognize our people
10:32 because those are the folks that are teaching our kids.
10:37 That was a long story, sorry about that.
10:40 Okay, so again, our district priorities.
10:44 We need to make sure our kids have an excellent education.
10:47 And I’ll go back that when Madison left first grade,
10:51 she was on the second, third grade level.
10:55 So she did learn why she was going through all of that.
11:00 And then to protect our workforce
11:02 ‘cause we need that workforce.
11:04 We need the workforce that are passionate about our kids
11:07 and we need to recognize them.
11:09 Fiscal strength, we can’t fund everything.
11:13 So we have to make sure that we have our priorities in line
11:17 and we have to make sure the things that we’re doing
11:19 are affordable.
11:21 And then we have to make every single dollar count
11:24 because every dollar that we spend needs to go,
11:28 we need to think about how is that impacting
11:33 the education of our kids.
11:37 And then so I put on here district goals.
11:41 And with that story, I was trying to bring home
11:46 that our people, they’re the most critical asset
11:51 that we have with our mission is our people.
11:54 And if we don’t recognize our excellence,
11:56 our excellence is gonna go somewhere else.
11:59 So what we would like to do this year
12:03 is to include recurring pay raises.
12:07 We wanna make sure that we try to work on our compression
12:13 issues that we’re gonna have to provide
12:17 good competitive compensation packages.
12:19 We want the bar to be the place where teachers
12:22 and workers come, they wanna come.
12:26 And I think that kind of spirit will also increase
12:29 the education that our kids get.
12:32 We wanna retain the best, we need to invest in the best
12:36 and we need to also improve our facilities.
12:39 We need to look at our innovation.
12:42 We need to start doing things better,
12:43 thinking about how we can be more efficient
12:46 and optimize the things that we do.
12:48 And kindness, collaboration, diversity, inclusion,
12:53 it all goes a long, long way treating everybody
12:56 with dignity and respect.
13:02 And so you take a look at this slide and you can see
13:06 that in 1920 pre-pandemic,
13:11 you can see where we were at the district level
13:14 and then 2021 is where we were held harmless.
13:19 So we were funded very close to 2019-20,
13:23 but we had less kids.
13:25 So we were funded the same amount,
13:29 but we were funding kids that actually
13:31 weren’t in our classrooms or the state was.
13:33 And that was a huge help as we were figuring our way out
13:37 through the pandemic.
13:39 But in ‘21, ‘22, the state said, okay,
13:45 you had a year to figure it out.
13:47 You have ESSER, you have all these things.
13:49 You need to kind of reset and budget for those things.
13:54 So if you remember last year, or actually this year,
13:57 the beginning of the year,
13:58 we went into the budget with a negative.
14:04 And then you can see next year,
14:07 well, in ‘21, ‘22, this can be very deceiving
14:11 because it looks like if you look at
14:13 the total Brevard numbers that we’ve recovered,
14:17 but in actuality, the scholarships doubled
14:21 because of the empowerment program
14:23 that kind of came in this year.
14:27 And just in case you’re wondering,
14:30 probably about half of those kids never stepped foot
14:33 in Brevard.
14:35 They were kids that were in private schools
14:38 that are now getting funded through scholarships.
14:42 And there are quite a few homeschool kids,
14:44 about 538, I believe.
14:48 Charters grew and we grew a little bit.
14:52 We’re kind of remaining flat.
14:54 And that’s what it looks like for the following year as well.
15:01 And this is just a picture that you can see
15:05 that we’re kind of losing.
15:07 The district is, you know, we’re growing slightly,
15:11 but the other percentage of the charter
15:13 and the scholarships are growing.
15:21 So recently, the conference report came out
15:25 and historic levels of funding.
15:29 And it’s very exciting.
15:32 There’s a lot of money and unfortunately,
15:35 it’s never enough, right?
15:39 But the base student allocation increased by $214.
15:46 The student funding increased 384.
15:51 But do remember when you look
15:54 at that base student allocation increase,
15:57 a big chunk of that is bringing everybody up,
16:01 all the employees to $15 by October 1, 2022.
16:07 So along with that 214,
16:10 it’s expected that we do that as well.
16:14 And then the teacher salary increase allocation,
16:19 250 million this year.
16:21 And the good news is the allocation is gonna be 50/50
16:25 versus the 80/20.
16:27 And what that mean, and the other good news is,
16:31 we’re gonna get up to our 47.5 this year.
16:36 Transportation, you can, and again, this is statewide.
16:39 So transportation increased, but so was fuel.
16:43 The reading increase.
16:47 And then again, as I stated,
16:48 the BSA comes with the bill of at least $15 an hour
16:54 for all our employees.
16:56 The employee retirement funding increase,
17:00 and there’s gonna be inflationary costs
17:03 that are going to increase the, our expenses next year.
17:11 And then the last one, I’m sure you’re all aware
17:14 of the school recognition program.
17:17 That was restored this year, not funded in the FEFP,
17:22 but funded within a reserve.
17:25 And it omitted 12 districts and we were one of them
17:31 because of the mask mandate.
17:37 And I’ll go to the next.
17:43 And then I kind of talked about these,
17:45 but this is the district-wide.
17:47 And again, I wanna kind of talk about the 50/50
17:50 for the student salary allocation.
17:55 That’s a big deal because we’re not only gonna get to 47.5
18:00 on that first 50% spot,
18:03 but probably a little bit more than half of that
18:05 can go over to the other side and fund our veteran teachers
18:12 and give them additional or more money
18:15 than they have been getting
18:16 with this teacher salary increase.
18:19 And it will also help with some compression issues.
18:24 The transportation went up 1.4 million for us.
18:27 That will cover the fuel costs.
18:30 And we also had an increase of 725,000 for safe schools,
18:40 which will be very helpful to us
18:42 because we normally get about 65 cents on the dollar for them
18:48 and so that will be helpful to us.
18:50 And again, the FRS will have to fund 4 million.
18:56 And then we’re also gonna have to take a look
18:58 at our inflationary cost increases.
19:01 Procurement’s already getting phone calls
19:03 asking for adjustments to their fuel.
19:07 Food services is having issues with supply and demand
19:11 for paper products and things like that.
19:13 So with costs going up,
19:18 we are going to have contractors, vendors
19:22 passing those costs to us.
19:25 And again, with the school recognition program,
19:29 when it was in effect in FY 1920,
19:34 we received 3.9 million for that program.
19:42 So this previous slide was in words, this is in a graph.
19:48 And then you can see again,
19:50 the BSA and the revenue per student.
19:58 And that change of 389, remember that also includes
20:03 all the increases in categoricals,
20:05 the increase in scholarships and those kinds of things.
20:11 And then when you look at this slide,
20:12 this is built showing some of the bigger categoricals.
20:17 And you can see the increases
20:19 or the changes on the other side,
20:21 the remaining categoricals there on the next slide
20:25 that you’ll be able to take a look at,
20:27 where it says state net of categoricals,
20:30 that 8.7 million is the funding that we get from the state
20:35 that isn’t tied to a categorical.
20:37 And then you’ll see the state funding
20:40 plus the local funding, which is property taxes.
20:44 We had an increase of $42 million.
20:48 I remember we have all those scholarships also
20:52 that were a pass through
20:53 and were a pass through for the charter schools.
20:58 And this slide shows you again,
21:00 it lays out some of the other categoricals.
21:04 Digital classrooms was deleted from the FEFP.
21:14 And then when you take a look at that $42.9 million,
21:21 that looks so good.
21:24 You subtract out the 14.3
21:26 and then we set aside money for family empowerment growth
21:32 and charter growth.
21:34 It might be a little high.
21:36 We might be able to get some dollars out of that,
21:38 but we still, we received the conference report a week ago
21:42 and we’re still digging through it.
21:44 There’s still some language in there that I’m not 100%
21:48 and how that’s gonna impact us.
21:50 There’s language about, you know, Florida virtual,
21:55 Brevard virtual, the funding.
21:56 There’s things that we’re still trying
21:58 to make sure we understand.
22:01 And then you can see that remaining funding balance, 13.6.
22:06 And then when you consider the minimum wage increase,
22:10 estimated $6 million, and then the FRS rate increase,
22:15 you can see that the remaining reoccurring dollars
22:20 that the conference report is showing us at this point
22:23 is 3.6 million,
22:28 which is better than a negative number.
22:35 So the benefits to Brevard or BPS,
22:39 obviously we’re gonna get our employees up to $15 an hour.
22:44 And that’s, you know, the law was by September 30th, 2026.
22:52 So we’re gonna do that four years early,
22:54 which is huge for our employees.
22:57 Teacher salary increase allocation,
22:59 highest since the inception of the program.
23:03 We’re gonna be able to recognize our veteran teachers.
23:10 We’re able to invest in the employees’ retirement funds
23:13 without having to cut a budget.
23:16 And the state acknowledged that transportation
23:19 and safe schools are underfunded.
23:21 And then we also have an increase in reading
23:23 and academic instruction, mental health, ESE allocations.
23:30 So it is a good news story.
23:34 And we have challenges.
23:39 So employee recurring compensation and compression.
23:43 We’re gonna have compression issues
23:45 as everyone goes, as employees reach $15 an hour.
23:50 And then people that are making 15.45,
23:54 you know, they’re gonna want an increase.
23:57 So there’s gonna be compression issues.
23:59 There’s compression concerns and issues with our teachers.
24:06 The way that the TSIA was structured in the beginning,
24:10 we also have rising Boston self-insured medical plan.
24:16 Believe the last that I saw was we need to increase
24:23 that plan by another 7.2 million next year
24:27 in recurring dollars.
24:29 So there’s work to do on figuring out how we do that
24:34 and, you know, making sure that that is the right number.
24:37 And again, the Florida retirement rates.
24:41 I mean, everybody likes that when they retire,
24:44 but it does come out of our budget.
24:47 And then we have the emerging requirements,
24:49 unforeseen events that I can’t budget for
24:54 ‘cause I don’t know what they are yet,
24:56 but we know that those things are gonna come.
24:59 And inflation, supply line disruptions.
25:03 So those are all things that we need to consider.
25:07 So this year we did not, again,
25:12 we started the year with a negative
25:15 and we worked our way through,
25:19 but we recognized how hard our employees worked
25:21 and we wanted to give them something.
25:23 So we were able to give them one-time bonuses,
25:26 but what we did was we projected about
25:29 what we think will fall out now.
25:32 So remember that when we have the end of this year,
25:36 when we have end of year closeout
25:38 that we’ve already spent a lot of dollars for the bonuses.
25:45 And then whatever falls out now,
25:47 what I wanna do is build up those reserves
25:52 because we let go many reserves in order to pay the bonuses
25:58 and we need those reserves for inflation.
26:02 We need those reserves for enrollment.
26:05 And so that’s what we’ll do with the one-time money
26:08 at the end of this year.
26:10 And then as we get into next year,
26:12 we’ll be able to evaluate more of where we can go.
26:15 And then a soft landing in 24, 25 seems like a long way off,
26:20 but we do need to make sure that we don’t
26:24 rely on all that money that we have now
26:29 because that money is going away.
26:31 So we’re gonna have to have to figure out
26:33 how we have a soft landing
26:35 and make sure that people that are funded now under ESSER
26:39 that we wanna be able to bring them back into the budget.
26:42 So there will be some planning
26:43 that we’ll have to do with that.
26:45 And then uncertain enrollment recovery, I don’t know.
26:51 Are we at the new normal?
26:52 Is this the right number?
26:53 Are we gonna grow?
26:54 Are we gonna rebound?
26:56 And if we’re not going to grow,
27:01 we might have to take a look at reducing our footprint.
27:05 So those are all different things
27:07 that we’ll have to take a look at.
27:14 This is our budget timeline.
27:15 You can see that we’re in March right now
27:18 and we are marching off to build our budget for next year.
27:24 And I wanted to introduce our new budget director,
27:29 Sherry Green, right here.
27:31 Very excited to have her.
27:33 And then our assistant budget director, Diane Lichtenstein.
27:41 I’m sorry, Lichtenstein.
27:43 And I also wanna thank Susan Denyer down there.
27:48 She, for the last three, four months,
27:52 she has come into the budget office every day
27:56 saying, “Good morning, budget,”
27:58 and making sure that we continue.
28:03 And she’s done an amazing job.
28:05 So she’s an honorary budgeteer.
28:10 But she’s excited to go back to the accounting
28:12 and working on that.
28:13 And she’s gotta close the books very soon.
28:17 And then our team right here, Maria and Rebecca,
28:21 have done an amazing job
28:26 getting all this together
28:28 and just relooking at the way we’ve done budget in the past
28:34 and how we can do things better.
28:35 So they’re just absolutely amazing.
28:41 So is there any questions?
28:44 - Thank you to the entire team
28:46 that works so hard to get all the information together
28:48 for us.
28:49 And just getting conference report
28:51 makes it a little bit difficult to have this information
28:54 right on the heels of everything.
28:55 So thank you for your hard work
28:57 and for interrupting your family time, Ms. Lissinski,
29:00 to wrap things up for us on Sunday.
29:01 We appreciate it.
29:02 Ms. McDougall, I think you wanted to say something.
29:04 - I did.
29:06 So first, I also wanna thank you and your team.
29:07 Thank you.
29:08 It takes a lot of work to put this together.
29:10 And I’m sure a lot of pencil erasers.
29:13 So thank you very much.
29:15 And so I just wanna kind of go over some of the challenges.
29:22 So our compression issue for all of our staff
29:26 across the whole county is going to be significant.
29:31 For our 1010, for our teachers,
29:34 there is going to be compression issue.
29:36 And there has been since I’ve been here, quite frankly.
29:41 I’m glad we were able to give bonuses,
29:43 that bonuses doesn’t help our staffs,
29:46 but I wanna say their bottom line when they retire,
29:49 ‘cause it doesn’t go into the retirement system.
29:52 So I think that is a very big, it’s a very big deal.
29:57 Plus, we’ve had 1010, our bus drivers,
30:00 our cafeteria workers, our secretaries, our admin,
30:03 our teachers all come and say, we’re not competitive.
30:06 We’re losing, as you said, people to other districts.
30:09 And we wanna keep our best and brightest here
30:11 in our district.
30:13 We have to keep paying into FRS, and it keeps going up.
30:16 Every year since I’ve been here,
30:17 it’s gone up that we submit some more money.
30:20 Our health plan is another one that we have to keep,
30:24 keep it afloat, because if we don’t keep it afloat,
30:26 our alternative is even worse than what we have right now.
30:30 So we have many challenges.
30:33 And on top of the inflation and the supply chain right now.
30:38 So I’m wondering, I would like to ask
30:40 my fellow board members, if you all might have the appetite
30:46 to ask Dr. Mullins to put together for us
30:50 and for our community, to see if our community
30:52 will support a millage.
30:55 I think it’s important things right now with inflation,
30:59 the compression, where we are as a district.
31:02 ESSA is gonna go away in 24, 25, then what do we do?
31:10 So I’m just asking my fellow board members
31:12 if you would have the appetite to go ahead
31:17 and have Dr. Mullins put something together for us
31:21 to look at for a millage on this balance.
31:23 And ask our community, community, do you support education?
31:27 Do you support your public education?
31:28 Do you support your schools?
31:30 Is it important to you?
31:32 I think we need our community to jump in also.
31:40 Pretty much what I have to say, thank you.
31:43 - Thank you, Ms. McDougall.
31:44 Any board member want to address Ms. McDougall’s question?
31:48 Ms. Jenkins.
31:49 - Ms. McDougall, I appreciate you bringing that up.
31:52 It’s something that I’ve been waiting for
31:56 as an employee of BPS before getting on this board.
31:59 I don’t remember if it was 2018 or 2019.
32:03 I specifically remember ‘cause it was a shocking number
32:06 of districts across the state.
32:08 I think it was 19 districts put it on their ballot.
32:11 All of them passed with flying colors
32:14 and were able to give significant increases
32:16 to their employees back then.
32:17 It was before that minimum teacher salary increase.
32:21 And it made a huge difference on the impact
32:23 of the morale of their staff
32:25 and probably overall the performance of their students.
32:28 And so I think it’s a no brainer
32:32 that we attempt to do the same here on the Space Coast
32:34 and just increase our ability to compete
32:39 with the surrounding counties around us.
32:41 You know, we lose,
32:42 because we’re such a weird shaped district,
32:44 we leave so many of our employees
32:46 in the North area over to Orange County
32:48 and so many of our employees in the South area
32:49 down to Indian River making significantly more money
32:53 with their years experience
32:54 once they hit that 10 to 12 year mark.
32:56 So I think it’s really, really important
32:59 and I absolutely support that idea as well.
33:03 - Anyone else?
33:07 Camille.
33:10 - Can I just like do my things
33:11 about the budget presentation too
33:13 and then I will address.
33:14 First of all, thank you for sharing your story.
33:16 A lot of times when we think about, you know,
33:18 this gets thrown in our face
33:20 rather than just given as a reminder,
33:22 people think about a certain type of kid, right?
33:26 But we have kids in every grade level
33:30 from all different kinds of background,
33:33 backgrounds who struggle and need that acknowledgement
33:37 that they are unique and they learn in a unique way
33:41 and those relationships are so important.
33:43 So thank you for sharing your story
33:44 and hope that Madison has found that kind of relationship
33:46 with the teachers that she has this year.
33:49 - She does.
33:50 - Good, good, but thank you for that story
33:52 because we need a reminder of what it really looks like
33:55 the face of a child and their story
33:57 and their emotions, right?
33:59 That you’re dealing with as a mom,
34:01 but also that our teachers and our staff deal with as well.
34:06 Competition, I think that word keeps being tossed out there
34:12 because one of the things we have to realize
34:13 is that we did receive all this extra funding
34:16 that we’re gonna be able to raise
34:18 but so did all the other counties.
34:20 They got the same proportionate share
34:23 and so they’re going to also be putting funding
34:25 into raising their employees up to $15 an hour
34:28 and raising their teacher salaries up to the 47.5
34:31 and doing all of that.
34:33 In addition, we’ve talked just about
34:36 competition with other counties,
34:37 but the truth is we lose a lot of our people
34:39 to other non-education jobs.
34:41 We lose a lot of our drivers to go drive for Amazon.
34:44 We lose a lot of our 10/10 staff
34:46 to go work at the Walmart warehouse.
34:49 We lose teachers who just give up the profession
34:51 to go do– - Space Center.
34:54 - Right, Space Center, whatever, something else.
34:58 And so, it’s just something we need to keep in front of mind.
35:07 The other thing about competition is
35:09 every time we do the budget presentation,
35:10 we have those similar first slides
35:13 and we tend to lament their growth in charter,
35:17 their growth in scholarships.
35:19 Just to bring it back around though,
35:21 we did receive the funding
35:24 for all the students that we have.
35:26 We receive it every year except for the year
35:27 when we got more funding than the students that we had.
35:29 We receive all the funding for every student that we have.
35:33 The charter schools receive the funding
35:35 for the students that they have.
35:36 The scholarship is kind of a new thing,
35:38 but that funding technically is not taken away from us.
35:42 That funding goes to the students
35:43 that are doing the scholarship opportunities.
35:46 Going back to the competition theme,
35:48 we have to embrace that we are
35:52 in a more competitive environment than ever
35:55 and we need to show, rather than lament,
35:57 we need to show what BPS has that other people don’t have.
36:02 Me personally, when I look around
36:04 at the options around our county,
36:05 I’m a music person, I’m not sure
36:07 that there is a school system in Brevard,
36:12 private or charter or homeschool co-op, whatever,
36:16 that can do what we can do music-wise.
36:18 They’re not doing it.
36:20 We have amazing programs that are only available
36:22 and if you want world-class music education,
36:25 BPS is the place to go in Brevard County
36:28 and I don’t apologize for that.
36:29 That’s why my kids are here because one of the reasons
36:32 why they’re in all the schools that they’re in
36:33 because we chose the music route.
36:36 There’s lots of other things,
36:38 but we have to embrace that competition
36:42 because scholarships aren’t going away,
36:45 charter schools aren’t going away
36:47 and it’s not an enemy necessarily,
36:50 but it is a chance to emphasize CTE.
36:54 No one’s doing CTE like we’re doing CTE
36:56 and we continue to improve every year
36:59 because of the hardworking staff that we have
37:01 and the focus that we have had
37:02 on making these internships happen.
37:05 Thank you, Mr. Susan, for keeping pushing that button.
37:09 Yeah. - It is cheerleading.
37:10 - Right, yeah, you know what, the cheerleading helps,
37:14 but those kinds of things.
37:15 We’ve got to continue to just honestly brag on our people,
37:20 brag on our programs, brag on and continue to improve them.
37:24 Those aren’t empty words when we brag
37:26 that we have the best high school orchestra in the country.
37:30 More on that tonight, but we have that
37:33 and so I just encourage us as a board
37:36 to keep our focus on that
37:38 rather than continue seeing these numbers
37:40 and we go, oh, no, all right, challenge accepted.
37:46 We have to be the best that’s going on out there
37:48 if we want people to come to us.
37:49 It’s a marketplace and it’s a free marketplace
37:52 of education more than ever before
37:54 and people aren’t just going to their school
37:56 in their neighborhood.
37:57 A lot of people are because for them,
37:58 the choice that they want to make
38:00 is the school that’s right next door because that’s easy.
38:02 It’s close and I went there and my parents went there.
38:06 My sister went there, whatever, they’ll do that
38:09 and that’s their choice, but more and more people
38:11 are making different choices and we need to embrace that.
38:15 To your point, Ms. McDougall,
38:20 I’m always willing to look at information
38:23 and I do think we have some unique challenges.
38:25 I think the communication, it’s gonna be an education piece
38:31 because we see these challenges
38:32 ‘cause we look at these numbers every year,
38:34 multiple times a year and we know what our challenges are.
38:36 We know what compression is.
38:37 A lot of times we say compression.
38:38 Does everybody on the public
38:39 really understand what that means?
38:41 That they understand that we might have a manager
38:43 making $15, $25 an hour managing people
38:46 who are making 25 cents less an hour than they do.
38:48 They understand what that means,
38:49 that we have teachers,
38:50 so I was just talking to one last night,
38:52 who’s been working with us for 15 years
38:55 and she’s making just a little bit more
38:58 than a teacher who just walked through the door
39:00 out of college.
39:02 Yeah, so and that’s tough to swallow
39:06 and it makes people wanna leave more
39:08 and we don’t wanna lose that.
39:09 So the complexities of our budget
39:13 are easy to get lost in the messaging.
39:17 So I just think we’d have to just make it super clear
39:20 what it is that we’re trying to do.
39:23 We’re not, it wouldn’t be going out
39:24 because poor woe is BPS.
39:27 We’ve lost all this money ‘cause of charter school.
39:28 No, it needs to be, everybody,
39:30 ‘cause honestly, the charter schools,
39:33 they need additional funding too.
39:35 They do and we would be sharing it with them
39:37 ‘cause by law we have to.
39:39 Their teachers need, I was at a charter school,
39:41 I’m sorry, I’m going along.
39:42 I was at a charter school a few weeks ago
39:43 as our charter school liaison visiting a school
39:46 and with the, they were asking how did you,
39:49 did you pull money from your budget
39:51 to raise the teachers up to whatever were 46, eight?
39:54 And I said, no.
39:55 And they’re like, well, how did you do that?
39:55 I said, well, we just already had a lot of teachers
39:57 that were close to it.
39:59 They’re still only able to get their teachers
40:01 up to like $42,000 a year.
40:05 They could use this too.
40:07 So it needs to be just that education funding
40:10 in general in Brevard County is struggling
40:14 and I think that communication needs to be clear
40:16 if that’s where we go.
40:17 But I certainly am willing to look at the information.
40:23 - Anyone else before I?
40:27 - No, she can go.
40:28 - I just have like one really quick thing
40:30 that just kind of segues off of that
40:31 and then I promise I’m done.
40:32 But jumping off of what Ms. Campbell said,
40:35 I think it’s really important to, of course,
40:37 educate the public of why we need that
40:39 but also remind them when that millage decreased.
40:42 It decreased ‘cause of the housing crisis,
40:44 across the entire nation, across the state of Florida
40:46 and Brevard but I’m pretty sure people are well aware
40:50 of how insane our housing market is now.
40:53 We are no longer in that situation anymore.
40:56 And so that is really why it’s important
40:58 to have this conversation.
40:59 And I think it would be really interesting
41:00 to find out at this point in 2022,
41:04 how many counties have went back
41:06 and increased that millage back up to the 2000 and great.
41:09 Because again, that one year alone was 19 counties,
41:12 but there’s more and more every single year.
41:14 Thanks.
41:15 - Thank you, Ms. Jenkins.
41:16 Mr. Susan.
41:19 - Yeah, there’s a lot of sentiments that I agree with
41:21 that are sitting here.
41:24 I think it behooves us to also dig into the budget
41:26 to make sure that what Dr. Mullins has been consistent with
41:30 in the past, he’s consistent with now.
41:32 I just pulled all of the presentations
41:34 to SIAC for insurance and I’m gonna go through those
41:36 to offer up anything to save.
41:38 But the bottom line is this.
41:41 This kind of hits me because I was a teacher here
41:43 for nine years and the last time I checked,
41:46 I was the only classroom teacher that’s ever made it through
41:48 that’s like been a consistent classroom teacher
41:51 that’s sponsored the clubs and done all this stuff.
41:54 So when I was in here, the first year that I was in,
41:57 they froze salaries, froze them.
42:00 And so I worked for seven years without a cost increase.
42:04 Seven years and they let other people
42:07 who were coming in from Orange County to get their steps.
42:12 So literally, I’m sitting here in my classroom
42:14 in O’Gally High School, I’ll never forget it.
42:16 And the woman that lived right next door,
42:18 worked right next door to me
42:19 was making $3,000 more a year.
42:21 So in order for me to offset the cost of that,
42:24 I sat down and taught seven of seven classes.
42:28 At the time we had two plannings.
42:30 I taught seven of seven without a break all day.
42:34 And that was multiple history classes,
42:36 multiple kids, I had a lot of students
42:38 with disabilities in my classes that I would take them in.
42:41 And I would teach, I mean, I remember one girl,
42:43 I taught her ninth grade US or world history
42:46 in the middle of my American history class.
42:49 It’s what we do.
42:51 And then after it was all done, I would go and I was a coach.
42:56 And I was a head coach to the lacrosse team
42:58 that I have on my shirt right here.
43:00 And then after that was done, I literally got in my car
43:02 and drove and taught night school.
43:05 So you wanna talk about somebody that was committed
43:07 trying to make a difference in kids’ lives
43:09 and was getting paid peanuts for it, I’m right there.
43:13 It’s my story.
43:14 And I will tell you that there is nobody in this world
43:18 that can connect to a kid in high school like a teacher.
43:23 We all know that we have our kids at home
43:25 and they don’t wanna listen to us.
43:28 I mean, I’m just now getting my 19 year old
43:30 to start listening to me when she’s in college.
43:32 And that’s just ‘cause I’m not around to drive her crazy.
43:35 But I’ll tell you, there’s no single individual
43:39 in this community that has more of an impact
43:42 in a child’s life than those teachers
43:44 that are in front of them.
43:46 And one of the hardest things I ever had to do
43:48 was make a financial decision to leave teaching.
43:51 And a lot of that had to be wrapped around the fact
43:53 that I was able to make more money outside
43:55 in the private sector, which some of you guys have said.
43:58 And it was a sad day.
44:00 And I will tell you and Mullins will tell you too,
44:03 the hardest thing anybody can ever do
44:06 is leave teaching and then go back.
44:09 Because every time I’m back in a school,
44:11 my energy level pops up, I’m so excited,
44:13 I mess with the kids a little bit too much,
44:15 because there’s nothing better
44:17 than being a teacher in this world.
44:19 And I think from the bottom of my heart
44:22 that we need to have our teachers to be appreciated.
44:26 And I spent a lot of time being in my position
44:29 with the Florida School Board Association
44:31 in many districts around the state of Florida.
44:34 And there are a lot of them that already have millages
44:38 that we are competing against that have told our,
44:41 that are paying their people more.
44:43 And we’re losing to them, we are.
44:47 For me, my story comes from being frozen
44:50 and having to give up probably my happiest career
44:54 I will ever have because I barely had enough money
44:57 on the weekends to take my daughter to the beach.
45:00 And that’s sick.
45:02 So I know there’s a lot of teachers
45:04 that are on the verge this year that are out there
45:07 that are saying, you know what, I just can’t do it anymore,
45:10 there’s more opportunities out here, and let’s face it,
45:12 we are the only county in the state of Florida
45:14 that is projected to not hit a depression
45:17 or a recession in the next 20 years.
45:20 Literally by the Florida Chamber and by all the other groups
45:23 because of the amount of defense industry
45:26 and aviation we have coming.
45:28 So it’s gonna be tough, we’re not doing this this year,
45:30 it’s not gonna be next year, I mean, we have,
45:32 in other counties across the state of Florida,
45:34 each one of the individuals that works inside of those,
45:37 and some of them, the county job and the school board job
45:39 are the best jobs in the county.
45:41 Well, not here.
45:42 I mean, freaking, we got like SpaceX and Blue Origins
45:46 and NASA, and I mean, there’s opportunities every day
45:48 that pluck our teachers.
45:49 And every time Dr. Mullins gives them awards the next year,
45:52 they’re running off taking a job somewhere
45:54 ‘cause they got on somebody’s radar.
45:56 So the bottom line is is that as a teacher,
46:00 I will tell you that I had to leave this profession
46:02 because of it, and I’ll make an argument
46:05 that I was a damn good teacher,
46:06 and I cared about those kids,
46:08 and I run into them all the time, and I see them,
46:10 and it just reminds me.
46:11 I mean, it reminds me of what we did.
46:14 But what the other thing is is that we need to do
46:16 is there’s two things.
46:17 One, we’re not making the decision.
46:19 We’re giving it to our voters to make the decision,
46:21 and that’s a mandate on us too,
46:22 the school board members, just so you know.
46:25 But the other thing is is that I would have to see
46:27 what Dr. Mullins brings back,
46:29 because there’s a lot of things that if I was to support
46:31 this that I would wanna see inside there.
46:34 We’re talking about salaries,
46:35 but our coaches are some of the worst paid coaches
46:37 in the entire state of Florida.
46:39 It’s not anybody’s fault.
46:40 It’s just their stipends are the lowest.
46:42 We can’t even get people to do academics.
46:45 We can’t get people who sponsor clubs.
46:47 Needs to be part of it.
46:49 So I am the same sentiments.
46:52 I have a personal story of me,
46:55 and I appreciate you bringing it up.
46:57 Let’s see what we’ve got.
47:00 - Thank you, Mr. Susan.
47:02 Anybody else before I?
47:06 - Mr. Susan, thank you for bringing that up.
47:07 I think another thing for people to be aware of
47:10 is the insane percentage of our teachers
47:13 that have second jobs just to survive.
47:16 I can’t even imagine what that number would be
47:19 for the rest of our employee groups
47:20 that are making $15 an hour and under.
47:22 I can assume it would only be higher.
47:26 Just my husband came on right around
47:29 probably when Mr. Susan came on, same thing.
47:31 Had a second job most of his career as an educator.
47:34 I had a second job most of my career as an educator.
47:37 At one point, I had three,
47:39 just to live paycheck to paycheck.
47:42 So it’s not just our teachers.
47:44 It’s definitely all of our employees,
47:45 but I appreciate you bringing that up, Mr. Susan,
47:47 and I think it’s, again, I think it’d be really interesting
47:49 to get data like that out to the public.
47:51 How many of them need to work a second job
47:54 just to live a decent living wage?
47:56 So thanks.
47:58 - Thank you, Mr. Jenkins.
48:00 - I think, sorry.
48:01 I think one thing to remember is this.
48:05 People work second jobs, many people do.
48:07 There’s no doubt, right?
48:10 I know a lot of people, the gig economy,
48:12 the 1099 economy has become the new thing.
48:15 But there’s a difference here with teachers.
48:18 They are making a difference in the community.
48:21 When you go to work in many of the different jobs,
48:23 that many people say, “Well, I’ve got five jobs.
48:25 “I work the same amount of hours.”
48:28 There is a specific skillset that we need
48:30 inside of our teachers that takes a specific type of person
48:34 to get the best outcomes for our children
48:36 to build our future.
48:37 And that’s what people need to understand
48:39 is that in order to attract that good, specific skillset,
48:44 there needs to be part of that,
48:45 needs to be conversation.
48:48 Thank you.
48:50 - Thank you, Mr. Susan.
48:53 So I have a couple of questions
48:56 before I get into the current discussion,
48:58 Ms. Blasinski, if you don’t mind.
49:01 On the TSIA, the language still exists,
49:06 if I understand correctly,
49:07 and I’m hoping that you can tell me I am correct
49:10 or I am wrong.
49:12 But so we got it from the 80/20 split to the 50/50 split,
49:16 but we still have the language and statute
49:18 that requires that for every,
49:23 for every dollar 50,
49:27 until we get to the 47.5,
49:29 it’s like 150% has to go to teachers below.
49:36 And then once we hit the 47.5,
49:38 for every dollar we give to our veteran teachers
49:40 who are making more than 47.5,
49:42 we have to give 75 cents, I think,
49:46 to our new teachers that they didn’t,
49:48 they didn’t give us any leeway on that, right?
49:50 - Actually, that’s something that we are digging into.
49:54 There’s some portions that are a little vague
49:56 and we have a super smart person over there,
50:01 Rebecca, that, you know,
50:02 she was kind of looking at different percentages.
50:04 And so we’re still looking into it
50:07 to see if there’s a different way that we can do it.
50:10 But my understanding is what you said is correct,
50:13 but we’re still looking to see
50:16 if we can work some things differently.
50:20 Is that kind of right, Rebecca?
50:24 - Thank you, Rebecca, for looking into that
50:26 and seeing if we can get,
50:28 ‘cause that really creates,
50:31 it makes it almost impossible for us
50:32 to fully address the compensation
50:35 or the compression issue in our teacher force.
50:42 - And incredibly complicated.
50:43 - Yeah, and we don’t have that issue
50:45 with 10/10 and non-bargaining, right?
50:47 That’s restricted to teachers.
50:49 It’s just the teachers.
50:50 - Yeah, and then the other question that I had for you,
50:53 I know that we had some pretty good indication
50:56 that our third calc issue would be addressed during session.
51:01 Do we know if, do we have relief coming there?
51:04 - Yes, the FDOE brief that they received approval
51:10 from all the primary people that have to provide approvals
51:13 that they can fix that in the fourth calc.
51:17 And then what happened was the state put aside,
51:21 what, $426 million as reserve
51:27 because they knew that scholarships
51:31 was gonna be kind of tricky and what that cost would be.
51:34 And we were to be a pass-through.
51:37 And so they reserved that funding.
51:39 I think 200 million was for the Gardner scholarships
51:42 that went away.
51:43 And then there was another 286, something like that.
51:46 And so when it came to third calc,
51:51 they used 186 million instead of the entire reserve.
51:58 And the legislature actually, the purpose of that reserve
52:02 was that was their estimate of what it was gonna cost.
52:06 And it made no sense to anyone
52:08 for whatever reason that happened.
52:10 And when the legislature realized what happened,
52:14 they’re like, no, that’s not the intention.
52:16 So I was told that it would be fixed in the fourth calc.
52:21 So ‘cause right now in the third calc,
52:23 we receive a plus up of 15.5 million,
52:29 but charters went up by 20.
52:32 So again, it was brief that different levels
52:37 that that would be corrected on the fourth calc.
52:40 - Good, that’s definitely good news.
52:42 You mentioned that our safe schools allocation went up
52:45 and I don’t know, this might be a major Neil question.
52:49 I don’t know if there’s been any conversation around it,
52:50 but I know we’ve had concerns about being able
52:53 to sustain the school safety specialist program
52:56 because of potential training dollars available.
52:59 Do you know if there was any additional funding provided
53:02 for that program to make sure that we can continue
53:06 to train and hire as we have gaps?
53:10 - I forget the name of that area.
53:16 That funds that, but it is still funded this year.
53:19 So I think we should be okay on the training.
53:22 The state provides funding for the sheriff to train the…
53:37 - Awesome, great news, thank you.
53:39 - It’s in the language.
53:41 - Super, thank you.
53:44 All right, so to the topic of conversation at hand,
53:48 a couple of things that I think Ms. Lisinski
53:51 went through the challenges that we have ahead of us
53:54 and what we need to do to meet those challenges.
53:58 And I think it’s important to point out
53:59 that regardless of the conversation that takes place today
54:02 in the direction given to the superintendent,
54:04 which clearly there’s a majority,
54:05 so it doesn’t really matter how I weigh in on the issue.
54:09 But I think it’s important to state
54:11 that we still have to do those things, right?
54:15 So I don’t want the public to think
54:17 that we’re just gonna try to go out for a millage
54:19 so we don’t have to make any of the tough choices.
54:22 I think we still have to look at one of the things
54:25 that we have tried really hard to do
54:27 and actually we received funding to do
54:30 was to keep people employed during the pandemic.
54:33 And we’ve done that.
54:35 If we don’t see that rebound in enrollment,
54:37 then I think unfortunately we come to a point
54:39 where we have to look at efficiencies, right?
54:42 And whether that be that we eliminate some of those positions
54:45 whether it be that we have to look at, you know,
54:48 mining facilities, those types of things
54:51 for a main efficient,
54:52 I think that still comes along with it, right?
54:56 We’re not looking for an easy way out through a millage.
54:57 I think that’s important.
55:01 But I think we have come to a point
55:03 where we really have to allow our community
55:08 to weigh in on the issue.
55:09 And help us to determine our priorities
55:12 or the priorities from the community.
55:16 You know, we hear all the time the concerns
55:18 about not having enough bus drivers
55:20 and buses running late and kids not getting to school
55:22 and not being able to eat and not being in class.
55:26 We hear all the time about we have substitutes coming in
55:29 and working in our cafeteria.
55:31 We have one or two people working in, you know,
55:33 an entire cafeteria to school.
55:35 We certainly have the teacher issue of people leaving.
55:39 I think you guys probably got the email yesterday
55:41 of one of our teachers that shared her letter of resignation.
55:47 And we hear that more and more.
55:48 And the reality is that if we can’t keep good people
55:53 in the system, we can’t be competitive.
55:56 And while I agree with you, Ms. Campbell,
55:58 that we need to stop lamenting over those numbers
56:00 and instead really sell BPS
56:02 and the reasons that we’re the best.
56:04 The truth of the matter is that we can only be the best
56:06 if we have the best people.
56:08 Because it doesn’t matter what we do up here
56:11 with regard to passing policies and those sorts of things.
56:14 If we don’t have the right people
56:16 in the schools to serve our students,
56:19 then we can’t be the best and we can’t be competitive
56:21 in this new competitive market.
56:23 And so I think our community deserves an opportunity
56:29 to weigh in and tell us what’s most important to them.
56:33 So I would certainly just think you will support
56:36 your request for us to look at that again.
56:39 And you’re right, Ms. Campbell, the communication
56:42 and Ms. Spinkins, you mentioned it too.
56:46 I think we definitely have to do a lot of,
56:48 providing a lot of information.
56:50 But we are at a point where it’s not going to get better
56:53 and we’ve got that cliff when SRNs
56:56 that we’re gonna have to deal with as well.
56:58 So yes, I thank you for bringing forward the conversation
57:02 and Dr. Mullins, do you need additional guidance
57:06 from us on where to go next or?
57:09 - No, I appreciate the board’s discussion.
57:11 If I may just take a couple of minutes.
57:15 First, I’d like to also thank Ms. Lisinski
57:18 and the finance team for your great work
57:21 over the last, I don’t know, week and a half
57:23 that we’ve had the conference report.
57:24 I mean, I think this is the shortest turnaround time
57:27 we’ve ever had to put together a budget presentation
57:30 and appreciate your hard work
57:31 and the hard work of the team,
57:32 especially through some employment transition challenges.
57:36 So appreciate the work you get us ready
57:38 for this conversation today.
57:42 But also, thank you for sharing the story of Madison
57:45 and just elevating what our first priority is and remains
57:52 and that is the people who influenced the kids’ lives
57:54 that we are entrusted to serve.
57:58 But I also wanna thank this board
58:01 because you have consistently demonstrated
58:05 your championship for kids
58:07 and have recognized the hard decisions
58:11 and challenges we’ve had to face as a district.
58:15 We didn’t include it in this presentation,
58:17 but I know it’ll be familiar with the board
58:19 and hopefully to our public.
58:21 We’ve cut over $35 million from the operating budget
58:25 over the last six years.
58:28 And that has come with some very hard realities.
58:34 We’ve eliminated media assistance across all of our schools.
58:37 That was a reduction in workforce.
58:39 We’ve eliminated other positions across the district
58:43 as well as in our schools,
58:45 supporting our teachers to do their great work.
58:47 And when we can’t provide the supports around the classroom,
58:51 then our teachers have to take on
58:54 additional responsibilities and so on
58:57 and more work and it just compounds.
59:02 So in the midst of having to make those hard decisions,
59:08 everywhere I go in our community, they’re grateful.
59:11 They recognize our world-class career
59:15 and technical education programs,
59:16 the opportunities we’re providing our students,
59:18 the expansion of workplace experiences for them.
59:22 Our business partners are complimenting us
59:24 on the work of our teachers
59:25 and preparing our kids for the workforce.
59:29 Our music programs are,
59:31 I’m gonna read a testimonial this evening.
59:34 An unsolicited testimonial from a fellow music expert
59:40 in the state who experienced our music programs.
59:45 We are, we’re number one.
59:47 We have a graduation rate that has continued to go up.
59:51 We are tackling the underperformance of some students
59:55 in our third grade reading performance.
59:58 We’re tackling very vigorously
1:00:02 and we’re making a difference in our students’ lives.
1:00:05 And I appreciate this board continuing
1:00:10 to not only be champions for kids and for our schools,
1:00:15 but demonstrating that through having to make hard choices
1:00:19 and supporting what we have to do to meet the needs,
1:00:22 but now also recognizing the necessity
1:00:25 to have our community understand, along with us,
1:00:29 to continue to be the competitive school system we are
1:00:32 and to keep our best, retain Brevard’s best,
1:00:35 that we need to put this before them for consideration.
1:00:38 So I understand the board’s direction
1:00:41 is to prepare language for a millage
1:00:45 on the general election ballot, November of ‘22,
1:00:50 to put before our community to support compensation
1:00:55 for our employees when we begin receiving revenue.
1:01:00 Did I get that correct, Madam Chair and board members?
1:01:06 - Thank you, go ahead.
1:01:09 - Yes, that is correct, but I also think about,
1:01:15 this is from my, maybe Ms. Paul,
1:01:19 is I would love us to bring back,
1:01:21 if we can find bus drivers,
1:01:23 which is the big F, regional bus drivers,
1:01:25 ‘cause I do think some of our students are missing out,
1:01:28 that they can’t go to some of the CTE programs
1:01:30 because there is no transportation for them.
1:01:33 So if we could maybe incorporate a little bit of that too.
1:01:36 - We’ll look at that as well.
1:01:41 - I just have a clarifying question.
1:01:42 Mr. Susan had mentioned, and Mrs. Susan, I’m sorry,
1:01:45 Mr. Susan, you know, our coaches and staff.
1:01:50 So my understanding was,
1:01:54 for the counties that had gone out for the millage,
1:01:56 this can go towards any form of compensation
1:01:59 and for staffing.
1:02:00 Is that true, or is that something that we have to define?
1:02:04 - Well, my understanding, and I’ll let Mr. Gibbs weigh in,
1:02:09 as, you know, from the legal perspective,
1:02:12 a millage for the operating budget
1:02:15 can be allocated and used for any purpose,
1:02:18 unlike the half cent sales tax.
1:02:20 That has to be used solely for the purpose of capital.
1:02:23 But a millage can be used for operating budget expenses
1:02:27 that can include everything from compensation
1:02:29 to supplements and so on.
1:02:31 However, we have a collective bargaining agreement
1:02:33 with our different employee groups,
1:02:35 and how those funds would be ultimately distributed
1:02:41 would be subject to collective bargaining.
1:02:45 Did I represent that correctly, Mr. Gibbs?
1:02:51 - I would want to confirm all of that through statute,
1:02:54 but my understanding is operational
1:02:56 is for operational costs.
1:02:57 So the one limit might be you can’t use it for capital.
1:03:00 So there’s a capital millage that you can do separate.
1:03:02 But yes, I think that’s the right answer,
1:03:04 but I’ll confirm that.
1:03:10 - Anybody else?
1:03:14 All right, then I think we are now moving on
1:03:16 to our update on capital projects funding.
1:03:19 Ms. Han?
1:03:22 - Okay, I think I’m gonna kick this off
1:03:24 and then Ms. Han will come and end the briefing
1:03:29 for the capital side.
1:03:31 - Okay, super.
1:03:32 Thank you, Ms. Lisinski.
1:03:36 - So, you know, not to take any thunder away from Sue,
1:03:42 but capital funding is critical as well for the learning.
1:03:46 And studies have proven that the facility quality
1:03:54 is a major factor or predictor for teacher retention
1:03:58 and student learning.
1:04:00 So everything from proper light to air quality.
1:04:05 I even read that the color of the paint
1:04:07 makes a big difference within the classroom.
1:04:10 So all of those things.
1:04:12 [BLANK_AUDIO]
1:04:22 you know, an inviting space, and there’s a lot of things
1:04:15 that we can do now, you know, to make it inviting,
1:04:17 but I just want to stress the importance
1:04:21 of teachers and students and all the employees
1:04:27 having facilities where they feel like
1:04:29 that they’re welcomed and they’re respected,
1:04:33 that, you know, it’s that they’re there
1:04:36 and they’re professional, they’re there to learn.
1:04:40 And then also the 21st century skills,
1:04:44 such as teamwork, collaboration, problem solving,
1:04:47 all of those things and all the computer stuff
1:04:51 that Russell buys for the technical side
1:04:57 is just so important, and then some of these classrooms
1:05:00 and these old buildings are, you know,
1:05:02 maybe not made for that.
1:05:04 So I just want to kind of have that as a lead in
1:05:10 as we talk about what we came up with as a committee
1:05:15 to provide recommendations for funding next year
1:05:19 for capital dollars.
1:05:22 And then you can see the tax assessment history here.
1:05:27 And, you know, you can see pre-pandemic was 1920,
1:05:32 and the property taxes assessment
1:05:38 is just continuing to rise.
1:05:40 That probably wasn’t the prediction two years ago,
1:05:43 but it’s something.
1:05:47 And then when you look at that 1.5 mills
1:05:52 and considering 96% collection, we have $81 million.
1:05:58 We do have debt service that we have to pay.
1:06:01 And then we also transfer maintenance dollars
1:06:06 as well as property insurance.
1:06:08 And so the remaining, I should say,
1:06:11 LCI funding for projects is 27.8 million.
1:06:17 And again, if you want to attract the best talent,
1:06:20 you also have to create the best working environments.
1:06:29 So this was the request that we had.
1:06:34 $38.6 million worth of requests,
1:06:37 and we had 27.8 million to allocate.
1:06:42 And you can look through this list and see,
1:06:47 and this isn’t priority order
1:06:49 of the things that we felt that we could fund.
1:06:52 The committee included Mr. Novelli, Suhan,
1:06:57 Russell Cheatham, and Winnie Knipple, Susan Denyer.
1:07:03 And then you can see the different things
1:07:05 that we were funding, always with the priorities
1:07:09 of what makes sense for the district.
1:07:13 And then there were some areas where we felt
1:07:17 that we could possibly use funding from a different source.
1:07:33 - Can I ask, okay, I just have a goofy question.
1:07:40 I’m looking at this list and I just want
1:07:42 to better understand what a portable toilet trailer is.
1:07:48 I’m curious, I’ve not heard of that.
1:07:52 - Really, well, actually my daughter came home one day
1:07:56 from school and said that the water wasn’t working
1:08:00 and the district brought in portable trailers
1:08:03 so the students could use the restroom.
1:08:07 - So, do we have a bunch of those, Ms. Nance?
1:08:10 I mean. (laughing)
1:08:18 - So that’s when I’m having a bad day.
1:08:22 What it means is, Ms. Lissensky said,
1:08:23 the water’s off or there’s some plumbing disaster
1:08:26 and we basically bring in Port-A-Lets on a trailer.
1:08:30 So it’s a multi-bathroom asset that is mobile
1:08:33 that comes onto the site.
1:08:35 And we have a couple of them.
1:08:36 We’re looking to add one so that we have them deployed
1:08:39 in different areas of the county because we’re so long.
1:08:42 If it’s in the wrong spot, our kids have to wait.
1:08:44 - Okay, thank you.
1:08:54 - And then we also added a list
1:08:59 that if we receive additional dollars,
1:09:01 if we find that we’re gonna receive additional dollars
1:09:05 ‘cause of the property values increase.
1:09:10 So we have this list here for another $3 million
1:09:13 that we would buy some of these things back or add things
1:09:17 as we receive additional funding.
1:09:22 And I would say, I just realized this today,
1:09:26 that the ARP dollars came in and there’s, I think,
1:09:31 $3 million for classrooms for FF&E.
1:09:34 So some of these may come off
1:09:40 because there’s some great money coming in
1:09:43 to do amazing work to our classrooms.
1:09:49 - I just remember, I was about to ask you
1:09:51 what the excellence, one of the things that,
1:09:54 one of the cuts, the modern classrooms, number 14,
1:09:56 from 7.1 million to 1 million is a part
1:09:58 of excellence elevated, but that is the plan
1:10:00 for the ARP funding, am I, is that correct?
1:10:05 Dr. Mullins or whoever, excellence elevated,
1:10:08 that’s the ARP plan?
1:10:09 - Correct, I think Mr. Cheatham,
1:10:11 are you coming up to clarify that further?
1:10:15 - It’s a long walk.
1:10:22 - I believe that’s our one-to-one.
1:10:24 - Okay.
1:10:27 - Good afternoon, yes, excellence elevated,
1:10:29 that’s our newer classrooms, the classrooms you’d see
1:10:32 at South Lake or Vieira Elementary.
1:10:35 With excellence elevated initially,
1:10:37 not knowing how much ARP dollars we were gonna get,
1:10:40 the goal was to bring all of our classrooms
1:10:42 up to that level.
1:10:43 Our 21st century classrooms are similar
1:10:45 to what you see here with the projectors and strings,
1:10:47 where we’re trying to move forward
1:10:48 with the modern classroom and having the flat panels
1:10:51 in front of the classrooms and things like that.
1:10:53 So, still trying to chip away at that
1:10:56 without the ESSER dollars to fully support it
1:10:58 for all of our classrooms.
1:10:59 - Awesome, thank you.
1:11:18 - Oh, one more question, sorry.
1:11:19 And number 46, the distributed antenna system,
1:11:22 is that the, like to help with the communications
1:11:27 at our schools that are in kind of like cellular holes?
1:11:30 Okay, Sue’s nodding her head yes, okay, thank you.
1:11:45 - One of the questions we have for the board
1:11:47 and for discussion is are you comfortable
1:11:51 with the prioritization that the allocation committee
1:11:55 has presented and then also the priority request
1:11:59 to add back in the event that the revenue
1:12:02 does go up because of the 96%?
1:12:04 Sometimes we get additional revenue
1:12:06 because it is funded at a higher rate than the 96%.
1:12:12 - The only one I saw that kind of perked out
1:12:14 was the ESF carpet renewal was the only one
1:12:16 that they increased on the thing.
1:12:18 If we can just bring that down to be equal
1:12:20 with the rest, the committee, you know, asked.
1:12:25 - Which item number was that?
1:12:27 - What is it?
1:12:27 - Number 32, I wondered though, Mr. Zusin,
1:12:30 because of the increased costs.
1:12:33 - Well then all the increase would increase costs.
1:12:36 Fuel, building, everything.
1:12:38 So it was just the optics, that’s all.
1:12:41 - I believe that’s a typo, I apologize.
1:12:43 - Okay.
1:12:49 - That increased because the original
1:12:52 was based on last year’s capital request.
1:12:55 It was a two year project.
1:12:56 That was actually the second of three years.
1:13:00 We were able to bring it in in two years.
1:13:02 However, what happened since that time
1:13:06 and the preparation of this presentation
1:13:10 is that we actually got a quote for the second half.
1:13:13 And so that price actually reflects a quote.
1:13:16 But we can certainly adjust if necessary.
1:13:19 So no problem either way.
1:13:22 - It was just optics, that’s all.
1:13:23 - Well I was just gonna suggest that
1:13:24 if we go with Mr. Zusin’s suggestion,
1:13:26 he gets to pick whose office doesn’t get re-carpeted.
1:13:29 (laughing)
1:13:31 - Well I got a list right here.
1:13:32 I just wanna put it in perspective.
1:13:35 This building may not look it,
1:13:38 but it is nearly 30 years, or it is 30 years old.
1:13:41 And we have entire pods in this facility
1:13:44 that have the original carpet
1:13:46 when the building was built.
1:13:49 So it is not a replace out of luxury.
1:13:56 It is absolutely out of necessity
1:13:58 just from a quality work environment,
1:14:00 air environment, et cetera.
1:14:02 - Well and just to remind all of us
1:14:04 that just like our half cent sales tax plans,
1:14:06 we have saved ESF for last.
1:14:09 That’s why all that construction’s going on out there.
1:14:11 Not because we don’t prioritize the people in this building,
1:14:13 but because our priority is on our schools and our students
1:14:16 and so everybody at ESF has had to wait ‘til the end
1:14:20 to have their, you know, the air conditioning
1:14:22 and the doors leaking and all of the work that’s being done,
1:14:26 you know, security wise right now
1:14:27 and the new entryway and all that, so.
1:14:31 - The unique paint.
1:14:33 - Yeah, and the green paint.
1:14:34 - The unique paint.
1:14:38 - If you’re asking for input, I appreciate this list.
1:14:43 I was taking a look when you first sent it
1:14:45 and we actually, usually when it goes from requested
1:14:49 to the committee proposed, it’s always either the same
1:14:52 or it’s down and I appreciate the FF and E went up
1:14:55 and I know $300,000 sometimes when you start buying
1:14:58 furniture for classrooms, that goes really fast.
1:15:02 But for secondary and elementary,
1:15:04 I appreciate that that was increased
1:15:05 because that’s how we get to these classrooms
1:15:09 where the kids walk in and they go,
1:15:10 wow, I wanna be here and I wanna learn here
1:15:12 and it’s not the same desks that their parents sat
1:15:15 in when they went to that school.
1:15:17 - With their initials still carved in them?
1:15:18 - With their initials still carved in it, right, exactly.
1:15:21 You know, I was just thinking,
1:15:22 that’s where I went to school, it was good enough for me,
1:15:24 it’s good enough for them.
1:15:25 Well, 50 years later, so, but no, I’m fine
1:15:30 with the list and the add back list as well.
1:15:38 - The final slide is just so you can get a snapshot
1:15:41 of our debt service schedule
1:15:44 and I’m gonna pass this to Ms. Han.
1:15:51 - We should come back for a party then.
1:15:53 I’m serious.
1:15:54 - Before we start talking about the projects,
1:15:56 I just, as a point of education,
1:15:57 because you know, we just did our other budget
1:16:01 and then some, and we come into this one
1:16:02 and I think sometimes people in the public are,
1:16:05 because we say, oh, we have,
1:16:06 our property values are skyrocketing,
1:16:07 you should have all this money.
1:16:08 They don’t understand that the operational side
1:16:10 of our budget is completely controlled by the legislature.
1:16:14 How much money we get, it’s per student.
1:16:15 It’s not based on how wealthy our county is
1:16:18 or how much our property values goes up.
1:16:20 Like the capital budget, this one can increase every year
1:16:23 based on property values
1:16:24 because it’s actually a set percentage
1:16:26 and we get whatever this percentage is
1:16:28 of our actual property values.
1:16:29 So just as a point of education,
1:16:31 I think it’s important for our community to know
1:16:32 that this one, of course, you know, there’s also,
1:16:36 it’s not recession proof and when property values went down
1:16:39 in those years, this one dropped significantly
1:16:42 and that’s why we had such, you know,
1:16:44 the horrible facilities that, conditions that we had
1:16:47 before the half-cent sales tax pass.
1:16:49 But just wanted to clarify that this one is different
1:16:52 and the operational budget is set by the state
1:16:55 and can’t go up and down necessarily according to property.
1:17:00 - That’s a good point, Mr. Harrell.
1:17:01 - And our taxable income is based upon,
1:17:04 your taxable income does not increase
1:17:06 based upon the amount of money that your house is worth.
1:17:09 It can only go up if you live in a homestead
1:17:11 of property by 3% every year.
1:17:14 So for people to, yeah, good point.
1:17:22 - Yeah, thanks.
1:17:24 - So good afternoon, everyone.
1:17:25 Sue Han, Assistant Superintendent for Facilities Services.
1:17:28 And I have to say, I am so excited to be here
1:17:31 talking about something that is not air conditioning.
1:17:34 (laughing)
1:17:35 I remember when I started here about seven years ago
1:17:37 that I spent a lot of time at this podium
1:17:40 talking about air conditioning and our learning environments
1:17:43 were not conducive to learning.
1:17:46 And I can’t tell you how happy and proud I am
1:17:49 to be standing here today talking about
1:17:52 putting more money into FF&E for kids in our classrooms.
1:17:56 And that is just an awesome place to be
1:17:59 considering where we were.
1:18:00 So I wanna thank the board and our community
1:18:02 for supporting all of our capital investments
1:18:04 because we’re getting to a place
1:18:06 where we can do great things for kids.
1:18:08 So I’m gonna talk just about some of the big projects
1:18:10 that we have going on.
1:18:11 This is a bit of an update, some of these slides.
1:18:13 You’ve seen some of these graphics before
1:18:15 and just kinda let you know where we are
1:18:17 with our major projects.
1:18:19 So this is the list of projects
1:18:21 that will be under construction soon.
1:18:23 And I’ll be going through these in a fair amount of detail.
1:18:27 But I also wanna highlight that little sentence
1:18:28 at the bottom that you’re gonna see on a lot of these slides
1:18:31 and that is that our costs and timing
1:18:33 are unpredictable these days.
1:18:35 We have a lot of variability in costs.
1:18:38 We have issues where we get under contract
1:18:41 and then suddenly we can’t get a whatever bid.
1:18:44 Things are very volatile right now
1:18:46 in the construction market.
1:18:47 So just be prepared for change.
1:18:49 I’m gonna be giving you what our best guess is
1:18:51 and what we’re planning.
1:18:53 But be prepared for things to change.
1:18:56 We also have some projects that are under development
1:18:58 and I’ll talk about these individually as well.
1:19:00 But we wanna plan for the future
1:19:02 and these are some of the things that we anticipate
1:19:04 will be coming up in the future.
1:19:07 So just a reminder, resources for facilities projects.
1:19:10 There’s really three big buckets that we work from.
1:19:13 Capital is in the middle
1:19:14 and can kind of do any capital projects.
1:19:17 That’s the funding that Cindy was talking about.
1:19:20 We have our sales surtax revenue
1:19:22 and that is primarily dedicated towards
1:19:25 renewal of facilities, at least in the facilities world.
1:19:28 So we’re not building new buildings, new student stations
1:19:31 with sales tax here in Brevard.
1:19:33 It’s eligible, it is not what we propose
1:19:36 to the voters for this round.
1:19:38 So really when we’re doing capacity projects,
1:19:40 we primarily use educational impact fees.
1:19:43 So I’m gonna talk a little bit about that
1:19:44 just to set the stage for most of our major projects.
1:19:49 Our educational impact fees are broken into two districts.
1:19:52 Basically the Vieira area is the north boundary
1:19:56 of the south district.
1:19:58 So Vieira area, Palm Bay, West Melbourne,
1:20:01 those communities are in the south district
1:20:04 and then Merritt Island, Cocoa, Titusville area,
1:20:07 those are in the north district.
1:20:09 The revenues must be spent in the district
1:20:12 where they’re collected, whether that is on debt service
1:20:15 or whether that is on new projects.
1:20:17 So there has to be a rational nexus
1:20:19 between the impact fee where it’s paid
1:20:21 and the educational facility where it’s applied.
1:20:26 And this program is administered and collected
1:20:28 by Brevard County government, not the school district.
1:20:31 So we are a partner, but we don’t set the rate,
1:20:34 we don’t collect the fees.
1:20:37 So our current revenue pace is pretty extraordinary.
1:20:42 This has been going up as it is tied
1:20:44 to the residential building market.
1:20:46 So the same type of slide that Cindy was showing you
1:20:49 with the accumulation of property tax or taxable base,
1:20:56 our slides are more related to the growth
1:20:58 in residential units.
1:20:59 So there is a lot of building going on out there
1:21:02 and that is providing impact fee revenues
1:21:05 for education among other things
1:21:07 that the county commission uses revenues for as well.
1:21:11 So what we do is quarterly,
1:21:13 we bring together the impact fee benefit district
1:21:15 advisory committees and those are stakeholders
1:21:18 from the affected municipalities in the county.
1:21:21 The district staff proposes the use of the funds
1:21:24 and the committee either endorses or doesn’t
1:21:27 or make suggestions and ultimately those recommendations
1:21:30 come to the school board, they go across the street
1:21:33 to the county commission and then we receive the money.
1:21:35 So it can be a two to three month process
1:21:38 from the time the quarter ends
1:21:40 till the time we actually get the revenue.
1:21:45 Looking through December, 2021,
1:21:48 these are some of the areas
1:21:51 where we have been reserving funds for projects.
1:21:53 So we have a little over 23 million reserved
1:21:56 for central area secondary projects
1:21:58 and that would include
1:21:59 both the Viera High School classroom addition
1:22:02 as well as the middle school in the Viera area.
1:22:05 We have some funds reserved
1:22:06 for a future South elementary school,
1:22:09 future South elementary classrooms
1:22:12 and we’ll be talking a little bit about
1:22:14 a West Melbourne School of Science project potentially.
1:22:17 We have a little over 7 million reserved
1:22:19 for North area elementary classrooms
1:22:22 and we’ll be starting on the South Lake project.
1:22:24 I believe on your agenda tonight
1:22:26 is a design contract for South Lake.
1:22:28 And then we have a project
1:22:32 at Palm Bay Magnet High School, Fire Academy.
1:22:35 That has been through the construction contracting process
1:22:40 and we believe we are under budget there.
1:22:42 So some of those funds will be able to come back
1:22:45 and similarly, we’ll be closing out Viera Elementary
1:22:48 and Cocoa High projects and we’ll be having some revenues
1:22:51 that we can redistribute but those have to go back
1:22:53 through that committee process that I mentioned.
1:22:56 So to talk specifically about projects,
1:22:58 first is the Firefighter Academy
1:23:00 at Palm Bay Magnet High School,
1:23:02 a relatively modest facility project.
1:23:04 It’s just basically adding some space
1:23:07 onto the corner of a building
1:23:09 that is currently over an overhang.
1:23:11 So the construction contract was approved in March
1:23:14 and we anticipate opening that in school year 23.
1:23:17 So excited to partner with CTE
1:23:19 and there’s a couple of those sprinkled
1:23:20 throughout this presentation
1:23:22 that really have some great opportunities
1:23:24 to invest in our CTE programs
1:23:26 if we can tie it to additional student stations.
1:23:30 At South Lake, we’ll be doing an eight classroom addition
1:23:34 and we have a prototype design contract
1:23:36 on the board agenda for tonight
1:23:39 using the Longleaf prototype model.
1:23:42 And this is generally a cost savings
1:23:44 if in the state it really encourages us to use prototypes.
1:23:48 So if you have already designed it once,
1:23:50 we can reuse that architecture again.
1:23:52 It’s not cheap but it’s less expensive
1:23:56 than starting from scratch.
1:23:57 We’ll also be using that model
1:23:59 for the Viera area middle school.
1:24:03 We used it for the Viera elementary project.
1:24:06 So our goal with the South Lake project
1:24:07 is completion in August of 23
1:24:09 and that too is funded with educational impact fees.
1:24:13 There are some capital components to that
1:24:15 where we are making some other improvements on site
1:24:18 that are more appropriately funded with capital.
1:24:21 So you’ll see a little bit of capital investment
1:24:23 as we move through that project.
1:24:26 The MIMS Cafetorium in North Brevard,
1:24:29 that is under construction pricing.
1:24:33 So you should be seeing a contract for construction
1:24:36 in April of this year.
1:24:38 So we’ll be starting construction hopefully in May
1:24:42 with a planned opening in spring of 2023.
1:24:45 So hopefully we can get that underway
1:24:48 and then we’ll also be working with elementary leading
1:24:51 and learning for renovation of the existing cafeteria space
1:24:55 to do something innovative and unique
1:24:57 with the existing cafeteria space.
1:25:00 So that’s kind of an exciting opportunity as well.
1:25:04 This is just a graphic that shows you the new layout
1:25:06 for the Cafetorium and the traffic circulation improvements
1:25:10 that we’ll be making at MIMS.
1:25:13 The Viera high school classroom addition project,
1:25:16 we have selected a design builder
1:25:18 and the pre-construction services contract
1:25:21 is on your agenda tonight.
1:25:23 One of the early activities that we’ll be doing
1:25:26 at Viera high school is to relocate the portables
1:25:29 that are onsite out of the way
1:25:32 so that they are actually ready to be used
1:25:33 for students in August.
1:25:35 So we’re trying to get those moved early.
1:25:38 So you will likely see an early works GMP in May.
1:25:42 You’ll probably see an early works construction contract
1:25:45 in July and probably the final GMP in September.
1:25:50 So our goal with this project is to open for students
1:25:53 in August of 2023 and this one is fully funded
1:25:56 with educational impact fees.
1:25:59 And this gives you kind of the concept rendering
1:26:04 of the different types of uses that will be in that building
1:26:08 including classroom science labs.
1:26:10 We have a blast program, CTE program and the choir room.
1:26:14 So really got a lot of great functions for our students
1:26:17 and we’re excited to be building something new
1:26:19 over at Viera high school.
1:26:24 The other project that we’re working on now
1:26:26 is a middle school in Viera.
1:26:28 And we are using the site adjacent to Viera high school
1:26:32 anticipating about 800 student stations
1:26:34 and we’re in the middle of the RF,
1:26:37 we’re farther along than the middle.
1:26:38 We’re towards the end of the RFQ process
1:26:40 for a prototype design.
1:26:42 We have a selection committee that has interviewed
1:26:47 different firms, they have gone on field trips
1:26:50 and you should see a recommendation for a prototype designer
1:26:55 with a prototype design
1:26:56 at your one of your board meetings in April.
1:26:58 So as soon as we conclude that process,
1:27:01 we will be getting started with design.
1:27:03 And then shortly thereafter anticipate going out
1:27:06 into the market for an RFQ for construction manager.
1:27:10 And the idea would be for the construction manager
1:27:14 and the designer to kind of work concurrently
1:27:16 so that we can take advantage of construction practices
1:27:19 that they might suggest that could save money
1:27:21 on the design side.
1:27:22 So we do wanna get a construction manager
1:27:24 on board relatively soon.
1:27:27 So the big question for the school board
1:27:29 is really the opening date
1:27:31 and the degree to which you may be comfortable
1:27:33 with doing some very short term construction financing.
1:27:35 And I’ll show you some slides in terms of the cashflow
1:27:38 of our impact fees and why that is important.
1:27:41 But I think there’s really two options.
1:27:43 One is to target opening in August of 2024.
1:27:48 The other is a pay as you go option
1:27:50 that would either be August 25 or 26,
1:27:53 depending on our revenue.
1:27:55 And just a final note about the middle school boundaries.
1:27:58 That’s going to be a process
1:28:01 that requires some extensive stakeholder engagement.
1:28:03 So be prepared that that’s going to be
1:28:06 a big public involvement, public engagement activity
1:28:12 on our part in facilities
1:28:13 in conjunction with leading and learning.
1:28:16 So that will be coming up as soon as we kind of move
1:28:19 a little farther down the line on the middle school project.
1:28:23 So this is the planning calendar
1:28:25 for the middle school project.
1:28:26 It shows you about where we are
1:28:28 and about where we’re heading.
1:28:30 And I would anticipate working
1:28:33 on the construction contract development
1:28:35 starting in the summer and moving through the fall.
1:28:40 And these are not hard and fast dates
1:28:42 as you get down towards the bottom,
1:28:44 but it gives you a sense of about
1:28:46 when we would be ready to contract for construction.
1:28:50 Right now, our estimate for construction is about 40 million.
1:28:54 That number could be all over the place.
1:28:57 Our costs for some of our more recent projects
1:29:01 are going up higher than one would have thought.
1:29:05 So that number is variable,
1:29:08 but it gives you kind of a ballpark range
1:29:11 of where we think we might be.
1:29:14 So if you look at our impact fee cash flow,
1:29:17 you can see that the pink shading
1:29:18 is kind of about the same timeframe
1:29:21 as to when we would ideally start
1:29:23 doing construction contract
1:29:25 with an opening date of August 24 in mind.
1:29:29 With that, we would need to settle on short-term financing
1:29:33 sometime late this summer, early fall type of a timeframe.
1:29:38 And our estimate, as you can see,
1:29:41 our cash flow is gonna be in the range
1:29:44 of we’ll need about 20 million.
1:29:46 As we’re starting with 23 million and change today,
1:29:51 we would subtract whatever our costs are
1:29:54 on the Viera High School edition,
1:29:56 and then whatever balance is left,
1:29:59 we would continue then to accrue impact fees every quarter.
1:30:05 We have been allocating about three million per quarter.
1:30:08 That’s about three million out of four
1:30:11 in the South District.
1:30:13 The other million has been allocated
1:30:15 to either South Elementary capacity
1:30:17 or South Elementary schools,
1:30:19 so that we’re kind of making sure
1:30:20 that other areas of the South District
1:30:23 are also getting some impact fee dollars.
1:30:26 So if you look at a $40 million target for the project,
1:30:31 you can see that the pay-as-you-go option
1:30:34 puts you kind of in the range of not starting construction
1:30:37 until spring or summer of 24.
1:30:41 So depending on how that cash flow actually works
1:30:44 and how the construction costs increase over time,
1:30:50 it’s difficult to predict whether we would be able
1:30:52 to make it for 25 or whether it would be 26
1:30:55 before we had the cash needed to do this
1:30:57 on a pay-as-you-go basis.
1:31:00 So the options are basically short-term financing
1:31:04 about 20 million, opening in August of 24.
1:31:08 The benefits are that it avoids
1:31:10 construction escalation costs,
1:31:12 and of course we open the school at least one year sooner.
1:31:16 The relatively small short-term financing
1:31:19 are impact fee revenues, assuming they continue
1:31:22 on the path that they have been on over the past few years.
1:31:26 We should be able to pay that off in five years,
1:31:29 and depending on our payback framework,
1:31:33 potentially even sooner.
1:31:35 The pay-as-you-go option, as I said,
1:31:36 we would be opening in August 25 or 26.
1:31:40 Unpredictable as to what our construction cost escalation
1:31:43 might be.
1:31:44 There are short-term financing option impact,
1:31:48 interest costs about a million and change.
1:31:51 Obviously no interest costs on pay-as-you-go,
1:31:54 but you’re offsetting that
1:31:55 with the construction cost escalation.
1:31:57 So this is an area where we would like some guidance
1:32:00 from the board so that we can plan our path appropriately.
1:32:06 So Ms. Belford, if you’d like to talk about that now,
1:32:09 or if you’d like me to finish the presentation,
1:32:11 either way, I would appreciate some guidance from the board.
1:32:17 - Board members, you guys, anyone?
1:32:20 I have one just clarifying question for you, Ms. Han.
1:32:23 On the, if we were to finance,
1:32:28 the impact fees could be used,
1:32:31 the future impact fees could be used
1:32:32 to pay both principal and interest on that, right?
1:32:34 So we wouldn’t have to be taking out of capital
1:32:36 or operating to pay the actual debt amount, correct?
1:32:40 - Correct.
1:32:41 The intention is to fully fund this project
1:32:43 with educational impact fees.
1:32:46 - Thank you.
1:32:50 Ms. Campbell, are you going?
1:32:51 - Yeah.
1:32:52 So if I’m, thank you for all this and laying it out,
1:32:56 and I know, I appreciate it very much,
1:32:59 the meeting we were able to have individually last week
1:33:01 with board associates who this is their area of expertise,
1:33:04 right, the options when it comes to do we borrow,
1:33:08 do we not borrow?
1:33:10 It looks like from the cash flow estimate
1:33:13 that we would have received,
1:33:20 the conservative estimate by July of 2024,
1:33:23 the amount that you’re estimating we would need
1:33:25 to build the middle school, right?
1:33:27 But with, so just to clarify,
1:33:28 so with the, if we did pay as you go,
1:33:31 we couldn’t start construction until that point.
1:33:33 - Correct.
1:33:34 - If we, so, but if we took out short-term financing, right,
1:33:39 and not the kind of financing that we’re,
1:33:41 you know, when I got on the board,
1:33:42 we had $400 million of debt,
1:33:44 and every time I think about it,
1:33:45 we still have 300 and whatever,
1:33:47 it makes me kind of nauseous.
1:33:49 So the idea of adding to that also makes me nauseous.
1:33:53 But if we’re looking at it like this,
1:33:55 or we’re just talking about a few years,
1:33:56 I think they mentioned a five-year loan
1:33:59 or something like that,
1:34:00 we actually would have the ability to pay it off
1:34:03 before the term was over.
1:34:04 So I know one of the questions,
1:34:06 so when I had my conversations with board associates,
1:34:08 they said most lenders don’t want to do anything shorter.
1:34:11 They want at least to be three years,
1:34:12 and that’s pretty standard.
1:34:13 But my personal financial philosophy
1:34:16 and the philosophy that I would encourage our organization
1:34:19 is to borrow as little as possible
1:34:20 and to pay it off just as fast as possible.
1:34:23 And so for me, I don’t know if the rest of the board
1:34:26 would agree that we would just borrow that,
1:34:28 you said $20 million, it looks like it would be max,
1:34:32 and that we look for a vendor
1:34:35 that’s not going to charge us fees,
1:34:39 a penalty for early payoff within reason, right?
1:34:43 I think they said three years was reasonable,
1:34:44 but that that’s part of our,
1:34:46 when we’re looking for who do we want to go with,
1:34:49 and I don’t remember RFP, RFQ,
1:34:51 which letters go with that one,
1:34:52 but that we find someone
1:34:54 who will not give us that penalty for early payoff
1:34:57 because it looks like we’re going to have the funding
1:34:58 within just a couple of years.
1:35:03 - Ms. Jenkins, did you want to speak?
1:35:04 - Yeah.
1:35:09 I don’t want to put words in your mouth,
1:35:11 but it sounds like as long as that’s an option,
1:35:13 you’re kind of leaning towards doing it sooner.
1:35:17 That’s where I totally fall as well,
1:35:19 doing it sooner than later.
1:35:21 If we could do it next year,
1:35:22 I would totally love that as well.
1:35:25 I think Mr. Susan would probably enjoy
1:35:26 not getting those phone calls and emails and conversations
1:35:29 about a middle school being wanted in Vera anymore.
1:35:32 And so I fully support that.
1:35:35 I think it’s also important for anyone who’s watching
1:35:37 to understand, obviously it’s risky
1:35:39 to take out any more debt,
1:35:41 but the interest rates are so incredibly low.
1:35:44 Of course, it would be presented to us when that time comes,
1:35:46 but it is pretty minuscule in the grand scheme.
1:35:51 So I think it’s best to move quickly.
1:35:56 - Ms. Han, could you, if you are comfortable doing so,
1:35:59 could you speak to the cost per student station issue?
1:36:03 Because I think that’s important
1:36:04 for people to be aware of as well.
1:36:08 Do you want me to?
1:36:10 - I think I can.
1:36:11 Let me start because it’s somewhat of a rabbit hole.
1:36:17 But I will start by saying that the state legislature
1:36:21 requires school districts to build school facilities
1:36:27 within a cost parameter that has been established
1:36:32 at the state level for certain funding sources.
1:36:36 And that cost per student station number for high schools
1:36:41 around this time is around $27,000 per student station.
1:36:49 We’re looking at about 120,000 square feet.
1:36:54 And if you just use 30,000 as a kind of a round number
1:36:57 that lands you at about 36 million,
1:37:01 I think it is probably underestimated
1:37:05 by a wide margin, especially since construction costs
1:37:08 have changed so dramatically in the last couple of years.
1:37:12 So that parameter applies to certain types of funding
1:37:18 but does not apply to educational impact fees,
1:37:21 nor does it apply to certificates of participation,
1:37:25 which would be the vehicle
1:37:27 by which we do this short-term financing
1:37:30 in terms of at least the recommendation
1:37:32 from Ford and Associates.
1:37:34 So it is always our goal to build efficiently
1:37:39 and effectively at the lowest possible cost,
1:37:41 but we also want to deliver a good school for our students.
1:37:45 And I think, honestly, we have been dealing with the results
1:37:50 of doing things cheaply now when we’re,
1:37:56 15, 20, 30 years later, you can see what happens
1:38:00 when you do not invest appropriately in your facilities.
1:38:04 And so I would not advocate for cheap.
1:38:07 I would advocate for best value.
1:38:10 And we, I believe, are better off not being as constrained
1:38:15 by the cost per student station
1:38:17 as the legislature has required for using LCI primarily
1:38:24 or any other state funding sources.
1:38:26 State revenue sources are subject to that.
1:38:29 Our local revenue sources are not.
1:38:32 And I think we can kind of thread the needle
1:38:35 with this project and others that we are doing.
1:38:38 We’re respectful of the concept
1:38:41 behind the cost per student station.
1:38:43 That makes sense, but it is very difficult
1:38:46 to have a one-size-fits-all philosophy
1:38:48 in terms of costs throughout the state of Florida.
1:38:51 It is widely different costs in the state of Florida
1:38:56 in terms of timing, a lot of differences there.
1:38:59 So I think the short answer, respectful of the concept,
1:39:03 but using educational impact fees,
1:39:05 we are not bound by statute to comply
1:39:09 with the cost per student station.
1:39:11 - And the other, and correct me if I’m wrong from this hand,
1:39:14 I don’t wanna put words in anyone’s mouth,
1:39:16 but my understanding from that meeting was
1:39:19 if we say we utilize partial impact fees and partial LCI,
1:39:29 thinking that we could stay
1:39:30 within the student station requirement,
1:39:32 and by the time we get to project completion,
1:39:35 we have exceeded the student station,
1:39:38 cost per student station costs,
1:39:41 we would then be subject to penalty
1:39:45 because we used LCI and not impact fees and COPs.
1:39:50 - I believe sort of is the answer to that.
1:39:52 So if we have a mix of funding,
1:39:55 so let’s say out of the 40 million,
1:39:58 say 10 million is LCI for talking purposes.
1:40:01 The portion that we fund with the 10 million
1:40:04 has to be in compliance
1:40:05 with the student station requirement.
1:40:08 The 30 million does not.
1:40:10 So a hybrid project, we would,
1:40:13 I’m quite sure be able to meet
1:40:14 the cost per student station requirements
1:40:17 as they are framed in the statutes.
1:40:20 - But if we started assuming that we could meet
1:40:24 cost per student station,
1:40:26 and we saw increases in our cost and went over,
1:40:30 we would be subject to undefined consequences, right?
1:40:34 - Yes, except that as long as we are paying
1:40:38 for the majority of it with educational impact fees,
1:40:42 we would not be.
1:40:42 But if we have, say the overage was a couple million,
1:40:47 that would have to be in compliance
1:40:49 with the cost per student station,
1:40:50 whatever we’re using LCI dollars for.
1:40:53 Am I making sense?
1:40:54 - Yeah.
1:40:56 - Yeah, I think that’s just an important point to understand
1:40:58 is the risk involved in trying to meet that
1:41:03 for multiple perspectives.
1:41:05 - Yeah, and I honestly, I think it is entirely likely
1:41:09 that the cost will be above the cost per student station,
1:41:13 given where the construction market is today.
1:41:15 So we will look at that very closely
1:41:17 as we enter into any financing arrangement,
1:41:20 and certainly would disclose that
1:41:22 as we’re bringing that to the board.
1:41:25 - Thank you.
1:41:27 Anyone else, Mr. Susan?
1:41:28 - Sure, so when you look at this board,
1:41:33 the need to build a little bit faster is on multiple fronts.
1:41:37 So the first one is ABC,
1:41:40 who I was speaking at their event the other night,
1:41:43 Central Florida chapter, which is our chapter,
1:41:45 saw the highest increase in construction costs in 50 years.
1:41:48 50 years.
1:41:50 Right now, by the projections that they had,
1:41:52 this newsletter did, I did the math,
1:41:55 this project is costing an increase if it continues,
1:41:59 which that spike is not gonna increase and continue,
1:42:02 but with the increase is almost $31,000 a day
1:42:06 of increased cost that we would see
1:42:09 if we were to wait another two years.
1:42:11 And that’s compounding, right?
1:42:13 So it’s 31, then 31.5, then 31.
1:42:16 So you just talk about the amount of investment premium,
1:42:22 you know what I mean, an interest,
1:42:23 compared to the cost, flat, that’s it.
1:42:26 The other thing is is that we’ll see an increase,
1:42:28 because I know my area,
1:42:30 many of my parents that are inside this area,
1:42:32 home school or charter school,
1:42:34 they’re children to keep them here.
1:42:35 And I’ll explain why is because a parent,
1:42:38 a lot of the parents are stay-at-home moms
1:42:40 and family members here, or they work,
1:42:43 and it’s very difficult for them to have a child
1:42:46 that gets out of high school at 3.30 here,
1:42:50 and then a child that gets out of a middle school
1:42:54 on the other side two causeways away at 4.30.
1:42:57 So they keep them here.
1:42:58 I promise you that there would be an increase of FTE
1:43:01 in words of about four to $5 million per year
1:43:05 because of the amount of students
1:43:06 that not only would now attend the middle school,
1:43:09 but many of the elementary school students
1:43:11 who are inside of charters to keep that charter seat
1:43:15 as they move up in the charter
1:43:17 will now enter into all of our Viera elementary schools.
1:43:22 So there’ll be an increase.
1:43:23 So you’re talking about not only the,
1:43:25 avoiding the increase in cost of construction,
1:43:28 not only avoiding the increase of FTE,
1:43:32 but there’s one other piece,
1:43:34 is that when we did these rough estimates last time
1:43:37 with RV Creach years ago,
1:43:39 in order to take 11 buses, run them as different,
1:43:43 the distance that we are doing over two causeways
1:43:46 all the way to Delora and back,
1:43:48 it was inwards of close to four to $420,000
1:43:52 if we remember in fuel and everything else.
1:43:54 With fuel increasing,
1:43:55 that becomes another cost that we would be saving.
1:43:58 Now, to her credit, Ms. Han was explaining to me
1:44:03 that you’re still gonna need buses.
1:44:05 It’s not like you’re gonna get away from that,
1:44:07 but you could reduce that probably I’d argue in half
1:44:10 because of the travel that they’re going over.
1:44:12 The other thing for you,
1:44:14 and you alluded to this, Ms. Jenkins,
1:44:18 there’s a lot of students,
1:44:19 now I grew up in the country in Jupiter Farms, right?
1:44:21 So when I got on a bus every morning,
1:44:23 I knew that I had to go six to eight to 10 miles
1:44:25 depending on the route that year.
1:44:27 And that’s not a big deal and it would take me 40 minutes,
1:44:29 but we lived in the farms, we knew who we were.
1:44:32 The thing is is that a lot of the students that are here
1:44:35 have to get on the bus and travel 45 minutes to an hour
1:44:39 just to get to school, 45 minutes an hour to get back.
1:44:42 It starts inhibiting a lot of the cost from your sports
1:44:45 and everything else.
1:44:46 So a lot of families have decided
1:44:48 that instead of putting their child on that bus
1:44:49 and putting them through that,
1:44:50 that they would rather them stay home or stay in charters.
1:44:53 So I wanted you guys to understand the political,
1:44:56 the social, the economical impacts
1:44:58 of what the choices that we were gonna make.
1:45:01 So I think that it makes complete sense
1:45:03 to move forward early as possible.
1:45:05 The one thing that I was gonna ask is while we’re going out,
1:45:10 because there’s a group of you that are,
1:45:12 I mean, we have enough support
1:45:13 to move towards the financing piece.
1:45:15 If I could look at what it would take,
1:45:17 and this is just an exercise for me,
1:45:19 to use our reserves to fund the gap
1:45:22 rather than to get into a financing situation.
1:45:25 We have a high reserve number.
1:45:27 I would just love to look at it
1:45:28 and sit with finance team and go over that, that’s all.
1:45:31 So I say that we give direction,
1:45:32 but if there’s an event that we can use those reserves
1:45:35 to fund the gap, that we could possibly come up with that
1:45:38 before we sign any contracts with any finances.
1:45:41 And it can probably be done within three, four days.
1:45:45 That’s all.
1:45:48 - About the three or four days,
1:45:49 considering that Ms. Lister–
1:45:50 - It’s a 30,000-foot view.
1:45:52 I mean, we have X amount in there, projected.
1:45:55 Is it possible?
1:45:56 Can you take reserves–
1:45:58 - I mean, I’d love to do it with that at all, but I–
1:46:00 - Yeah, just an example, just an exercise.
1:46:06 I mean, is everybody on the same time at least?
1:46:10 Do you see it off early?
1:46:13 - Absolutely, I feel like, too, Ms. Campbell,
1:46:16 I’d like to see it off early whenever we can.
1:46:20 And I also agree with you, Mr. Simpson,
1:46:22 that we really need to move forward.
1:46:24 This area needs a middle school that has for a while.
1:46:27 So I’m certainly focusing on the short-term financing also.
1:46:35 - Yes, so I think we’re all on the same page.
1:46:37 The only other thing that I would add is,
1:46:39 we talked a lot in our operating budget
1:46:41 about being competitive.
1:46:43 And I think this is part of that as well,
1:46:45 is making sure that we’re providing those opportunities
1:46:47 for the families.
1:46:48 So I think it makes sense.
1:46:50 And with you, Ms. Campbell, the less we have to finance,
1:46:54 the sooner we can pay it off, the better.
1:46:55 But I think we as a board have been very diligent
1:47:00 about not taking on any new debt
1:47:03 and paying down those debt dollars for a long time.
1:47:05 And I still think that’s the right way to go.
1:47:07 I think we’ve made the right choices,
1:47:09 but I think we’re getting to a point where,
1:47:12 sometimes we have to weigh our ability
1:47:14 to truly continue to serve our families.
1:47:17 So I’m on board.
1:47:25 - So I’m just gonna talk real briefly
1:47:26 about some of the projects we have under development.
1:47:29 One is a classroom addition
1:47:31 at West Melbourne School of Science.
1:47:32 And this is an interesting one.
1:47:35 There’s a demand, obviously, for seats at this facility.
1:47:39 And we’re trying to figure out
1:47:40 if we have a place to put them.
1:47:42 The site is pretty constrained.
1:47:44 So that’s our current exercise.
1:47:47 And looking at, rather than just putting
1:47:50 in a classroom addition building,
1:47:52 if we do that, maybe a better approach
1:47:54 is to try to rearrange some of the space within the building
1:47:57 and change what the addition piece would be
1:48:00 versus instead of just classrooms.
1:48:02 So it’s a work in progress,
1:48:04 but we definitely see a need there.
1:48:06 And working with our elementary leading and learning folks,
1:48:09 that that is a demand.
1:48:11 And I feel like that would be a good investment.
1:48:14 And so we’re gonna try to figure out how to make that happen
1:48:16 which is still a work in progress.
1:48:18 You will see that
1:48:19 in the upcoming student accommodation plan as well.
1:48:23 - Ms. Hand, you might be able to talk
1:48:24 to West Melbourne City Council
1:48:25 about taking up some of Bryant Adams Park over there,
1:48:28 just moving in there.
1:48:29 They don’t have as many people attend their school,
1:48:31 their meetings as we do here.
1:48:33 We may be able to take that back row
1:48:35 and add a little bit of land over there
1:48:37 just to give you a heads up.
1:48:39 (laughing)
1:48:44 - Might need some help with that conversation.
1:48:46 (laughing)
1:48:48 So we’re also excited to work with our CTE friends
1:48:52 on a project at Cocoa Beach,
1:48:55 looking at doing an aquaculture program
1:48:57 in cooperation with the Brevard Zoo.
1:48:58 And we don’t know what that looks like yet
1:49:00 or whether it’s due to the stations or not,
1:49:02 but we’re gonna be meeting on site coming up here shortly
1:49:05 and trying to figure out what that actually is.
1:49:08 But I think it’s needed in this county.
1:49:11 It’s very germane to the issues of Brevard County
1:49:14 and just excited to be a part of something
1:49:16 that probably is pretty rare in the state of Florida.
1:49:19 - So one of the, just to let you know,
1:49:21 and this would be my two cents here,
1:49:24 and I know this is not my area, Ms. McDougall.
1:49:28 There is a strong, strong need on our economic,
1:49:32 I sit on the executive board of directors
1:49:34 for the Economic Development Council.
1:49:36 And they are looking at the wastewater of our lagoon, right?
1:49:40 And across from top to bottom,
1:49:43 the need for like Kennedy Space Center
1:49:46 just basically said, oh, we’re not worried about it,
1:49:47 you guys deal with it.
1:49:48 So like we’re having to deal with
1:49:51 what the infrastructure and growth of Kennedy Space Center
1:49:53 with wastewater in the north would be and everything else.
1:49:56 I would love to have a component of this
1:49:58 work with the EDC on those special pieces
1:50:01 since it’s aquaculture and it’s dealing with that.
1:50:03 I would, that would just be my two cents
1:50:04 to try to put out there for anybody who’s listening.
1:50:06 And you would get a lot of supporting funding
1:50:09 for the project because of the area that that would be in.
1:50:15 - Thank you.
1:50:16 And then we’re also still looking at Myla.
1:50:19 Building nine is at the old pool
1:50:21 and we’re kind of deciding whether we do something
1:50:24 with that building or whether we’re better off building
1:50:26 a classroom addition there.
1:50:27 So that’s another one that we’re evaluating
1:50:30 what the proper approach would be.
1:50:32 Yes, ma’am.
1:50:34 - So are you saying they did the pool?
1:50:38 Possibly, is that one of the options
1:50:39 or best effective was the best way?
1:50:42 ‘Cause I know that is,
1:50:44 you’ve got a great, it’s for our special needs.
1:50:48 There’s an amazing program for them
1:50:50 and I would hate to lose it all together.
1:50:52 But I understand costs.
1:50:55 - So we’re not, as far as I know, we’re not using the pool.
1:50:59 - I know.
1:50:59 - And we would like to work with the school
1:51:04 to develop better facilities
1:51:06 to serve the special needs students.
1:51:09 That was really my takeaway when I toured building nine
1:51:11 that the facility does not serve those students very well
1:51:17 and we should do better.
1:51:19 So ideally, that might be where we go in a sort
1:51:23 of a new classroom addition building is one
1:51:25 that is more targeted towards serving
1:51:29 the special needs students.
1:51:31 So that’s kind of exactly what we’re debating.
1:51:34 - Okay, thank you.
1:51:35 - Now, Bockmar had a pool in a room for the same purposes
1:51:41 and I think it was actually having some leaking issues.
1:51:46 So they filled it in, covered it.
1:51:47 You can still see that line of the pool in the room,
1:51:49 but they use that space as an ESC PE,
1:51:54 like the physical therapist come in there
1:51:56 and occupation and do, that’s kind of their own PE area.
1:51:59 And so they’ve definitely used it,
1:52:01 put it to good use for the program.
1:52:03 - Yeah, it’s a great room at Bockmar.
1:52:05 So that was a really cool project.
1:52:07 We’re just not sure of the quality
1:52:09 of the rest of the building.
1:52:11 - Yeah, I know.
1:52:11 - So those are kind of some of the issues
1:52:16 we’re debating before we move forward.
1:52:18 - Thank you.
1:52:19 - The transportation project,
1:52:20 I just wanted to give you an update on where we are.
1:52:23 We have our real estate agent engaged.
1:52:25 We’re looking at four sites and hopefully get
1:52:28 into doing some due diligence relatively soon
1:52:31 on those sites ‘cause we need to move forward on this.
1:52:34 And it’s been a little bit of a challenge trying
1:52:36 to find a site that has the appropriate infrastructure
1:52:39 to support what we’d like to do.
1:52:40 So that’s really the gateway to getting this done.
1:52:46 This is just a graphic that I think you saw
1:52:48 at our last presentation that kind of outlines
1:52:50 how we would use the site.
1:52:53 The transportation project funding talked about some
1:52:56 of these things last time,
1:52:57 that we do have some sales tax revenues
1:52:59 that are reserved for transportation projects.
1:53:02 We did talk to the ICOC and they suggested
1:53:04 that we just table that conversation
1:53:06 until we know exactly what we need.
1:53:07 And we agreed that we would do that.
1:53:10 We have property sales revenues that have been designated
1:53:13 for the project and we’ll see where it goes.
1:53:16 But I feel pretty confident that the math is gonna work.
1:53:19 We just need to get that site selected
1:53:21 so we can move forward.
1:53:23 On the property sales side of things,
1:53:26 we have sold the Neiman Heights property.
1:53:28 We’ve sold the Sullivan Groves property
1:53:31 and anticipate closing this month.
1:53:33 Whispering Hills is under contract
1:53:35 and looking to close that in July,
1:53:37 assuming the due diligence period works out.
1:53:39 And Pineapple Avenue is on hold depending
1:53:42 on what we do with transportation.
1:53:44 But we’ve been moving slowly but deliberately
1:53:48 through the property sales project.
1:53:51 Just wanted to put this slide back up here.
1:53:53 This was kind of a concept of what we were doing last year
1:53:58 when I talked about this.
1:53:59 And we have largely implemented these
1:54:01 or are in the process of implementing
1:54:04 the programs for student services.
1:54:06 So we have a great program at Meridaun High School.
1:54:10 And that really has caused us to think differently
1:54:13 about our portables, which is why you see
1:54:15 some portable renovation in the capital plan.
1:54:18 So we were out at Meridaun Island
1:54:20 and talking with the principal and the assistant principal
1:54:23 and they’re like, “Can we paint the portable?”
1:54:26 I guess.
1:54:27 “Can we paint the portable with school colors?”
1:54:30 Well, we’ve never done that before.
1:54:32 And by the time we got done with that walk,
1:54:33 we’re like, “You know, let’s give it a try.”
1:54:37 And they painted it with school colors.
1:54:39 And it looks amazing.
1:54:41 So it sort of turned our thinking on its head.
1:54:44 Like, why don’t we do that everywhere?
1:54:46 And so instead of having this nicely painted school,
1:54:49 everything looks great, and these decrepit portables,
1:54:52 why don’t we consider portables as integrated
1:54:55 with the campus and start to upgrade them,
1:54:59 paint them, rehab them, drag them off if they’re drunk,
1:55:02 and paint them to be integrated with the schools.
1:55:05 So we’re sticking our toe in the water.
1:55:07 Like, it’s not gonna all get done tomorrow,
1:55:09 but as we work on these campuses,
1:55:12 I feel like this is another step to making our school campus
1:55:17 more inviting and more inspirational
1:55:20 for our kids and our teachers.
1:55:21 So that was a great move for Meridaun Island
1:55:24 and really helped us see things differently.
1:55:27 The other thing that I just wanted to mention
1:55:29 is we’re doing a hardcore improvement at the South ALC
1:55:32 that will be done this summer.
1:55:33 So I know we’ve been chatting about that for a while
1:55:36 and we’ve got it, there’s a purchase order
1:55:39 coming out of the printer as we speak.
1:55:41 So I’m excited that we’re ready to go with that.
1:55:44 - I think Mullins and I are gonna go do three on three
1:55:46 with the kids and see what they got.
1:55:47 - Can I go too?
1:55:48 - Yeah, come on in.
1:55:50 I mean, that has been, honestly,
1:55:51 that is one of the things that you look at
1:55:53 and you’re like, there’s such an impact
1:55:55 that small things can do, and that’s one of them.
1:55:57 The other thing I wanted to bring up to everybody
1:55:59 is just so you know, we are doing the trades tour.
1:56:02 I haven’t really talked to Mullins about this yet,
1:56:03 so he’s gonna go into heart palpitations.
1:56:05 But you know, the other part of the trades
1:56:08 is that we have students with disabilities
1:56:10 that are part of our BLAST programs,
1:56:12 and we should really be focusing on transitioning them
1:56:14 into the workplace.
1:56:16 We have great teachers that are doing it,
1:56:17 great people here, I mean, a salt of the earth,
1:56:20 but I think we could help.
1:56:22 And one of the areas that I think we could do it in
1:56:24 is in federal contracts, you’re supposed to set 7% set aside
1:56:28 for students or people or workers with disabilities.
1:56:32 Right now, if you audited our space industry,
1:56:34 they would not be able to make that.
1:56:36 So I say we call them out, we say, hey, look,
1:56:39 to avoid an audit, hire our kids,
1:56:41 and then we have them working inside the space industry.
1:56:43 That’s where I’m gonna go next, so that you guys know.
1:56:45 - He’s turning purple down there.
1:56:46 - Oh, yes, but it’s okay, it’s okay.
1:56:49 We said we’re doing the trades tour,
1:56:51 this is part of the jobs tour.
1:56:53 - I’m not surprised by anything.
1:56:54 (all laughing)
1:56:56 - But that’s all.
1:56:57 So those BLAST programs are very, very intricate to that.
1:57:00 Thank you.
1:57:02 - And just to let you know what’s coming your way,
1:57:04 you have been seeing, and you will continue to see,
1:57:06 numerous design contracts and construction contracts
1:57:09 for gearing up for summer construction,
1:57:10 as well as these big projects.
1:57:12 So all of that’s heading your way.
1:57:14 The student accommodation plan will be on your agenda
1:57:17 on April the 12th.
1:57:19 The capital plan, Ms. Lisinski went through that.
1:57:22 Also, you’ll probably see in the budget
1:57:25 the update for the educational plant survey.
1:57:28 So that is coming as well.
1:57:30 We have to have that done by June of ‘23.
1:57:34 Talked about short-term financing for the middle school
1:57:36 and then property acquisition for transportation.
1:57:38 So these are all things that will be hitting your agenda
1:57:41 as we go forward.
1:57:42 Few other updates.
1:57:45 Mowing, I’m excited to get through the board meeting tonight
1:57:48 where we have a contract for mowing that the money
1:57:52 is budgeted and we will start mowing, I hope, on Wednesday.
1:57:58 Like we’re super excited about that.
1:58:00 And we’re going to replicate that in our budget request
1:58:03 for next year so you’ll see that in the facilities budget.
1:58:07 The Space Coast Stadium bleachers,
1:58:08 I just wanted to bring this up
1:58:10 because it’s kind of a big deal.
1:58:12 We do contract every year for a review,
1:58:15 safety review of our bleachers and stadium seating.
1:58:18 At Space Coast Stadium, our engineer recommended
1:58:21 some fairly major rehab needed to be done
1:58:24 and we started to take a look at that
1:58:26 and found that repair versus new,
1:58:30 really not that much of a cost differential.
1:58:33 So the rough order of magnitude was like 1.3 million
1:58:37 for rehabbing old bleachers or 1.6 million
1:58:40 for new bleachers.
1:58:41 So we’re kind of moving in the direction of new bleachers.
1:58:45 We’re gonna be talking with the Citizens Oversight Committee
1:58:48 in April about potentially funding that
1:58:50 through our sales tax revenues that are over
1:58:52 the programming level that we initially put forward.
1:58:56 But that will be coming to you as a contract,
1:58:59 most likely in April to get that under construction.
1:59:04 And hopefully we can work with the Citizens Oversight
1:59:07 Committee that they will recommend the use of sales tax.
1:59:10 That is why that is not in the capital plan,
1:59:13 thinking that we would be funding that with surtax.
1:59:16 But either way, we’ve got to do something out there.
1:59:18 So I just want to put that on your radar.
1:59:21 We talked about construction volatility.
1:59:25 The surtax revenue, we have had really extraordinary
1:59:29 revenues, had some record months.
1:59:32 So that is giving us some flexibility to cover extra costs
1:59:37 and/or to add projects.
1:59:39 All of that goes through our Citizens Oversight Committee.
1:59:42 You see on your board agenda, typically in the write-up
1:59:44 says this is or has been or is going to be reviewed
1:59:48 by the Citizens Oversight Committee.
1:59:50 So when we’re making those changes,
1:59:51 we typically do run those through our ICOC.
1:59:54 And then I’ll talk a little bit about our data-driven
1:59:57 approach to capital planning.
1:59:59 So I just wanted to show this slide.
2:00:00 This is an excerpt of our sales tax revenue through February.
2:00:05 And you can see that over what is essentially
2:00:09 the first year of the program, we’re about $13 million
2:00:12 over the estimate on which the program was built,
2:00:16 which was admittedly a conservative estimate
2:00:19 for a reason so that we didn’t overcommit
2:00:22 what we were going to do with our resources.
2:00:26 But it’s really been a good thing for BPS.
2:00:29 The charters do get a share of that.
2:00:31 So the net revenue to BPS has been about $12 million.
2:00:34 And we’re investing that in great places.
2:00:36 You saw some of it go to a big security project.
2:00:40 You’ve seen it go into some of our track projects.
2:00:43 And it’s really been good for Brevard.
2:00:47 So that hopefully is going to continue.
2:00:51 And then just to wrap up, we have really
2:00:53 transitioned in facilities.
2:00:55 And I’m super proud of my team, especially our folks
2:00:57 in the maintenance end of things.
2:00:59 We do have a new work order system
2:01:01 that we’ve recently implemented.
2:01:03 And by recently, I mean about a month and a half or so.
2:01:06 That’s going to give us really good data
2:01:09 on what’s happening in specific locations
2:01:12 and to specific assets.
2:01:14 So we will be able to tell if we have a problem air
2:01:16 handler or a problem chiller or a problem something that
2:01:20 needs to be addressed.
2:01:22 We will also be able to develop preventative maintenance
2:01:26 schedules.
2:01:26 So Mr. Ross, our maintenance director,
2:01:28 is inputting preventative maintenance schedules
2:01:31 for all of our major assets.
2:01:33 So as we’re putting new stuff in,
2:01:34 we’re actually planning to maintain our new stuff, which
2:01:37 is something we’ve not been able to do.
2:01:40 I think we have wanted to do that for a while.
2:01:42 But we’re finally getting to a place
2:01:44 where we feel like we can start moving in that direction.
2:01:49 We also have built our capital plan based on a lot of data.
2:01:53 And you saw some different things in the capital plan.
2:01:56 And that was based on the assessment of all
2:01:58 of these things that are on the list,
2:02:00 so things like student restrooms, marquee signs,
2:02:03 like we know which schools have them, which schools don’t.
2:02:06 And we’re actually trying to invest capital resources
2:02:09 in areas that have shown, based on our assessments, that
2:02:13 need that investment.
2:02:14 And then one of the things I’m really excited about
2:02:16 is our playgrounds.
2:02:18 Our sales tax program is investing
2:02:21 in replacing old, horrible playgrounds.
2:02:24 But in the capital plan, we have married that
2:02:26 with something that is an alternative to mulch.
2:02:30 That’s basically these rubberized tiles,
2:02:33 for lack of a better word.
2:02:34 They’re safer.
2:02:35 They’re lower maintenance.
2:02:37 So our custodial teams at the schools
2:02:39 don’t have to be out raking mulch like they’re
2:02:41 supposed to be doing every day.
2:02:43 It’s going to save us money in mulch, save us money in time,
2:02:46 allow our school-based personnel to do what they’re supposed
2:02:48 to do and not be raking mulch.
2:02:51 And it’s going to look cleaner, and it’s going to be safer.
2:02:54 So our first project is going to be at Endeavor Elementary,
2:02:58 and we’ll be starting that probably
2:02:59 in the next couple of weeks.
2:03:01 So we issued our first PO to give it a try
2:03:03 and just make sure it’s what we want to do before we
2:03:05 dive in wholeheartedly.
2:03:06 But I feel like that’s going to be a game changer for us
2:03:09 in the playground arena.
2:03:10 So super excited about it.
2:03:12 So just want to say appreciation to my team
2:03:15 for thinking outside the box and trying some new things.
2:03:18 And our partnership with the educational side of the house
2:03:21 has been extraordinary.
2:03:22 I feel very confident and proud that we are working together
2:03:25 to best serve our students.
2:03:28 And that’s really it.
2:03:31 Again, as Ms. Lisinski said, it’s
2:03:33 important that we’re all in alignment.
2:03:34 And I’m really proud to be part of this team.
2:03:36 We are all working together for the betterment of our students,
2:03:40 and we’re doing great things.
2:03:41 And we’re trying to implement some game-changing ideas.
2:03:45 And it’s really great to be here,
2:03:48 and I appreciate the opportunities
2:03:49 that you give me as the facilities person
2:03:52 to make those things happen.
2:03:53 So thank you very much.
2:03:55 And my closing quote is from Simon Sinek.
2:03:58 “Working hard for something we don’t care about
2:04:00 is called stress, but working hard for something we love
2:04:02 is called passion.”
2:04:04 And I think you see that with many, many, many
2:04:07 of your employees here at BPS.
2:04:09 Like, it’s tough, but it’s fun, and it’s rewarding,
2:04:12 and it’s a great place to be.
2:04:13 So I want to say thank you.
2:04:16 Thank you, Ms. Han.
2:04:17 And we are so appreciative of you and the work that you do.
2:04:19 And I tell board members all around the state all the time,
2:04:25 if they were to come and look at what’s
2:04:26 going on in Brevard County, they would be absolutely amazed
2:04:29 at the amount of alignment.
2:04:31 With our facilities has always kind of been
2:04:34 that other department that didn’t really
2:04:37 align with mission and strategic priorities.
2:04:40 And I think for most districts, it’s still that way.
2:04:43 But with your leadership, you really have transformed that.
2:04:46 Obviously, the entire cabinet working together
2:04:48 and Dr. Mullins’ leadership as well,
2:04:50 but I feel like your department is really unique in that you
2:04:54 are one of the few in the state, I would say,
2:04:56 that is truly integrated and aligned and focused
2:05:00 on serving our city.
2:05:03 Anyone else?
2:05:04 Yeah, Ms. Kimmel.
2:05:05 All right, just a couple of quick questions.
2:05:07 You talked about the mowing contract,
2:05:09 but I know we had purchased and had
2:05:11 a plan for the robotic mowers.
2:05:13 How is that going?
2:05:14 Is it successful?
2:05:15 It’s going great.
2:05:16 We have them five, they’re deployed, and we’re good.
2:05:19 I talked to Mr. Ross, like, do we need any more?
2:05:21 And he’s like, I think we’re good.
2:05:23 So we’re going to let that ride for a while.
2:05:24 I know it’s kind of unique.
2:05:25 It has to be a unique property for those to be able to work.
2:05:27 And then the other question that you talked about
2:05:29 when you were talking about the property sales,
2:05:31 that you’re not recommending any other at this time.
2:05:33 And I know we’ve got a plethora.
2:05:34 Some of them are not very big, and I
2:05:36 don’t think there’s any that we could build something on.
2:05:39 But about how many estimate do we have remaining?
2:05:45 So that’s a tough question to answer.
2:05:48 I can send you a list of what we have.
2:05:51 So we have everything from, like,
2:05:53 there’s this borrow pit in the middle of nowhere off of 192
2:05:57 that’s, I don’t know, half an acre or something like that.
2:06:00 There’s two acres in Cocoa, and there’s
2:06:03 50 acres of little teeny skinny lots
2:06:06 down in the county section of South Palm Bay.
2:06:10 So there’s all these, like, mishmash.
2:06:13 That’s not a very good word.
2:06:15 That’s a great word.
2:06:16 I love that word, mishmash.
2:06:18 So most of what we have left I would either
2:06:21 like to keep for potential school sites,
2:06:24 or it’s just little stuff that’s not worth engaging a realtor.
2:06:29 Thank you.
2:06:30 You sent it to us way, way back.
2:06:32 But when you get a chance to now rush,
2:06:33 would you send it to us again?
2:06:35 Sure.
2:06:37 Anybody else have questions for Sam?
2:06:40 I have one for you, Sue.
2:06:41 First of all, thank you for addressing the mowing.
2:06:45 I think as we’re going into this season,
2:06:48 you know, it’s obvious we’re going to need the assistance
2:06:50 there.
2:06:51 And I’m thrilled to hear when I was looking through the capital
2:06:53 budget and not seeing any more robotic vacuums or any–
2:06:57 or vacuums– robotic mowers or additional mowing equipment.
2:07:01 I was a little concerned.
2:07:02 So I’m glad that you had the opportunity to address that.
2:07:06 But really my burning question is, are we
2:07:07 bringing goats back this year?
2:07:09 I was going to say, there’s no goats in the presentation.
2:07:11 I know.
2:07:12 I was tempted to put a goat on a slide,
2:07:15 but that went badly for me last time.
2:07:19 So we are not using goats right now.
2:07:23 But looking around the district, there
2:07:26 are probably some spots where we could,
2:07:28 as areas get out of control.
2:07:30 But they’re really not good for tight mowing.
2:07:33 They’re good for messy retention ponds
2:07:35 that nobody can reach with equipment.
2:07:38 So nothing planned, but we do know they’re there.
2:07:43 All righty.
2:07:43 Thank you.
2:07:45 Anything else?
2:07:47 All right.
2:07:48 I believe then, if there is no further business,
2:07:50 that this meeting is adjourned.
2:08:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]