Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 (upbeat music)
3:51 - Good afternoon.
3:52 The April 11th, 2023 board session is now in order.
3:55 Paul, roll call, please.
3:56 - Mr. Susan. - Here.
3:58 - Ms. Wright. - Here.
3:59 - Mr. Trent. - Here.
4:00 - Ms. Campbell. - Here.
4:02 - Ms. Jenkins. - Here.
4:04 - Everybody, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
4:10 - I pledge allegiance to the flag
4:12 of the United States of America
4:14 and to the Republic for which it stands,
4:16 one nation under God, indivisible,
4:19 with liberty and justice for all.
4:23 - The first six topics are rule development,
4:26 public hearings to address policies.
4:27 The first board policy 3210, standards of ethical conduct.
4:32 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item?
4:40 - You will not dress code the other.
4:42 We need to look at that because that’s discriminatory.
4:45 So I’m looking at a policy that minorly is being tweaked,
4:50 is ignoring the other problematic areas,
4:52 is not listening to students or administration
4:56 or the community or the parents.
4:59 Matt, you had a video of dress code.
5:01 I know it’s been pulled and you made a comment like,
5:04 “Hey, some students are gonna have to buy a new wardrobe.”
5:08 Our families can’t afford food in some areas of our county.
5:11 Some families can’t afford rent.
5:15 Of all the issues to tackle,
5:17 dress code is low hanging fruit.
5:20 And I appreciated Ms. Campbell bringing up the comments
5:23 at the last meeting that she received at her school forum.
5:26 Dress code was talked about and the majority of the room
5:29 all felt the same way.
5:31 The teachers in the room literally were saying,
5:33 “Even administration, if my kids are sitting in their seats
5:36 “and they’re learning, I don’t care what they’re wearing.”
5:39 So if we’re gonna tackle this policy,
5:41 tackle the whole policy, not just a couple words.
5:44 Thanks.
5:45 - Thank you very much for your comments.
5:47 Moving on, is there anybody else
5:49 that wishes to speak on this policy?
5:51 Any board discussion?
5:53 - Yes.
5:54 - All right, Ms. Campbell.
5:56 - Oh, it’s okay, go ahead, okay.
5:59 Yes, this is one that I asked us last time
6:02 to take a closer look at.
6:03 We were gonna try to get some feedback from the student.
6:07 I agree, I think that’s vague and subjective
6:11 to who is making that decision.
6:14 And also not necessary.
6:15 We’re being pretty explicit about stuff in here,
6:17 so I don’t think we need to put a very vague statement
6:20 that can not or could possibly be implemented
6:26 inequitably, depending on the student and their body type.
6:32 Also, in the lower garments,
6:35 when we’re talking about shorts,
6:36 it really bothers me that we have a sentence
6:37 that says short shorts are prohibited.
6:40 I think that it’s just a silly thing to write in a policy.
6:43 To me, that’s like really old school language.
6:46 I think we, again, make it very clear
6:47 what is an appropriate lower garment to be wearing,
6:51 especially when we’re making it pretty explicit.
6:55 - There’s some sort of input from students and parents
6:58 that they might be able to do so.
6:59 But I agree with you as far as a core, it is.
7:02 It’s inside there.
7:03 But it doesn’t, to make sure that that is also
7:05 including the SAC committees and stuff like that.
7:08 But the other issue is that I think that this has been
7:13 an issue, like there are some schools that are screaming
7:16 that their address code is unenforceable.
7:19 So I think getting to a place where it is,
7:20 and I appreciate everybody’s collaborative efforts
7:23 in making this happen.
7:24 So with that, I think we’re good.
7:26 Anybody else, we can move on to the next one.
7:29 We good, all right.
7:30 Board policy 5600, student discipline.
7:33 Is there anyone else who wishes to address this item?
7:36 Anybody who wishes to address this item?
7:38 Any board discussion?
7:41 Moving on, next board policy 5610,
7:43 removal out of school suspension, disciplinary placement,
7:46 and expulsion of students.
7:48 Anyone present who wishes to address this item?
7:54 Is there any board discussion?
7:56 All right.
7:58 Last is the board policy 8420.02 protective facial covering
8:04 during a pandemic and epidemic events.
8:08 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item?
8:11 Anyone present that wishes to address this item?
8:14 Any board discussion?
8:16 Hearing none, that concludes our public hearings.
8:19 We have a couple of things
8:21 that are supposed to be presented to,
8:23 but we have a lot of people here
8:25 from the middle school task force.
8:26 Can we move them up first so that they,
8:28 ‘cause I see we have some administrative staff
8:30 and some other individuals,
8:31 we might wanna give them a break.
8:32 Would that be appropriate or do we have to go?
8:34 Okay, and I’m sorry that you may not be ready
8:38 because I’m jumping the gun here,
8:39 but I thought that it would be appropriate
8:40 for our people to be able to get out.
8:41 It’s not that they, we love having you,
8:44 but like Mr. Brown and stuff,
8:45 I know you guys are very important in that community.
8:47 So Ms. Sullivan, please, you have the floor
8:51 with our re-imagining middle school task force.
9:00 And while she’s getting that ready,
9:01 I wanna say thank you for all of you for the time period,
9:03 because you guys don’t get paid for this.
9:04 You’re trying to give input into what we’re doing,
9:06 and I really appreciate the time
9:07 that you guys have put forward, so thank you.
9:10 - Thank you, Mr. Susan, Ms. Hahn, board members.
9:14 We are so excited to be here today.
9:17 We’ve been jumping out of our skin to share
9:19 and talk about the incredible work that this team has done.
9:23 And your introduction was perfect.
9:26 These are warriors that are just really committed
9:29 to the process and the time that we have spent.
9:33 Before we get started though,
9:34 I want you to picture something in your head.
9:36 In every one of our community meetings,
9:38 parent meetings, teacher meetings,
9:40 the first question we asked everybody
9:43 was to describe the typical middle school student.
9:47 And I won’t put you to task for saying the things
9:50 that are coming to mind, but it’s gonna involve
9:52 a full range of things from hormones and excitability,
9:56 but also shyness and quiet, all of those things
9:59 that come with this incredible age.
10:01 And the real goal of this team
10:04 was to honor that as awesomeness.
10:06 This presentation is called
10:08 Middle School is Awesome for a Reason.
10:10 And we, our fleet of middle school educators
10:14 love everything about that child that you’re picturing,
10:17 all the differences in them,
10:19 everything that they bring to the table.
10:21 And what we wanna do is use all that we know
10:25 about those adolescents as the basis of our framework.
10:28 It comes first, not after.
10:31 So middle school should be different than elementary,
10:33 should be different than high school,
10:35 and should have some undergirding structures
10:38 that are emblematic of the children they serve.
10:42 I have to introduce this amazing group,
10:44 and I’m gonna take a minute to introduce all of them,
10:47 because most of them have been with us
10:49 for a year and a half now, every single month,
10:52 doing some real heavy lifting.
10:54 And I’m gonna ask them each to stand
10:56 when I introduce them.
10:57 Stephanie Booth, she began this
11:00 as a middle school educator at Jefferson,
11:02 and is now the middle school AP Dean at Cocoa High School.
11:06 So she has learned a lot in the last two years
11:09 that has been really powerful to this process.
11:12 Thank you, Stephanie.
11:13 Sherry Bowman, she’s the director in my division,
11:16 and I know you guys know Sherry.
11:17 What you may not remember is that this year,
11:20 we actually restructured to have a single director
11:23 over our 11 traditional middle schools,
11:25 and Sherry’s done an incredible job
11:27 bringing the principals together for collective efforts.
11:31 Kathy Bramlett, I don’t think is here.
11:33 She represents our career
11:34 and technical education department.
11:37 Dietrich Brown, many of you know Dietrich.
11:39 He doesn’t need a lot of introduction.
11:41 What you may not know is he’s the brainchild
11:44 behind Homebase.
11:45 So many of you guys have talked about
11:47 how important Homebase has been to the process.
11:50 He has been there for us to really help us keep
11:53 all those special needs in mind as we work through it.
11:56 Scott Corso, principal of Delora Middle School.
12:00 And many of you guys know
12:02 Scott is a passionate middle school educator.
12:04 We stole him from California
12:05 where he was San Diego’s principal of the year,
12:08 and on their re-imagining process.
12:11 So we were able to steal their work as well.
12:13 Jasmine Delater, principal extraordinaire.
12:17 As you guys know, she did amazing work
12:18 at McNair Middle School,
12:20 raised their school grade to a B,
12:22 and is doing incredible things
12:25 at Southwest Middle School right now,
12:26 and a lot of neat structures in place there.
12:30 Christine Ferrer.
12:32 Christine is one of our exemplary sixth grade educators.
12:35 You may have recognized her from,
12:37 she’s on many, many committees.
12:39 I feel like Christine and I go way back
12:40 from lots of different committees over the year.
12:43 We love having our sixth grade educators on the team,
12:45 ‘cause you’re gonna hear how this is really gonna become
12:48 a six through eight footprint,
12:50 even if the buildings are different.
12:52 Holly Ford, our Johnson Middle School media specialist,
12:55 and lots and lots of impact and insightfulness
12:59 on how we support schools in that space.
13:01 Matthew Gantt is not here with us today.
13:04 Many of you know Matthew Gantt.
13:05 He’s a coach and teacher at Central Middle School.
13:08 He has been really important,
13:09 has been with us since the very first meeting.
13:12 Tara Harris, our director of elementary
13:14 and leading and learning.
13:16 She has also been the voice of sixth grade,
13:19 elementary, how we work together
13:21 to do great things for kids.
13:23 Vivian Jones, glad to see Vivian.
13:26 Vivian’s one of our middle school educators.
13:28 She teaches at Madison Middle School.
13:30 Her experience is in ESC and reading
13:33 and has also worked in sixth grade.
13:36 So she’s been really clutch on those social emotional needs
13:39 of students and all of those other factors, so thank you.
13:44 Dr. Danielle McKinnon, our director of equity and diversity,
13:48 obviously playing a huge role as we think about
13:50 how to best serve kids in these areas.
13:53 Thank you, Dr. McKinnon.
13:54 Kathy McNutt, another principal extraordinaire
13:57 from Hoover Middle School, has played a huge role
14:01 in this team, lots of neat practices from Indy Atlantic
14:03 that we’re gonna look to replicate in other schools.
14:06 You’ll hear more about that as well.
14:08 Mr. Reed, I think is in here somewhere.
14:10 There’s Mr. Reed in the back.
14:12 He’s not sitting with us.
14:14 Director of, thanks Chris, director of student services,
14:19 obviously an important part of this team as well.
14:21 I wanna recognize Kyle Savage.
14:23 He is one of our officers at Brevard Federation of Teachers.
14:28 He is himself a sixth grade expert.
14:31 Kyle has been tremendous on our team as well.
14:35 Jason Sherburne is one of our elementary principals,
14:38 couldn’t leave the shop today.
14:40 But Nicole Sherburne, one of our sixth grade teachers
14:44 from Creel Elementary, she’s been on our team
14:46 and we were thankful to have that.
14:48 I’m gonna leave Vanessa for last on purpose.
14:51 Regina Taylor couldn’t be here today.
14:53 She is a counselor at Stone Middle School
14:56 and then Mira Trine, principal at Jefferson Middle School
14:59 and so pleased to have her as well.
15:02 I’m mentioning Vanessa last on purpose
15:05 ‘cause Vanessa’s really been my co-leader.
15:07 She and I began this journey together,
15:09 have done all the research together, the data together,
15:12 the co-presenting together.
15:14 And in fact, she is the only reason
15:16 where you’re gonna see awesome notes and minutes
15:18 and process and paperwork.
15:20 She’s the yin to my yang, so I’m very, very happy.
15:24 And I can’t underscore enough how valuable
15:27 our teachers union has been to this process
15:30 and really trying to connect the hopes and dreams
15:33 of our teachers alongside this important district level work
15:37 and so really thankful for their partnership
15:39 through all of this.
15:42 And so what you’ll see on the next two slides
15:44 is an overview of the process.
15:46 This began in January of 2022
15:50 and in fact, we did a little bit of legwork before then.
15:54 This is a team that was on hold due to COVID.
15:57 We’re gonna be able to stop saying that soon
15:59 but we delayed its implementation obviously
16:02 because of some of the challenges
16:03 that all of our educators were going through at that time.
16:06 But one of the big projects we did before January
16:10 was called Proximity Matters.
16:12 And my entire team went out and interviewed
16:14 about 450 kids one-on-one at every single school
16:19 to talk about that sixth to seventh
16:21 and eighth to ninth grade experience.
16:24 And we just brought in random kids,
16:26 not the ones the principals picked.
16:28 I literally got the kids as they were coming to school late.
16:30 I said, “Hey, you got a pass today.”
16:32 And so just talk to kids, what were those common themes?
16:35 And that really began this work, our students.
16:39 And I think that’s an important thing to mention.
16:41 We launched our website, we launched a series of meetings.
16:45 Wanna also underscore the fact that everything’s been
16:48 in the sunshine.
16:50 We’ve had lots of great visitors to our committee meetings
16:53 on both virtual and in person.
16:56 Some that I just think can’t quit us
16:58 and they’ve come to like more meetings
17:00 even than some of our staff, so really great.
17:04 The most important resource for us
17:07 was from the American Middle Level Education.
17:09 And it was a book called
17:10 “The Successful Middle School, This We Believe.”
17:13 And this book really became kind of our guiding force
17:16 in putting together a model for exemplary schools
17:20 in Brevard.
17:22 We did lots of stakeholder feedback, students, parents,
17:25 teachers, administrators, staff, community.
17:27 You’ll see a high level of that today,
17:31 not all the nuts and bolts.
17:33 We were super lucky that the American Middle Level
17:36 Educators Conference was in Orlando this year.
17:39 So the entire team was able to go to the conference
17:42 and call some best practices from throughout the country.
17:45 And again, really putting the whole puzzle together
17:48 from stakeholders to research, to all of that work.
17:52 And then we built our framework.
17:55 Now, it took a little turn
17:57 because we had an original timeline,
17:59 but due to some changes, we felt it was really appropriate
18:03 to put our recommendations in a phase one or phase two,
18:06 given a new superintendent.
18:08 We didn’t wanna spring on some real financial difficulties
18:12 that might be necessary.
18:13 And we thought it was really important to separate out
18:15 things that we thought would be more appropriate
18:18 once a new superintendent comes on board.
18:19 And you’ll see some of those differences in a minute.
18:23 And so the understanding our why.
18:25 I’m gonna give you a very high level data overview,
18:30 just to kind of get a feel for some of the conversations
18:33 that we had.
18:34 When we did our meetings, we would do a meeting
18:36 on just parent survey, on teacher survey,
18:39 on student information,
18:41 looking at different data indicators,
18:44 real deep dives in every one of those,
18:46 giving you top level today,
18:48 some things that I found were interesting.
18:51 But again, picture those middle schoolers,
18:53 that should be in the back of your head
18:55 for every conversation.
18:57 How do we honor their oddities, their curiosities,
19:02 their hopes and dreams,
19:03 and that weird space that they’re in.
19:08 So discipline.
19:10 So this is a snapshot taken like last week.
19:14 And this represents this school year.
19:16 And the tall pillars are seventh, eighth and ninth grade.
19:22 And I think you’re gonna be super pleased
19:25 ‘cause a lot of what you hear today
19:28 is gonna tie into some of that great information
19:31 we’ve received in just doing that deep dive
19:34 in discipline in general.
19:35 So I think these two things can march out very well together.
19:41 Ninth grade is really also a middle school thing, right?
19:44 So we think about sixth to seventh,
19:46 we think about eighth through ninth,
19:48 and how we’re preparing students for expectations.
19:52 But we are certainly concerned, of course,
19:53 and this impacts teachers,
19:55 this impacts strategies and programming.
19:57 When you have to think about discipline alongside it.
20:03 So Vanessa gathered this information for us
20:06 and I think it speaks for itself.
20:08 So I’m gonna just kind of give you a second to pause on it.
20:12 And when we think about attribution for this data,
20:17 it’s kind of tough, right?
20:19 Is it the kids change that much?
20:21 Is it that middle school educators look at discipline
20:25 different than sixth grade educators, right?
20:27 All of these things are part of what we’re trying to uncover.
20:33 What can we do to prevent that spike?
20:36 So in some cases, it might be consistency
20:40 in the sixth grade, right?
20:41 What’s tolerated, what’s acceptable, what’s okay?
20:44 In some cases, it’s going to be structures in seventh grade
20:48 that anticipate everything we know
20:51 about middle schoolers, right?
20:52 And how we use that knowledge to create our strategies
20:57 and our rulemaking in the schools
21:00 to address some of those things that we know.
21:02 But we had to put it on the table
21:04 ‘cause that’s part of what we’re trying to tackle.
21:10 We looked at some student achievement data
21:14 and what you will see is sixth, seventh and eighth
21:18 side by side and Brevard to the state.
21:22 And so when you look at ELA and math both,
21:26 we’ve said it a million times,
21:28 our sixth graders are crushing it.
21:31 They are highest performing group of students
21:34 in the district and that’s why every time
21:38 the different discussions come up,
21:39 we’re like, yeah, but they’re doing really great.
21:42 And so I really admire our sixth grade educators
21:45 for that level of focus.
21:47 And so then you’re seeing seventh grade performance
21:50 and eighth grade performance.
21:52 And in seventh and eighth grade math,
21:57 I brought in algebra and geometry as well
22:00 for both the district and the state.
22:02 Normally our eighth grade number doesn’t include it.
22:05 We calculated that in both as well.
22:08 And you can see that eighth grade math is a concern
22:11 and Ms. Bowman will tell you that it has been,
22:14 oh, I lost her.
22:16 It has been, she would tell you, I promise.
22:19 And the middle school principals will tell you
22:21 it’s been our number one focus this year
22:23 is really keying in.
22:24 We just did some really great work on using data,
22:27 using progress monitoring to improve eighth grade math scores
22:31 It’s been our observation.
22:33 The principals are all shaking their head
22:35 ‘cause they’re tired of me talking about eighth grade math.
22:37 So, but it’s something we need to keep working on
22:40 to improve for our students.
22:42 Our students deserve to have the very best results
22:45 and our teachers I know are really motivated
22:48 to help those kids.
22:51 So this is an interesting graph and it’s kind of messy,
22:55 but I’ll give you the short version of it.
22:58 So we looked at actual student grades,
23:01 meaning the grades the student earned in the class.
23:05 And ELA and math are particularly interesting.
23:09 So let’s look at ELA first semester,
23:12 the very first stack of data.
23:15 That grade six data, the blue is the average GPA
23:20 for sixth grade students in the first semester of math.
23:24 And then the first semester of ELA.
23:26 And then you see grade seven.
23:28 And what do you see as one of the highest trends
23:32 in terms of GPA?
23:34 Eighth grade, right?
23:36 So it doesn’t feel right.
23:38 It feels a little strange when we’re looking
23:40 at the other data.
23:42 One is based on testing, the other is based on performance
23:45 in the class alongside the teachers.
23:48 And so one of the things that you’re gonna see
23:50 as a recommendation for continued study next year
23:54 is grading, you know, tackling sort of the question
23:57 on grading, how we calculate grades.
24:00 Is it, are they measuring the most important standards
24:04 in the unit?
24:05 Why are they so dissimilar, right?
24:08 So this information just really highlights the need
24:12 for us to look at grading and how that works.
24:15 And then in math, I guess it’s good news
24:19 at their math grade, and eighth grade is lower
24:21 ‘cause it’s representative of the data.
24:22 But obviously, again, we’ve still gotta look at instruction
24:26 that is impacting that in our targeted instruction.
24:31 We’ve got this data in a lot of other different ways.
24:33 If you’re interested, I’m more than happy to send
24:35 a fat packet of analysis.
24:37 Just left some of the details out
24:39 of this presentation today.
24:45 And then we looked at our student survey data.
24:47 And we were lucky, we have survey 23 right now.
24:51 And, you know, these are the gut punch.
24:55 When we hear from the voices of our students
24:58 that in my opinion are the most important voices,
25:01 this is where there’s a lot of tears.
25:03 Our principals, when I go visit them and I say,
25:06 “How’s their survey?”
25:07 And they’re like, “Okay, well I cried.”
25:09 And then the next day I cried again.
25:10 And then I rallied the team on how we can
25:12 support our kids better.
25:14 And some of the questions that you see here are just a sample
25:17 from the survey.
25:19 But do you feel an important part of your school?
25:22 Only about a quarter of our students.
25:26 And we felt for sixth graders,
25:28 that was particularly important.
25:30 Because as a middle school person,
25:33 I would surmise they felt king of the hill.
25:36 They felt the most important.
25:37 And as a secondary person, I would have guessed
25:40 that the sixth grade would be higher
25:42 than the other grades and they weren’t.
25:45 However, we’ve talked about it a lot.
25:47 And we’ve talked about a lot of strategies
25:50 to increase the identity of sixth grade
25:53 to feel more like they get special things.
25:57 You’ll hear things like intramurals and other activities
26:00 and branding and common language
26:03 that matches seventh and eighth grade.
26:05 So they really do feel extra special
26:08 in that elementary setting.
26:10 So you’ll see some of those strategies down the road.
26:14 One of the other interesting patterns
26:16 that what we’ve seen every year with our Youth Truth Survey.
26:19 And again, going side by side
26:22 with our discipline discussion.
26:24 Students are identifying how disruptive students are.
26:29 And that’s some pretty high level thinking from our kids.
26:32 So when you see a question, do students behave in class?
26:35 Only 19% of our sixth grade students
26:40 felt positive about that.
26:42 So only 19% said agree or strongly agree.
26:46 So the students are aware of it
26:48 and they’re frustrated by it.
26:52 They’re frustrated by it.
26:55 But time and time again, and you’ll see it in the next slide,
26:58 they recognize how hard their teachers are working for that
27:03 and how respectful teachers are of kids.
27:05 So again, I think that’s an interesting contrast.
27:08 And those of you that have seen multiple years of that data,
27:11 it’s a pattern that we’ve seen before.
27:14 In terms of relevant instruction,
27:17 does what you learn in class help you in life?
27:20 22%.
27:22 And the one that I think as moms and dads and as educators,
27:26 you want kids to really enjoy going to school.
27:29 And in our sixth grade population,
27:31 only a third felt that kind of positivity around it
27:34 or a third on that day.
27:36 But does the teacher help you and have you keep trying?
27:40 A much higher response, which is particularly awesome
27:43 ‘cause we know from an abundance of research
27:46 that teacher expectation is a single big driver
27:51 of student outcomes.
27:52 We’ve done some work around opportunity myth
27:54 and some other resources.
27:56 We know how important teacher expectations are.
27:58 So the kids are recognizing
28:00 that their teachers have high expectations for them.
28:04 When we go to our middle,
28:05 so the questions are slightly different,
28:08 which is why I couldn’t mess them together.
28:11 But again, I feel part of my school’s community.
28:15 That was the one question that every presentation we did,
28:19 we shared that number.
28:20 When we did our community meetings,
28:21 when we did our parent meetings,
28:23 we wanted everybody to realize
28:25 this is a metric I want to target.
28:28 I think it’s very important for kids
28:29 to feel a part of their school community.
28:32 Again, you see a higher response on adults,
28:36 their perspective, middle school kids’ perspectives
28:39 on how students are treated by the adults
28:42 versus how students treat the adults.
28:46 I mean, from the mouths of babes, right?
28:48 And so again, I really applaud our fleet of teachers
28:52 because it’s visible even to the kids
28:56 that the teachers really do care
28:59 about that learning environment
29:00 and care about protecting them.
29:03 Again, in terms of relevancy,
29:05 you’ll see what I learn in class helps me outside of school,
29:08 and I enjoy school most of the time,
29:10 another metric that we measure annually
29:14 to see how that number is changing.
29:17 Couple others I wanted to add
29:19 from the seventh and eighth grade,
29:20 you know, those middle school, there’s more questions.
29:23 Again, feeling part of school community.
29:26 The next one is a new one.
29:28 We added questions around project-based learning this year
29:31 just to try to get an idea of what kids say.
29:35 And this question had, by teacher speaking, by reading,
29:39 and huge results of kids saying,
29:42 “I learn best by hands-on projects.”
29:45 And so that’s gonna really inform us
29:47 when we talk about professional development
29:49 and curriculum building,
29:51 because they also said they experience that
29:54 less than other strategies and approaches.
29:56 So using this as we talk about those items as well.
30:00 Are teachers connecting with your life outside of school?
30:04 And again, a very high response
30:07 on how many of your teachers believe
30:08 that you can get a good grade if you try.
30:11 And we do know that’s important.
30:12 So there’s a lot of good stuff to work with here,
30:15 and to really tackle some of the struggles
30:17 our kids are feeling in school on a day-to-day basis.
30:21 I just wanna pause there,
30:22 because we’ve got a couple meaty chunks.
30:25 Any questions on anything so far?
30:30 Okay.
30:33 So hot off the press is our Insight Teacher Admin Survey.
30:37 And I pulled three items that I thought
30:41 were super interesting for this conversation.
30:44 And when you look at the bars,
30:46 I took school year 19, pre-COVID year,
30:50 and then last year, school year 22,
30:52 and then we have this year’s data in already.
30:55 And so the first chunk, we’re very excited about,
30:59 because a year ago, we sat in this room,
31:02 and one of our metrics for the challenge in middle school
31:05 was how many more teachers in middle school
31:07 wanted to quit than in other grade bands, right?
31:10 So it was a dramatic difference
31:13 from middle school educators
31:14 versus high school versus elementary.
31:17 And look at the decline in that number.
31:20 That was like a bit of encouragement that we needed,
31:23 that this year, we went from 11% teachers saying
31:27 it was gonna be their last year to 6%.
31:30 And I checked it like five times,
31:32 just to make sure I wasn’t looking at the numbers wrong.
31:36 But then my soul was crushed,
31:39 and we saw a decline in teachers responding
31:42 to my school is a good place to teach and learn.
31:46 And that’s one of those questions on the teacher survey
31:50 that I measure for multiple years.
31:52 You guys know I have a gigantic spreadsheet,
31:55 and we monitored that question,
31:57 ‘cause we think it’s so important
31:59 that a teacher feels good about their school
32:02 in terms of workforce, but also for kids learning.
32:06 And so that is gonna become a very new,
32:09 another metric for us to keep targeting,
32:11 looking school by school and reading the comments.
32:15 We have thousands of comments to go through,
32:17 and so we’re gonna deep dive into that.
32:20 The other thing that I think is very powerful
32:22 is that last cluster.
32:25 And so one of the questions on this survey
32:28 is administrators put average of time spent
32:32 in different areas.
32:34 And you’ll see in 2019, principals reported 8% of their time
32:40 on reactive school discipline, right?
32:43 Meaning the situation happened, and you’re dealing with it,
32:46 as opposed to these structures prevent discipline.
32:50 Stayed 8% in school year 22, which was pretty amazing,
32:55 pre-COVID after COVID, jumped up to 19% this year.
33:00 And those are the results from our middle school principals.
33:04 Imagine the deans, those are pretty high bars,
33:06 as you can imagine, but these are our principals
33:08 having to spend that much more time on discipline
33:11 than they had in the past.
33:13 So you’ll see again why these conversations
33:15 are super well aligned to the other discussions
33:17 that we’re having.
33:21 We looked at a lot of qualitative student feedback as well,
33:25 and so this is just three comments from thousands.
33:30 We read thousands and thousands of student feedback
33:33 on their school’s greatest strength.
33:36 And from the mouths of babes, right?
33:38 These are middle schoolers talking about thinking critically,
33:42 the classes they take.
33:44 And again, these are direct quotes.
33:47 And what a student is recognizing
33:50 in how their teachers treat other kids,
33:53 how they’re handled when they’ve had a bad day,
33:58 whatever it is the kids notice.
34:00 So when I looked at all of the comments
34:03 on what is your school’s greatest strength,
34:04 most interestingly, the kids themselves
34:09 reflect on the challenges in the course.
34:12 More often than not, they cited the academic work
34:17 as the school’s greatest strength.
34:19 Again, you may not have predicted that, right?
34:21 You may have thought, well, PE is great.
34:23 Well, they say that too in a little bit,
34:24 so that’s coming too.
34:26 So these again are just a couple of thousands and thousands
34:29 of survey responses that we’ve culled.
34:34 Mr. Corso and the middle school principals,
34:36 and actually really everybody from the team,
34:39 we wanted to go back and get a little bit more information
34:41 from our middle schoolers.
34:42 This is this year data specifically
34:45 about the reimagining process.
34:47 And we got about 1300 responses.
34:50 And I’m really thankful to our sixth grade schools as well.
34:53 We captured some feeder bands to just try to get
34:57 what do the kids think?
34:58 And as you can see, pretty good spread of students.
35:03 And so they were able to choose
35:05 what was the most important characteristic.
35:08 And they could choose more than one,
35:11 which is why they don’t add up to 100.
35:13 But look at the top.
35:16 The top is about how teachers make them feel.
35:20 And it’s something that we are gonna spend a lot of time in
35:23 on professional development and the importance
35:26 of just somebody really feeling valued.
35:28 Many of you guys have heard our sort of secondary
35:31 leading and learning mantra.
35:32 It’s about people feeling known, valued and inspired.
35:37 And you have kids that are essentially saying those words,
35:41 maybe not using my words.
35:42 And I just wanna feel like they know me, they value me,
35:44 I feel good, they’re excited to see me.
35:47 We’ve talked a lot about those welcoming environments.
35:50 But also interesting to me was school safety.
35:53 The kids were keying in on how important that is to them.
35:57 And as questions come up, they’re all here
36:02 if you have questions that are ground level, right?
36:04 ‘Cause I think one thing, and I’m sometimes wrong, right?
36:07 I’m sometimes wrong on, even though I think
36:10 I understand the principles, they know their schools,
36:12 the teachers, the counselors, these are the real experts.
36:15 I’m just the coordinator.
36:18 Access to counselors, and then again,
36:20 challenging curriculum.
36:21 These were literally the top five responses from our kids.
36:26 What would you add to middle school?
36:28 So we asked that question.
36:29 I told you, Mr. Susan, you’d be happy in a second.
36:32 So these were, they could write it in.
36:34 So Mr. Corso and the team kind of culled those responses.
36:38 Football and sports.
36:40 Football kind of came up in particular, right?
36:42 For all of you guys.
36:44 They specifically named football
36:46 over and over and over again.
36:47 - Can I real quick?
36:49 - Fine.
36:50 (laughing)
36:52 - This was the only one, I have so much written down.
36:54 I promise you I was a good boy.
36:55 - No, please, of course, I’m kidding.
36:56 - Here’s what we do, just so you know.
36:58 Many of the sports programs, rec leagues,
37:01 are starting to cost an exorbitant amount of money.
37:02 So some of our kids are left out.
37:04 They have no avenue for some of these things.
37:06 And that’s directly what I think this supplants.
37:10 Plus, so I know that there’s some kids out there
37:13 that are in low socioeconomic places
37:15 that have no ride and no money to get to these.
37:17 When we provide these for our kids,
37:19 it’s also our commitment to our kids.
37:21 And that’s, you know, I get goosebumps right now,
37:23 but that’s what truly, when I see what’s going on out there.
37:26 So I applaud you guys for bringing up football
37:29 because that is a large chunk of many of the students
37:32 that follow in that rule, so thank you.
37:34 That’s all, I just wanted to kind of join in.
37:35 - And it came up authentically.
37:37 Again, the data’s the data. - Yeah, I didn’t say anything.
37:39 - The response is the response.
37:40 We did not put these words in their mouths.
37:43 Better food, you know, poor Kevin.
37:45 (laughing)
37:47 Just electives in general.
37:49 You know, I’m not gonna break the news to them
37:51 on access to phone, but typical things
37:55 that you would expect kids in middle school.
37:58 Like, what are those things that they wanna have?
38:03 So then we asked our kids, what would you change?
38:05 And the coolest thing of ever
38:09 was the number one answer was nothing.
38:13 The number one answer from all the kids was nothing.
38:17 Second to that, you’ll see the bell schedule.
38:21 It does induce a lot of stress.
38:23 And we’ll talk a little bit more about that
38:26 at the end of the presentation.
38:28 And sorry, Sue, appearance came up relatively,
38:31 but Ms. Hand and I have had a lot of conversations
38:34 on prioritizing our middles.
38:36 The late dismissal’s tough.
38:38 That 4/30 timeline is super difficult for kids.
38:41 And, you know, transportation.
38:44 So nothing that, as an organization, we haven’t tackled.
38:49 But again, when 12 and 13-year-olds are saying it,
38:52 it underscores its importance, right?
38:53 It gives us that triangulation of data
38:56 telling us that we need to key in on these things.
39:00 Favorite thing about their school,
39:01 people and friends, right?
39:04 Again, they want it to be a place where they can learn
39:07 how to be social, learn how to create friend groups.
39:10 But look what’s next.
39:12 The second highest response was teachers.
39:17 And again, really elevating the field of teaching
39:20 for middle school students.
39:22 That’s gonna be part of our goal, right?
39:24 Like, how do we continue to let those teachers feel valued?
39:28 How do we support them differently
39:30 than we support middle and high school teachers?
39:34 I laugh that they didn’t like lunch,
39:36 but lunch was their favorite thing.
39:37 I’m guessing lunch time.
39:39 (laughing)
39:41 And then you’ll see PE,
39:42 but then literally naming math and art.
39:44 I thought, again, that’s kinda cool to see that from kids.
39:47 - That’s the principal filling that portion out.
39:49 - I’m sorry?
39:50 - The principals are filling those out.
39:51 (laughing)
39:52 - Good, good, good, good.
39:55 So I had an opportunity for lots of teacher meetings.
39:59 So in the fall, I did five professional development sessions
40:03 specifically for middle school educators
40:06 to come and get caught up.
40:08 And then I did a series of Zooms
40:10 with our sixth grade teachers, which was super fun.
40:13 I was like a fish out of water,
40:14 but they were amazing and gave us a lot of cool feedback.
40:18 So I’m gonna let you take a look at some of the things
40:21 that came up in our discussions.
40:23 I can’t help but laugh at the first one in organization.
40:26 I remember being in that classroom at Viera High
40:29 with a room full of teachers.
40:30 And a teacher said, you know,
40:32 I’m a split between a Walmart greeter and border patrol.
40:35 And that just never left me, right?
40:38 Because we do supervision, but with joy in our hearts, right?
40:42 That’s a skill, that’s a gift, it’s a talent.
40:45 You’ll see a lot of discussions on home rooms,
40:48 activities, clubs and activities.
40:50 School-based time for that programming
40:53 was a constant theme that came up,
40:55 is how can we create our structure
40:58 to do more school-based activities within the school day?
41:01 And we have lots of different drafts and plans to look at.
41:06 You’ll see that over and over and over again,
41:09 the idea of more clubs and opportunities for kids,
41:13 purposeful tutoring, collaboration with the community,
41:17 not a lot of surprises.
41:18 Again, very thankful to our sixth grade teachers
41:21 and our middle school teachers
41:22 that joined us in this discussion.
41:25 We had parent feedback in a lot of different ways as well.
41:28 We did four community meetings in each of the area
41:32 that parents came out to.
41:34 And Sherry did a magical job of tracking all those comments.
41:38 We have lots more than the ones that you’re gonna see,
41:40 but these are some highlight ones.
41:42 We also had an online survey
41:44 and got about 150 respondents from there as well.
41:48 And our parents are certainly interested
41:50 in more CTE programming in middle school.
41:53 And of course, our CTE team is super happy about that.
41:56 We’ve got something cool working out actually for Johnson,
41:59 but we’re looking at those feeder patterns
42:01 and looking at how we can mimic
42:03 some of those experiences in middle school.
42:06 Again, the schedule came up a lot.
42:08 The transition from sixth grade,
42:11 where you have maybe one, two teachers,
42:15 and then boom, you’re in seventh grade,
42:17 seven different teachers,
42:19 not necessarily cooperation between the teachers,
42:22 different deadlines, different roles,
42:24 and seven different teachers contacting parents.
42:27 That’s a lot, it’s overwhelming.
42:30 Our parents talked about special programming, right?
42:33 So in this first example,
42:35 it was specifically about the Eagles,
42:37 but we heard it over and over again.
42:39 I like that there’s something for my child.
42:42 They’re either acceleration or remediation needs or both,
42:46 or music needs, or whatever it is,
42:48 there was something where each child could find their people
42:52 and find the support they needed.
42:54 So again, you see a lot on electives and programming.
43:00 And so all of this led us to the idea
43:03 of what do we stand for in BPS as middle school educators?
43:07 What is going to be, this is what every child in Brevard
43:13 should experience in middle school.
43:15 Yes, there’s gonna be some specialties,
43:17 yes, there’s gonna be some different things,
43:20 but every child should have a baseline
43:22 of amazing experiences from teachers
43:25 who love that grade band.
43:27 And so in that, we adopted the no, it depends.
43:32 And those are the two words that,
43:34 I don’t even know the right way to say that,
43:36 that became the unspoken words that we never wanted to say.
43:40 And let me give you some examples.
43:42 We had a room full of teachers,
43:43 we had a room full of parents,
43:45 and we’d hear these awesome practices.
43:47 Well, at my school, we blah, blah, blah, blah.
43:49 So if you went to that school, you had that experience.
43:53 And then, oh, well, I do this with kids in my class.
43:56 If you had that teacher, you had that experience.
43:59 I’m gonna use Kathy McNutt as my, she’s my constant example.
44:03 They do incredible service learning programming at Hoover.
44:07 And so if you went to Hoover, you got service learning.
44:12 And so it depended on the teacher or the school,
44:16 the experiences you had.
44:18 Now we still love like those individualized approaches,
44:22 but there should be a baseline
44:24 taking all the knowledge we know
44:26 about middle school developments, middle school kids,
44:29 their awesomeness, and what’s good for all kids,
44:32 not dependent on their school or teacher.
44:36 That as an organization, these are the best practices
44:39 that our teachers are telling us,
44:41 our parents are telling us, our kids are telling us,
44:44 our national organization’s telling us,
44:45 an abundance of research is telling us,
44:48 why should that depend on the teacher or the school?
44:54 And so I’m gonna take you through some additional work
44:57 on our webpage and certainly encourage any parents
45:01 that might be chiming in with us today to log on.
45:04 You can get to our webpage from all of the links
45:06 on the main one from parents and students and teachers.
45:10 And I’m gonna show you a little bit more
45:12 of what we did and what we thought about.
45:17 And so right there, you’ll see a stakeholder feedback.
45:20 We check that all the time.
45:22 I just checked it again last week
45:24 and look for feedback from our community
45:26 on what they want us to hear.
45:29 You will see the community meetings we held.
45:32 We did a south area, a beach side,
45:35 a central and a north area meeting.
45:37 We had lots of participation
45:38 from our sixth grade community.
45:40 So I was especially excited about that
45:42 ‘cause this is really about that next step.
45:45 And here you’ll see the framework.
45:47 And this is very important.
45:49 This is where we said these are gonna be
45:52 the overarching principles that we’re gonna consider.
45:55 So the essential attributes of being responsive,
45:58 challenging, empowering, equitable, and engaging.
46:03 And I want you to key in on that responsiveness.
46:06 And that goes back to what our original thoughts were.
46:10 Picture that middle school kid
46:12 and using the distinctive nature and identity
46:15 of kids that are in that grade band
46:18 as the foundation which all decisions about school are made.
46:22 And I’ll give you just kind of a really easy example.
46:26 Ms. Han and I, we talk a lot about renovating the classrooms
46:30 and that space, and every single time it comes up,
46:33 I talk about flexible, right?
46:34 I talk about kids being able to get up, move around,
46:37 new configurations, and not always being in a static manner
46:41 because who pictures a middle schooler in that way?
46:44 In fact, Ms. Jones’ classroom,
46:46 we bought high tops, low tops, circle tables,
46:49 just things that are more accessible
46:52 and more organic to the child.
46:54 I’ve bought, I don’t know if you know,
46:56 they sell desk chairs that rock.
46:58 How about a bunch of those, right?
46:59 ‘Cause the kids need that.
47:01 And so taking all the knowledge we have
47:03 about kids in that age band and applying it to furniture
47:08 and curriculum and support and guidance counselors
47:11 and everything that we know in that space.
47:14 If you look to the right, these are the areas
47:16 we’re trying to cluster our strategies around.
47:20 What makes for a strong culture and community?
47:22 How do we address curriculum, instruction, and assessment?
47:25 And what are those organizational things?
47:27 One of the things we talk with the principals
47:29 about all the times is the importance of systems.
47:32 How are you creating systems to withstand changes
47:35 in different kids and different programming?
47:41 You’ll see a little bit more on our members there
47:43 and those that served with us before.
47:46 This is our meeting schedule.
47:48 And if you looked up to the top
47:51 under meeting agendas and minutes,
47:52 you’ll see every single agenda
47:54 and everything we discussed at every one of those meetings
47:58 to kind of see the chronology
48:00 of how we got to where we were.
48:02 Again, super transparent and then same thing.
48:06 What did our community say to us at those meetings?
48:09 So if you go into community voices
48:11 and we went to south area,
48:13 you’ll see the responses the parents gave.
48:17 So we’ve tried to make it super transparent,
48:20 public for everyone, opportunity for people to catch up
48:24 and see what we’re thinking of.
48:26 And then I believe all of this will come together
48:28 as we lean into our recommendations.
48:35 If I do this right, okay.
48:38 All right, before we get into the recommendations,
48:40 my second pause for any questions.
48:42 - Here we go.
48:45 - All right, we’re rocking and rolling.
48:47 - We’re saving them for the end.
48:49 - Yeah, I’m writing mine down.
48:51 - So phase one, our recommendations that we believe
48:56 can be implemented in school year 24, meaning this August.
49:00 And I say it with confidence because like, for example,
49:04 Ms. Bowman’s been meeting
49:05 with all the middle school principals all year.
49:08 This is a back and forth between principals,
49:11 between school leaders.
49:13 Some of them, I might be a little hopeful,
49:17 but I can be hopeful in this first presentation.
49:21 So recommendation number one,
49:22 and everybody felt strongly about this,
49:25 especially our sixth grade friends,
49:27 that we wanted professional development
49:29 for middle school educators.
49:31 And so that includes our sixth grade teachers.
49:35 So it all hinges on youth mental health first aid,
49:39 Chris Reed, no pressure.
49:41 Assuming we can cross that hurdle before August,
49:43 we hope to have a middle school conference in August
49:46 that brings together our sixth, seventh,
49:49 and eighth grade teachers together
49:52 talking about all of these strategies, best practices,
49:55 teacher presenters, of course, you guys know,
49:57 always use teacher presenters.
49:58 These guys would all run expert sessions
50:01 and really strengthen that six, seven, and eight footprint.
50:06 We think we can do it.
50:09 We’re also really excited about micro-credentialing.
50:12 And so the idea that being a middle school educator
50:16 requires some additional skills in your toolkit.
50:20 And having opportunities for teachers to complete
50:24 maybe on like the young adolescent brain, right?
50:27 And then they would earn a micro-credential
50:29 from completing an online course.
50:33 Again, we feel it’s doable, right?
50:40 Focus, so funny, focus has been a hot topic of conversation.
50:44 We spent a lot of time at one of our meetings
50:47 talking about sort of the unharnessed power
50:51 of focus to connect student, parent, teacher,
50:55 and admin to academic history, information,
50:59 understanding a student’s accommodations, disability needs.
51:04 And so we’re gonna ask our friends in ET
51:08 to prioritize middle school and community outreach,
51:12 getting parents involved, because it’s such a change
51:15 going from that one or two teachers
51:17 in a school you’ve been at years.
51:18 We really think focus utilization can help bridge it.
51:22 And our parent focus accounts in middle school is not great.
51:27 And so just some public outreach
51:29 and some training around that.
51:33 Government community relations,
51:34 they’ve already kind of jumped on board with this,
51:37 supporting branding, promotion, middle school identity,
51:40 to include that sixth grade.
51:42 So for example, we may have common banners
51:46 in a feeder in that sixth grade classroom,
51:48 in that seventh grade classroom,
51:49 in that eighth grade classroom,
51:51 that connects the kids to middle school culture,
51:55 expectations, grading, all of those things.
51:58 And of course we know we’re right in the middle
52:00 of our middle school videos, which we’re really excited
52:02 about having those promotional items.
52:04 And again, parents are nervous.
52:06 One of the things that came across
52:08 at all of our parent meetings
52:10 was like the fear of the unknown.
52:13 And so the more we can do to eliminate the unknown,
52:17 ‘cause we don’t wanna be a secret,
52:18 the hopefully we can minimize those fears.
52:24 Felt very strongly about on-campus transition.
52:27 And this was one of those it depends.
52:31 So in a room, I would say about 50, 60% of our schools
52:36 had a structured transition program,
52:38 meaning inviting all the sixth graders to campus
52:42 and putting programs in place.
52:44 Last year you saw a lot more of ‘em,
52:46 ‘cause we were already on this journey,
52:48 whether it was a Saturday, an evening, on a school day,
52:51 that kids had a chance to come to campus
52:54 and learn about a lot of the issues that worry them.
52:57 Again, demystify the unknown,
53:00 we thought was really important,
53:01 and really connecting elementary schools to that process.
53:05 So we wanna make it a requirement for all 16 of our schools.
53:09 You will sometimes hear 16 and you will hear 11.
53:12 16 includes our 712s, 11 is our traditional middles,
53:18 ‘cause those 712s do have some unique issues
53:20 that we have to handle a little bit differently in there.
53:25 We also wanna recommend additional summer hours.
53:29 So some things that we learned is the conversations
53:33 that should be happening in the summer
53:35 about whether it’s a student’s IP,
53:38 a student that’s been in a custody issue,
53:40 or hey, I got the secret sauce on this child,
53:43 you need to know it.
53:45 The collaboration is minimal,
53:47 because in our elementary schools right now,
53:49 they have no summer hours for their guidance counselors,
53:52 and we have minimal in secondary.
53:55 Right now we have a little bit more because of ESSER.
53:58 So we think it’s really important to look at,
54:00 and I’ll be submitting budget requests, don’t you worry,
54:03 look at the need to have some of those elementary
54:06 specialists available in the summer to collaborate
54:09 with our secondary to help minimize those bridges.
54:12 I remember when I got the middle school,
54:16 I got a call from a sixth grade,
54:17 hey, this one has these issues.
54:20 I was able to meet with her and we bonded,
54:22 and she just was one of the happiest students on campus,
54:25 ‘cause we were able to put things in place ahead of time.
54:31 Class meetings and parent outreach.
54:33 We talked about this a lot.
54:34 Is it realistic to do this in the first two weeks of school?
54:38 We believe it’s essential.
54:40 We believe, again, think about those discipline issues
54:43 that arise, those communication issues that arise,
54:46 that our high schools all do class meetings,
54:49 meaning they bring the ninth grade together,
54:50 the eighth grade, the 10th grade together.
54:53 Our middle schools weren’t necessarily doing that,
54:55 it depended, and so we want everybody to,
54:58 within the first two weeks of school,
55:00 get in front of the parents and in front of the students,
55:03 again, to demystify some of the issues.
55:08 Team teaching must be prioritized.
55:10 I know some of you are long-term educators.
55:13 I was a middle school educator, and team teaching,
55:16 I wouldn’t be here today if it were not
55:20 for the team of teachers surrounding me
55:23 and helping me be successful as a first,
55:25 second, and third year teacher.
55:27 And in fact, an assistant principal
55:29 at O’Gally High School was my team teacher 29 years ago.
55:33 And so it’s great for kids, it’s great for parents,
55:37 but boy is it great for staff.
55:39 It creates many schools within a school
55:42 where these four teachers share this group of students,
55:45 and they are able to plan together,
55:48 do parent meetings together, combine on curriculum
55:52 and other topics together, and it’s kind of gone
55:56 by the wayside, so we’re gonna bring that back.
56:00 But it also is important for our elementary schools.
56:03 We wanna see our elementary schools, and thank you, Tara,
56:06 and she can answer any questions if they come up
56:09 about what this looks like in elementary school.
56:11 They did a lot of work on kind of doing a mini version
56:15 of some of those things that we like to see in seventh grade
56:18 to get kids, again, ready for that environment.
56:21 So again, cross-team planning, you know, hey, in my team,
56:26 we do math tests on Friday, we do science on Thursday,
56:29 things like that make a really big difference
56:32 for kids and families going into kind of the craziness
56:35 of middle school.
56:38 In terms of our students with disabilities,
56:41 support facilitation model allows students
56:44 to be in a tier one instructional environment,
56:46 which is very important for their academic development,
56:50 but yet those teachers have an ESC specialist
56:53 in the room with them, helping them support IEP goals.
56:58 And of course, our love of home base,
57:01 and what a perfect match that is for students who are,
57:05 picture this, you know, a student in middle school
57:08 with emotional disabilities,
57:11 and is also a middle schooler, right?
57:13 So it’s like the perfect confluence of challenges
57:16 that we wanna help kids get through, and so what we want,
57:21 and I said prioritize, ‘cause not all schools
57:24 through attrition and through natural things
57:26 will get to 100% next year, but I think most
57:30 of the principals are all really adjusting
57:32 their schedules already.
57:34 Co-curricular and extracurricular activities,
57:37 very, very important, and one of the interesting places
57:40 we landed at was sixth grade.
57:42 Again, think about those low results
57:45 on being valued at the school, interaction.
57:48 So we’d like to see the first expansion of intramurals
57:51 be for sixth graders.
57:53 Basketball is a great topic for kids to be able
57:56 to be on a team, get all the benefits of that,
57:59 the activity of it, the identity that comes with it,
58:02 representing their schools, and in fact,
58:05 it was one of our community members who attended one
58:07 of our In the Sunshine meetings, where he was like,
58:10 you know, have you thought about expanding it
58:12 in sixth grade, and we’re like,
58:13 that is really the right answer.
58:15 So talked a lot about that.
58:17 Again, something kids could earn going into sixth grade
58:19 and not feeling like the undesirables
58:22 of an elementary school, and so looking at additional clubs,
58:26 of course, and additional programming.
58:30 Lunch, boy, so middle school lunch is a special thing,
58:35 and if you don’t know what I mean,
58:36 please volunteer for lunch duty at a middle school.
58:40 It is like the perfect storm of just humor, love, funniness,
58:46 and like popcorn behavior, right?
58:48 It’s whack-a-mole, that’s what it is.
58:50 Oh, we don’t whack ‘em, so don’t fret,
58:51 I shouldn’t say that, but it’s akin to playing whack-a-mole
58:54 and kinda jumping around and targeting issues.
58:57 We want schools to be very intentional and very deliberate.
59:01 We have a lot of discipline issues that occur
59:03 in the lunchroom that we believe,
59:05 with good, deliberate planning, can prevent it,
59:08 but kids need positive social time.
59:11 They just need it in a structured way.
59:13 So they need to be able to get out,
59:15 they finally saw their buddy, middle school boys,
59:18 I hate to say it, like jump up and like to hit the ceilings,
59:22 and so, like, do they have a chance to jump up
59:24 and not get hollered at, and sort of all those things
59:27 that come with that, we want to say,
59:29 how can we allow that energy to happen in a structured way?
59:33 Should we look at separating seventh
59:35 from eighth grade in a cafeteria?
59:37 Is that a really good way to do it?
59:39 And in our 712s, does it make sense
59:42 to have our middle schools lunch differently?
59:46 Something we’re really, this is the thing
59:49 I’m most excited about, they just entertain me.
59:53 So think about student government in our high schools,
59:56 and, you know, a lot of the research we read
59:59 was about purposeful education, student engagement,
1:00:03 student advocacy, student having impact,
1:00:05 and we thought about middle school student congress,
1:00:07 kind of our other version of it.
1:00:10 And each school provides an opportunity
1:00:12 for kids to have a role in governance.
1:00:15 So let’s say they’re gonna change
1:00:17 their middle school lunch plan.
1:00:19 Mr. Corso would bring in his student congress
1:00:23 and they would debate it, and they would talk about it,
1:00:25 and they would advocate for some things.
1:00:27 So our sixth grade classes would select
1:00:30 two representatives every nine weeks.
1:00:32 Again, we don’t want it to just be the obvious kids,
1:00:35 we want a variety of kids, ‘cause we wanna rotate kids
1:00:38 through student congress.
1:00:41 I happened to be on a Zoom with an elementary principal
1:00:43 the other day, and I brought this up,
1:00:45 and I ran into her last week, and she’s like,
1:00:46 I just started that, that was a good idea.
1:00:48 I had to change something,
1:00:49 and I made a little congress to do it.
1:00:52 They become part of the advisory group.
1:00:54 Seventh and eighth grade will have homeroom-like spaces.
1:00:57 We haven’t technically called it homeroom yet,
1:00:59 but we’re getting there.
1:01:01 And select, again, representatives
1:01:03 to meet with the principal.
1:01:04 And then I would like to hold district regional events.
1:01:08 So, Mr. Susan, I think you’ve been to D2,
1:01:10 where the high schools come together.
1:01:12 It’d be something like that,
1:01:13 but for our middle school congress.
1:01:15 And I said regional events,
1:01:16 ‘cause of busing, distance, transportation,
1:01:19 but have like a south area middle school congress,
1:01:21 a north area middle school congress,
1:01:23 where we’re bringing in those leaders
1:01:24 from sixth and seventh and eighth grade.
1:01:27 Very excited about it.
1:01:29 We would ask the high school D2 students
1:01:31 to coordinate the events and do some activities,
1:01:33 which we think would be great for them as well.
1:01:36 And again, being active in their community.
1:01:41 Plan for transitions is very, very important.
1:01:44 We would require it.
1:01:46 Again, transitions, when we look at discipline referrals,
1:01:49 we can look at ‘em by location.
1:01:51 So I sit with the principal and we pull it up.
1:01:53 We say, okay, are your incidents
1:01:55 happening mostly in the classroom,
1:01:57 or are they happening in common areas?
1:02:00 If they’re in the classroom,
1:02:01 then it might be professional development,
1:02:03 admin getting in those classrooms more, common sequence.
1:02:06 If they’re in the hallways, it’s probably an admin problem.
1:02:09 I say that lovingly.
1:02:10 In terms of we need to change our supervision patterns,
1:02:13 we need to change how kids walk
1:02:15 through these corridors, right?
1:02:17 It’s a structural problem.
1:02:18 So we’re gonna ask them all to develop
1:02:21 a plan for those transitions.
1:02:23 I have to say, post COVID,
1:02:25 those one-way hallways were dreamy.
1:02:27 And so things were so smooth
1:02:30 when we implemented a lot of those.
1:02:31 It’s a great strategy to hang on to.
1:02:36 Tiers were interested in campus monitors.
1:02:41 And so let me, bear with me.
1:02:44 So remember the discipline discussions we’ve been having.
1:02:46 Think about the other ones.
1:02:50 We have to think of solutions that make sense
1:02:53 in this hiring climate and financial climate.
1:02:56 Campus monitors are a great solution for that.
1:03:00 Right now we have campus monitors
1:03:01 at each of our high schools only.
1:03:03 They’re the first ones to respond to a critical incident.
1:03:06 They’re the first ones to go get a student from a class.
1:03:09 They’re monitoring the hallways the entire time.
1:03:13 And they are typically community members
1:03:16 who are attached to the school
1:03:18 and absolutely want to do that work.
1:03:20 We added campus monitors this year
1:03:22 to Cocoa Beach, West Shore and Edgewood.
1:03:25 All of them hired somebody in one day.
1:03:27 So it wasn’t like our other challenges in hiring personnel.
1:03:33 They do immediate intervention.
1:03:35 They’ll be trained in youth mental health first aid.
1:03:39 Knowing what they do in a high school
1:03:42 and knowing how impactful they are,
1:03:44 I really think this is a great solution
1:03:46 for some of our settings that need some additional support.
1:03:50 And so we’re gonna be submitting some recommendations
1:03:53 in that space.
1:03:55 So think about all those challenges we’ve had
1:03:57 and how this one person can really make a difference.
1:04:00 And then our deans can focus on helping out in the classroom,
1:04:03 being in there, being more preventative
1:04:05 and training and support and of course outcomes.
1:04:11 Service learning, I mentioned that briefly.
1:04:13 We think that is a great way for a student
1:04:15 to be positively engaged with their community.
1:04:18 I’m gonna steal Kathy up for a second
1:04:21 because I don’t wanna steal her thunder
1:04:23 and give her a second to tell you a little bit
1:04:26 about the service learning class and program at Hoover
1:04:30 so that you can have in your head
1:04:31 what we’re looking to do all over.
1:04:34 - Thanks, Dr. Sullivan.
1:04:35 So the service learning class at Hoover
1:04:37 is really appropriate for that middle school student.
1:04:40 You’ve seen the data that talks
1:04:42 about hands-on project-based learning.
1:04:45 And it’s really stemming from the kids.
1:04:47 So it’s coming from that exploratory side of their brains,
1:04:51 delving into that curiosity where they identify
1:04:54 either a school-based project or issue that they have
1:04:58 or something within the community.
1:05:00 And then the students work on developing an action plan,
1:05:04 executing it, seeing the results
1:05:07 and reflecting on the project.
1:05:09 So we’ve had students do everything from,
1:05:11 hey, there are backpacks all over the floor
1:05:13 on the way into the media center.
1:05:15 We’re gonna build these awesome carts
1:05:17 to keep all of our backpacks and personal belongings safe
1:05:20 and have an allocated space for them
1:05:22 to meeting up with, working with the local community.
1:05:27 We’ve had a group of students
1:05:28 who have gone to town hall meetings,
1:05:30 the Indiana Atlantic town hall meetings.
1:05:32 They worked on a beautification project.
1:05:34 So they really got their hands in the community.
1:05:37 And I think one of the major benefits
1:05:39 is that we see with our students
1:05:42 that kids who maybe didn’t view themselves as leaders
1:05:46 or they’re looking for that role in a group,
1:05:49 they find something that they’re passionate about
1:05:51 and we see these kids rise to the top.
1:05:54 They really start to view themselves differently.
1:05:57 They’re accomplishing a task that they’re proud of.
1:06:00 And then we have students who wanna continue in,
1:06:03 it’s a semester long course,
1:06:04 who wanna continue in that course that following year
1:06:07 ‘cause they wanna carry out their project on a bigger scale.
1:06:10 We also had the opportunity
1:06:11 to take it a couple of years ago, pre-COVID
1:06:15 to a whole school-wide event
1:06:17 where we had all of our students
1:06:19 either on campus or off campus at elementary schools,
1:06:23 at assisted living facilities, at Goodwill.
1:06:26 We had our day that we called take flight
1:06:28 where we went out in the community
1:06:30 for our kids to give back.
1:06:31 And it’s also an amazing opportunity
1:06:33 for our community members to see
1:06:36 that those middle school students are awesome.
1:06:38 - Aw, that’s awesome.
1:06:40 - And I’m gonna turn it over to Christine
1:06:43 to tell us what would this look like in sixth grade?
1:06:45 Again, we want sixth to eighth grade
1:06:48 to clearly be our middle school.
1:06:51 - In sixth grade, some of the things that I’ve done
1:06:54 either at my old school or at Endeavor now,
1:06:58 last year students started seeing a lot of the weeds.
1:07:00 You know that we have the problem with less people
1:07:04 to do the yard work, the lawn work at the schools
1:07:07 and things like that.
1:07:08 We had had a beautification day
1:07:10 where it was part of our service learning of that month.
1:07:15 It was during generosity and we said,
1:07:17 “How can we be generous?”
1:07:18 They said, “Let’s give our time.”
1:07:20 We went out, we had gloves and we had Publix bags.
1:07:22 We pulled some weeds.
1:07:24 That was just a 30 minute period.
1:07:27 This year we were noticing there was a lot of,
1:07:29 around our portable, we were seeing a lot of garbage
1:07:32 from the snacks and stuff that the students get.
1:07:34 They were like, “We’ve gotta do something about this.”
1:07:36 And we said, “Well, what can we do?”
1:07:38 We went out there, we pulled,
1:07:39 and we just started picking up garbage.
1:07:41 One of my students took it a step further,
1:07:43 asked if she could have a meeting with Miss Murphy,
1:07:45 which she was able to get and said,
1:07:46 “I’d like to see a garbage can out by our recess area.”
1:07:49 So, and then when that did happen a few weeks later,
1:07:53 she came to me, she’s like, “Look,
1:07:54 “we got a garbage can now.”
1:07:55 And it’s those little simple things that help them
1:07:58 feel like they are part of the school
1:08:00 and part of not just always complaining about something,
1:08:03 you can have some problem solution in there as well.
1:08:05 - Love it.
1:08:06 - Thank you.
1:08:07 - Oh, sorry, sorry.
1:08:09 And again, we don’t want it to depend
1:08:11 on if you happen to have the amazing Miss Ferrer
1:08:13 or if you happen to go to a certain school.
1:08:15 We want all of our kids to have those opportunities.
1:08:19 This is really continuing the facility work
1:08:22 that we’ve had a lot of discussion on.
1:08:24 A lot of our middle schools are
1:08:27 some of our elder buildings, I don’t know the right word,
1:08:30 aging, aging facilities.
1:08:33 And I have to say, we’re in a district
1:08:37 where our operations team,
1:08:38 whether that’s facilities, technology,
1:08:40 they prioritize academic needs first.
1:08:43 So continuing to work on what can we do in those spaces
1:08:47 to make people feel valued, that we have done this work.
1:08:50 When we put in the new furniture at Madison,
1:08:53 the reaction from the kids was just incredible.
1:08:56 And so really continuing that,
1:08:58 no, no, no, you’re our number one, we’ve got you.
1:09:02 And so I wanna quickly address some phase two recommendations
1:09:06 and these would begin in as early as school year 25.
1:09:09 Again, knowing that we recognize the districts in transition
1:09:13 and we don’t wanna overstate
1:09:16 the priority sequencing for the board.
1:09:20 And so we definitely want to look at the schedule.
1:09:24 We wanna look at is six periods better,
1:09:27 teachers doing five out of six,
1:09:29 are there block options that are better?
1:09:31 What are some options that make sense
1:09:33 for what we know about kids?
1:09:35 What we know about our teachers
1:09:36 who are teaching six out of seven in a middle school,
1:09:40 I would dare say is more difficult than anything else.
1:09:43 And what can we look at to do that?
1:09:46 We have lots of different analyses.
1:09:48 Sherry’s led a team with the principals
1:09:51 and some potential recommendations
1:09:54 that we can kind of bring out at any point in time,
1:09:56 but we felt like a major change like that
1:09:59 would be appropriate
1:10:00 for when the new superintendent comes in.
1:10:04 Again, homeroom we think is important,
1:10:06 a place for Chris, what do you call that happy morning time?
1:10:10 What words did you use?
1:10:12 Smart start, thank you.
1:10:15 From our elementary friends,
1:10:17 we learned the concept of smart start.
1:10:19 Taking a few minutes every day
1:10:21 in terms of getting sort of baggage out of the way mindset,
1:10:24 our great teachers do it now, right?
1:10:26 They give kids a moment to get settled
1:10:29 and address any lingering issues,
1:10:31 having a smart start to the day.
1:10:33 And then obviously we want teachers
1:10:36 to not have any burden of that
1:10:38 and bring together some curriculum writing for them.
1:10:42 We wanna talk about how can we use exploratory wheel
1:10:46 or semesters or different configurations
1:10:49 to give kids maximum exposure to different programs, right?
1:10:54 Different ways and not necessarily
1:10:56 having to have a full year commitment.
1:10:58 Maybe they try music for nine weeks
1:11:00 or chorus for nine weeks
1:11:02 or different things like that
1:11:03 so they can dabble and find their space.
1:11:07 And school counselor allocation.
1:11:10 This is probably the greatest problem I’m gonna use.
1:11:13 Mira Trine as an example over here for Jefferson Middle School
1:11:17 our formula right now is up to 637 kids in a middle school.
1:11:22 You have the one counselor.
1:11:24 And that includes, they do ESC, they do MTSS,
1:11:29 they do ESOL, they do everything.
1:11:32 Up to 637 kids.
1:11:36 Ms. Trine’s school is one that’s been coming in around 610.
1:11:40 And by the blessing of ESSER we’ve been able
1:11:44 to support that second counselor.
1:11:46 Our elementary schools take a look at that allocation
1:11:49 one to 750 in elementary.
1:11:53 So we recommended some modest improvements.
1:11:56 Obviously not necessarily best practices
1:11:59 but we really think we’ve gotta tackle
1:12:01 that school counselor allocation
1:12:03 to at least improve where we’re at.
1:12:09 We know that ideal is another thing
1:12:11 but we’ve really gotta prove it.
1:12:12 The kids in that age band are so high need
1:12:16 and so emotionally driven
1:12:18 and our resources are so dramatically low
1:12:22 to where nearly all of our schools
1:12:23 there’s only one allocation
1:12:25 and they’re having to do so much technical work
1:12:28 that that other work gets left behind.
1:12:30 So we think that is very important.
1:12:32 And we wanna continue work evaluating the exam policy
1:12:36 and overall grading expectations.
1:12:38 You saw that in those other slides.
1:12:40 So these are things, they’re not off the hook.
1:12:42 So this wasn’t their last meeting.
1:12:44 We still have more meetings scheduled.
1:12:46 But continuing really into this next year
1:12:49 on tackling some other topics.
1:12:52 And again, the team has just been joy.
1:12:54 This is them at the American Middle Level
1:12:56 Educators Conference.
1:12:58 Being able to have the blessing of them all together.
1:13:01 Visiting best practices from all over the country
1:13:05 was just incredible, I’m really proud of them.
1:13:08 And any of them or I can answer any lingering questions.
1:13:16 - That’s great, thank you so much.
1:13:18 Lot to take in but I’m gonna get my fellow board members.
1:13:20 I see that Ms. Campbell has about three pages
1:13:22 of notes over here.
1:13:24 I just wanted to give them the opportunity to speak.
1:13:27 So I usually turn this way.
1:13:29 Ms. Jenkins, did you wanna go first?
1:13:34 - Thank you Dr. Sullivan and everyone involved.
1:13:40 Your slide about it depends the big X through it.
1:13:43 I really appreciate that because at a time
1:13:46 when we are continuously talking about school choice.
1:13:52 Yes, it’s wonderful that we want to give people
1:13:54 the opportunity to make choices.
1:13:56 But I’ve always argued that you shouldn’t have
1:13:58 to make a choice.
1:14:00 You shouldn’t feel that you have to make a choice.
1:14:02 That your local community school should have
1:14:04 a standard level of opportunity and operation
1:14:08 in order to level the playing field.
1:14:10 Obviously we have special CTE programs
1:14:12 that we can’t have at every single school.
1:14:14 But when it comes to that basic curriculum
1:14:17 and access to those resources, we need to put our feet
1:14:21 to the ground and ensure that we’re doing that
1:14:22 for every one of our students.
1:14:23 And of course we have amazing leaders out there within BPS.
1:14:28 And it’s wonderful that we’re able to collaborate
1:14:31 with them and identify those things
1:14:32 that are really, really working and ensure
1:14:34 that we’re gonna make that go equitably across the field.
1:14:36 So I really appreciate that being a focus.
1:14:40 I really appreciate you talking about the importance
1:14:43 of the environment.
1:14:44 We know that as educators that that dramatically
1:14:47 impacts the performance of our students.
1:14:49 And we want our environment to be a reflection
1:14:52 of what you desire and the outcome
1:14:54 that you hope for our students.
1:14:55 And so when you talk about a static environment
1:14:57 versus an innovative and collaborative environment,
1:15:00 you’re gonna get what you’re putting in there.
1:15:01 So hats off to that concept.
1:15:05 And it makes me think about my first visit
1:15:08 to the media center at Palm Bay High School.
1:15:11 And right, and that media center is kind of reflective
1:15:15 of what a kid might see when they go to college.
1:15:17 And it just makes it more collaborative and inviting
1:15:19 and makes students wanna be in that space.
1:15:21 And so we wanna see that within our classrooms as well.
1:15:26 The concepts of teams, not only academically,
1:15:29 but I think when we’ve obviously seen
1:15:31 that the discipline rates for our students
1:15:34 in middle school are significantly higher
1:15:35 than some of our other grade levels.
1:15:37 It’s important for those teachers that are working
1:15:40 with that difficult student to be able to come together
1:15:42 and tackle how they can deal with those behaviors together.
1:15:46 Because otherwise what you’ve got,
1:15:47 and unfortunately what we have,
1:15:49 and it’s no fault of our teachers,
1:15:51 but they’re so busy, they’re so burnt out.
1:15:54 This kid is struggling in every single classroom typically,
1:15:57 or every single class, they’re not struggling
1:15:59 just in the one class period.
1:16:01 And so the student is coming across a different teacher
1:16:04 every single period who’s gonna handle
1:16:06 that behavior differently.
1:16:07 And we’re expecting this 13, 14 year old
1:16:11 to be able to respond to that constantly changing
1:16:13 environment and set of rules.
1:16:15 And we’re just basically setting them up for failure.
1:16:17 So I think it’s better for our teachers
1:16:19 and our students to keep that focus.
1:16:21 Thank you for changing the school counselor ratio.
1:16:24 Definitely not– - We haven’t changed it.
1:16:26 - Well, recommending, recommending.
1:16:29 Sorry.
1:16:30 It’s obviously not the ideal, right?
1:16:32 We want one in 250 like we’re supposed to have,
1:16:35 but I understand how unrealistic that is,
1:16:37 not only in staffing and finances.
1:16:40 But I think it’s something that we’ve discussed
1:16:42 as a board previously, and I wanna keep a focus of,
1:16:45 is because it’s borderline impossible
1:16:48 to get to that ideal number,
1:16:49 we need to make changes in job description
1:16:52 and expectation of those staff members and those counselors
1:16:55 so that they don’t have all of this other additional duties
1:16:57 or other work that they’re usually tasked with
1:16:59 so they can spend more time in those classrooms
1:17:01 and making those relationships with those students.
1:17:03 - We do have a project team working on that separately.
1:17:06 - Yeah, awesome.
1:17:08 So thank you, everybody.
1:17:09 And then I did wanna ask this question,
1:17:12 and I think I know the answer,
1:17:13 but I just wanna throw it out there.
1:17:14 When you were proposing, not changing,
1:17:18 looking at schedules differently,
1:17:20 one of the questions I have,
1:17:22 and of course, I didn’t get feedback
1:17:24 from every single middle school teacher
1:17:26 when this was happening, but during COVID,
1:17:28 when we had that block scheduling,
1:17:30 I felt like there was a lot of positive reactions
1:17:32 in some of our schools,
1:17:34 in terms of academic performance of our students going up
1:17:36 and then the discipline going down.
1:17:39 And so I’d be curious to see,
1:17:41 and I know you probably do ‘cause you’re the data queen,
1:17:44 the data on that.
1:17:45 And I think you probably presented to us
1:17:47 like a year ago at this point,
1:17:48 but just to take a look at that again.
1:17:49 - Yeah, and I would say the feedback
1:17:51 is about as split as it can get.
1:17:54 On our survey online, we ask about that,
1:17:57 and it is a love it, hate it.
1:18:00 And people feel very strongly about loving it,
1:18:02 and very strongly about hating it.
1:18:05 We feel strongly about that we need something different.
1:18:10 So we’re not strongly at which that different is.
1:18:13 We’re gonna keep walking out.
1:18:14 We need a lot more stakeholder work just on scheduling.
1:18:19 But I don’t know if any of the principals
1:18:20 wanna comment on the differences that you saw, Ms. Trine.
1:18:23 Do you wanna take that one?
1:18:26 Yeah.
1:18:26 (muffled speaking)
1:18:36 - Mr. Lauder, do you wanna add to that?
1:18:38 (muffled speaking)
1:18:51 We’re looking at some hybrids.
1:18:53 Mr. Corso.
1:18:54 (muffled speaking)
1:19:04 Thank you.
1:19:08 - I’m ready.
1:19:09 - All right, Ms. Jenkins, are you good?
1:19:10 Okay, Ms. Campbell.
1:19:11 - Well, first of all, I have to totally agree
1:19:13 that middle school is awesome.
1:19:16 Middle school is my jam.
1:19:18 And even though it’s been almost 19 years
1:19:19 since I was a middle school teacher,
1:19:20 I still, when I go sub, I may have a preference,
1:19:23 I may be in, even though I only have two middle schools,
1:19:25 I’m probably in my middle schools
1:19:26 more than I am in my schools, elementary schools,
1:19:28 ‘cause you know, that’s my favorite.
1:19:33 But they are very special.
1:19:34 And the people who work, I remember all the years
1:19:37 that I did work as a middle school teacher,
1:19:38 people say, what do you do on middle school?
1:19:40 Oh, God bless you, right?
1:19:43 Right, if you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it 100 times.
1:19:47 But this is really important work.
1:19:49 It’s really important work.
1:19:49 The data shows it to be important work.
1:19:52 We have to prioritize, so I’m so thankful
1:19:54 for the work that all of you have done.
1:19:55 I know we didn’t have room for people to applaud you,
1:19:57 but after she did the introduction screen,
1:19:58 I just wanted us to all applaud the team.
1:20:02 You know, I liken it to like when you have a newborn
1:20:04 and you swaddle ‘em so they feel secure, right?
1:20:07 Elementary is kinda like the swaddling.
1:20:08 And when you get ‘em out of the swaddling,
1:20:10 you don’t just put ‘em in the crib one day
1:20:11 completely unwrapped, ‘cause then they’re flailing.
1:20:14 That’s kind of what middle school feels like.
1:20:16 And you know, I’m in my last year of middle school
1:20:20 as a parent, but I will be sad, because like I said,
1:20:25 that’s one of my favorite schools to be a part of.
1:20:27 But having my kids going through this process,
1:20:31 I see all these, I have seen these up close.
1:20:35 With the gifted, with the kids with the IEP,
1:20:39 ones in music, the ones in sports,
1:20:41 the ones who made it look easy, and the one who’s,
1:20:45 I hope this is my last year as a middle school parent.
1:20:49 But so I just, this is really important work.
1:20:51 Thank you for using, for showing us the Youth Truth data.
1:20:55 There’s been a lot of conflict about Youth Truth data.
1:20:56 I think it was important for the community to see
1:20:57 this is one of the ways that we’re using it,
1:20:59 and it’s really important information for us to have.
1:21:02 I have a few concerns.
1:21:04 You know, we talked about more electives.
1:21:06 I, you know, I wanna see the data.
1:21:10 This is heart reaction, that data reaction,
1:21:12 ‘cause I haven’t seen it, but one of the things
1:21:14 that we do for kids who make a one or a two
1:21:16 on their FSA is we put ‘em in,
1:21:20 you guys know where I’m going with this,
1:21:21 where you put ‘em in an intensive reading class,
1:21:23 or we put ‘em in an instructional strategies class,
1:21:25 and they lose an elective.
1:21:27 And I can’t tell you how many times as a sub,
1:21:30 either working as a sub or as a school member
1:21:32 filling in a sub, in those types of classes,
1:21:34 I’ve just seen the defeat, and the behavior issues,
1:21:36 and I can’t help but think that that is a drain
1:21:40 on a student’s motivation to be there.
1:21:43 And I know they need that.
1:21:45 They need that extra support, and it’s not a downer
1:21:48 on the teacher who teaches, teach those classes,
1:21:51 but kids are losing the opportunity to be in band.
1:21:53 Sometimes PE, which that’s a worst nightmare
1:21:56 for a kid who really needs a fidget.
1:21:57 You just put ‘em in another academic class.
1:21:59 I, as you guys are working through that,
1:22:02 as a parent, that bothers me,
1:22:06 because the classes like the music classes,
1:22:09 the CTE classes, those are the things
1:22:10 that provide kids motivation for being there,
1:22:12 that sense of belonging.
1:22:13 And of course, I was a music teacher,
1:22:14 so I kinda have a bent towards that,
1:22:15 but I will tell you another concern I have
1:22:17 is about the wheel idea.
1:22:19 I love the wheel idea for the kids who are out there,
1:22:21 like, you know, I don’t really know what I wanna do,
1:22:24 but as a music teacher, I know that those, to me,
1:22:29 if the kids already know what they wanna do,
1:22:31 again, music, band art, and not just music,
1:22:34 band art, chorus, but also drama and art,
1:22:37 those kinds of things, they provide
1:22:41 such of that sense of belonging.
1:22:42 My personal opinion, if every middle schooler
1:22:44 was in a music class, they would have a different culture.
1:22:47 I’m not suggesting that, but, you know,
1:22:49 we, there is something about this.
1:22:52 I don’t want anything that we do with the wheel ideas
1:22:55 to take away from the success that students
1:22:57 are already finding because they find that sense
1:22:59 of belonging and that motivation to be in school.
1:23:00 That kinda ties together with the intensive reading concern.
1:23:03 - Typically, in those situations, there would be,
1:23:07 let’s say I’m a music teacher.
1:23:09 There would be one, maybe two periods that are on a wheel
1:23:13 that are for exploratory for those seventh grade kids.
1:23:16 The rest of their classes are their traditional, right?
1:23:20 So typically what we see, we did it for a long time
1:23:22 in this district when I started as a teacher a while ago.
1:23:27 It’s complementary to the programs
1:23:29 and in fact creates a stronger feeder pull.
1:23:33 So it is definitely not in lieu of.
1:23:35 - Right, no, I hear ya, I hear ya.
1:23:37 And I definitely, that kind of participatory class
1:23:40 would be better than, sometimes we’ll have like,
1:23:46 it’s called like a music exploration class,
1:23:48 but it’s not fun.
1:23:50 I did like nine weeks of subbing in a class like that
1:23:54 and it was not fun, I’ll just leave it at that.
1:23:57 ‘Cause it’s a class that kids get stuck in, you know?
1:24:00 And any class that kids get stuck in,
1:24:01 it’s just a recipe for behavior issues.
1:24:04 I just wanna recognize the responsibility
1:24:06 that so much of this puts on our principals
1:24:08 because that culture point, that lies on you guys.
1:24:14 And getting the buy-in not just from the students
1:24:16 but from the staff is so important.
1:24:19 And ‘cause you can go in there
1:24:21 and unilaterally make changes.
1:24:22 We’re gonna do this! - No.
1:24:24 - Yeah, please don’t.
1:24:26 But I know you guys, you know, you recognize that
1:24:29 and it takes some time for buy-in.
1:24:31 So there’s a lot of cheerleading that has to go on
1:24:34 and I just wanna recognize that weight
1:24:37 of that responsibility and to be a cheerleader.
1:24:39 Sometimes we don’t feel like a cheerleader.
1:24:43 Issue about focus.
1:24:45 Focus is so important, it’s a powerful tool.
1:24:48 I will tell you, as a middle school parent,
1:24:50 one of my frustrations has been every single teacher
1:24:53 uses it a different way. - Yep.
1:24:55 - And some use Google.
1:24:57 So when my middle school son, I talk about him more
1:25:01 because my girls are like, “Do you have homework?”
1:25:03 ‘Cause they just did it.
1:25:04 I didn’t even have to ask him, right?
1:25:05 This is different for me.
1:25:08 But every teacher does it differently.
1:25:09 Some use Google Classroom to find their homework.
1:25:11 Some use Focus to find their homework.
1:25:12 Some they write it on their planner to find their homework.
1:25:14 And as a parent, I’m having to say,
1:25:16 “Look in all the places, look in all the things.”
1:25:18 And sometimes I’m still not finding it.
1:25:20 So that consistency is really important
1:25:23 on the school side so that parents can,
1:25:25 ‘cause if I really wanted to get frustrated,
1:25:28 I’m just not looking at anything because I can’t find it.
1:25:30 So that’s, I don’t wanna lose,
1:25:32 I don’t want parents to get discouraged.
1:25:34 I love the campus monitor idea.
1:25:36 We’ve had that conversation before, you and I have,
1:25:38 and I think that would be really great
1:25:40 to start it here with our middle schools
1:25:43 because of the building relationships with person,
1:25:46 another trusted person on campus to just be eyes and ears.
1:25:50 And just throwing this out there
1:25:52 for the block schedule idea,
1:25:54 one of the places where I taught you guys
1:25:56 look at that in the future, it was an AB block,
1:25:58 but it was a unique AB block
1:26:00 where we had what we called a constant period.
1:26:02 And so the middle period of the day,
1:26:04 every day was the same period.
1:26:06 So you really only, still only had seven classes,
1:26:08 but what it did was it created at the end of the day,
1:26:11 like a 30 minute, and it could be at the beginning,
1:26:13 it could be at the end, it didn’t matter,
1:26:14 but a 30 minute also, I can’t remember what we called it now,
1:26:17 but where I could pull kids in for a choir rehearsal,
1:26:20 kids could go to tutoring, whatever,
1:26:22 we could use that time.
1:26:24 I don’t even know if that school district
1:26:25 still uses anymore, but it was helpful.
1:26:28 Except that constant period, I had the ISS REM,
1:26:31 so I had 90 minutes of ISS every day.
1:26:33 But other than that, I really enjoyed that schedule.
1:26:35 So just throwing that out there as an option.
1:26:37 - Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
1:26:40 - Mr. Trent?
1:26:42 - Okay.
1:26:45 Well, thank you for all the work
1:26:47 that you guys have been putting in.
1:26:49 Wow, I don’t envy your job on this,
1:26:53 but I’m glad you stepped forward.
1:26:55 You’re the experts, you’re the ones that are out there.
1:26:57 So, and thank you for putting it together, Dr. Sullivan,
1:27:00 and presenting it to us.
1:27:03 I’ve been through the middle school experience as a parent,
1:27:07 three times, wait, four times, I have five.
1:27:11 And I’m waiting to enter that with my fifth grade girl.
1:27:15 That’ll be interesting, it’ll be the first girl
1:27:17 through the middle school.
1:27:19 I think middle school starts with females and girls
1:27:22 probably at third grade, compared to the boys.
1:27:26 That’s what I’m learning, as on the parenting end of it.
1:27:28 So, and I’ve also been through it on the teaching end of it.
1:27:33 And I have some people out there that was there.
1:27:35 And so it is, I look at myself as I subbed
1:27:39 for two and a half years in the middle school,
1:27:42 even though I was teaching.
1:27:44 It is definitely an experience.
1:27:47 I’m a high school teacher by trade.
1:27:49 I envy anyone who sticks it out in middle school.
1:27:54 It’s a different set of, it’s a skill set by new teachers.
1:27:58 So thank you so much for doing that.
1:28:01 I completely am just going to, we consider all day
1:28:06 of what I think could and couldn’t work.
1:28:07 But again, I just can’t wait to just keep getting
1:28:10 the feedback and you guys are doing it.
1:28:12 So I look forward to that.
1:28:13 On the counseling end of things, I might have missed it.
1:28:16 I think it was Ms. Jane ‘cause it mentions 250.
1:28:19 But what is best practices?
1:28:22 Is there a national organization that says
1:28:23 it needs a counselor per student is what?
1:28:26 - There is.
1:28:27 There is a national organization we’re putting together
1:28:29 for the board information on that.
1:28:31 And around 250 is indeed the sweet spot.
1:28:36 That would be incredibly difficult just in terms of capacity
1:28:40 and so what we sometimes look at is how can we complement
1:28:44 the guidance team to where the guidance counselors
1:28:46 that are there are better supported.
1:28:48 Sometimes it’s clerical, right?
1:28:50 So sometimes the solution when there is not a,
1:28:55 when there’s a dearth of certified teachers
1:28:57 is what can we do differently?
1:28:59 And so we’re looking at what can we do in terms
1:29:01 of clerical support and additional support.
1:29:04 We do want to lower it a little to where a school
1:29:06 with 600 plus doesn’t have one counselor.
1:29:09 Also, what team can we provide those counselors
1:29:14 to help with the work that doesn’t require
1:29:16 their very special talent?
1:29:18 I don’t need them at a copy machine, right?
1:29:20 So we’re looking to balance what we realistically can get.
1:29:24 We have the ability to look at the number of people
1:29:27 in the state that are certified in an area
1:29:30 and there’s not enough certified people in the state.
1:29:33 So how do we tackle the problem instead of just giving up
1:29:38 and say what other supports can we give our counselors?
1:29:41 So we’ve got a little project team working on that
1:29:43 right now and evaluating the national standards
1:29:46 against what we realistically think we can do
1:29:49 to help our counselors.
1:29:50 - That’s good to hear.
1:29:52 I spent my last few years in the guidance area
1:29:56 as the testing coordinator and they are,
1:29:58 and they’re, they need help, they’re dying.
1:30:01 They’re professional pencil pushers and they just feel,
1:30:05 many of them are just, they feel sad
1:30:06 because you don’t become a counselor
1:30:09 unless you’re really wanting to help students
1:30:11 and they’re just hand tied.
1:30:13 - Well, example is the counselor on the team
1:30:15 couldn’t get away today.
1:30:17 So that’s a living example, yeah.
1:30:20 - And just like we have bus drivers and teachers
1:30:23 and IAs that are looking for other avenues
1:30:26 because they’re not able to do the things
1:30:28 that they’re hired to do,
1:30:29 counselors are doing the same things
1:30:31 and they are leaving and we need their help, so.
1:30:36 - Yeah, through one of our grants,
1:30:38 we piloted guidance IAs, particularly MTSS IAs.
1:30:43 We’ve got them at 10 elementary schools
1:30:45 in one high school right now
1:30:47 to actually support the guidance team on data gathering
1:30:50 and all those related services.
1:30:53 And those that have them know that
1:30:57 they’ve become an invaluable member of the team
1:31:00 and we can train them in skills to take some of those
1:31:05 like logistical things off the counselors.
1:31:07 - Thank you so much for that.
1:31:08 And I’ll be the big campus monitor support person.
1:31:12 It is, they have done amazing things.
1:31:17 I’ve spent some time at Cocoa Beach
1:31:18 and we have a campus monitor there
1:31:21 and I can’t imagine not having a campus without one.
1:31:24 So we have, we’ve used him to the fullest
1:31:28 and I can see the advantages there.
1:31:32 So again, thank you everyone that is on that team
1:31:35 and we look forward to implementing
1:31:37 some of these recommendations.
1:31:39 Thank you.
1:31:42 - Ms. Wright.
1:31:43 - All right, I am so glad that we’re having
1:31:44 this conversation right now about re-imagining middle schools
1:31:47 because honestly when I think of this idea
1:31:49 that we expect every student to arrive at school
1:31:51 at the same time, learn the same things,
1:31:54 we test in the same way and all of our students
1:31:56 aren’t going to be the same thing in life.
1:31:58 And so this idea of re-imagining middle schools
1:32:01 I think is very appropriate right now,
1:32:02 especially in light of legislation that’s changing,
1:32:05 that’s gonna give more choices to parents.
1:32:06 So I’m excited about this opportunity.
1:32:08 I think this is a really good opportunity
1:32:10 for us to do some amazing things.
1:32:11 Thank you to this team, you guys are rock stars.
1:32:14 So we appreciate you tremendously.
1:32:16 There’s a few things that I wrote notes here for
1:32:17 and I just, some of them are questions,
1:32:19 some of them are just things that I wanna kinda talk about.
1:32:22 Ms. Campbell I think referred to focus.
1:32:25 Focus is one of those things that, like she said,
1:32:28 is used so differently.
1:32:29 I think it would be very beneficial if we looked at
1:32:32 maybe even having a focus representative come in
1:32:34 and maybe walk us through how to tap into
1:32:37 all the potential that focus has.
1:32:39 Even from the discipline aspect of things,
1:32:42 ‘cause I have heard that there are certain things
1:32:45 that focus can grab and maybe help us
1:32:47 track a little better when it comes to discipline as well.
1:32:50 So I think if we had a uniform standard
1:32:52 that we expected from our schools, that would help parents.
1:32:56 I am one of those parents like you
1:32:58 that has had different experiences,
1:32:59 depending on what child it is, which teacher it is,
1:33:01 when it comes to focus, and so that would be beneficial.
1:33:05 One of the other things, I love the idea
1:33:07 of these teaching teams.
1:33:08 And I actually, when I go to my schools,
1:33:10 I see the benefit of this, and this is tremendous
1:33:13 to have a team that you kind of, you’re there together.
1:33:16 You’re in the trenches together,
1:33:17 and you guys are finding solutions to the problems you have.
1:33:20 One of the things that I just hope that we as a district
1:33:23 make sure we do is we keep our teams together.
1:33:25 We don’t wanna break up a team that’s working
1:33:27 and doing a good job, because some of our teams
1:33:28 have been together for a long time,
1:33:30 and so we wanna make sure that we keep them
1:33:32 where they’re at and they’re thriving.
1:33:34 The service learning.
1:33:35 I wanted to ask, I think it was Ms. Kathy, right,
1:33:38 from Hoover, does every one of the kids
1:33:40 take a service learning class, or is this an elective
1:33:43 that they participate in?
1:33:44 (muffled speaking)
1:33:59 Yeah, absolutely.
1:34:00 I love this idea, ‘cause honestly,
1:34:02 I think that really gets buy-in from the children,
1:34:04 to be able to say, hey, this is my school,
1:34:05 this is my community, I have a voice here,
1:34:07 I have a part and a role to play,
1:34:09 and so I love, love, love that.
1:34:11 I love the campus monitors.
1:34:13 I think that’s something that we definitely need
1:34:14 to put in place.
1:34:15 One of the common things I hear is that our hot spots,
1:34:17 our issue areas are our bathrooms.
1:34:19 That’s like a constant every school,
1:34:21 and now it’s even happening in an elementary level,
1:34:24 which is obviously have bathrooms in their pods,
1:34:26 but it’s still, it’s an area that needs constant monitoring.
1:34:29 So campus monitors are tremendous there.
1:34:31 I’m a huge advocate for that.
1:34:32 I like the block scheduling,
1:34:34 and I know this is one of those 50/50.
1:34:37 You love it or you hate it,
1:34:38 but I think one of the hard things that we see
1:34:40 for kids coming from elementary school
1:34:42 is that they’ve spent years and years and years
1:34:44 in the same school, right?
1:34:45 So they know the staff, they know their librarian,
1:34:47 they know their front desk clerk, they know their nurse,
1:34:49 they know these people, and their familiar faces,
1:34:52 but now they go into a middle school,
1:34:54 and they’re changing class periods.
1:34:56 It’s a whole new, you know,
1:34:57 now you have a bunch of schools coming together,
1:34:58 so you don’t know everybody that’s there.
1:35:00 So I think the block scheduling gives some stability
1:35:02 to the fact that there’s more time in that class
1:35:05 with those educators.
1:35:06 I like the block scheduling mentality.
1:35:08 I think it’s a good transition,
1:35:09 especially if they’re going from
1:35:11 not necessarily changing classes.
1:35:12 I know they sort of do in fifth and sixth grade.
1:35:15 It’s a little different at each school,
1:35:17 but I think it gives a good transition into high school.
1:35:20 So it’s something I think we should look at exploring,
1:35:22 and I just thank you guys.
1:35:23 You guys are doing amazing work,
1:35:25 and middle school is, it is a specialty by all means,
1:35:28 and that’s really when kids are really deciding
1:35:30 which path they’re gonna take,
1:35:31 and they’re trying to figure out who they are.
1:35:33 So it truly is a calling,
1:35:34 and I’m grateful to you guys for being invested there.
1:35:37 It’s amazing that we have so many great people
1:35:39 in Brevard County, so thank you for all you do.
1:35:43 - One of the things about being chair
1:35:45 is by the time you get to go,
1:35:46 everybody’s already talked about everything.
1:35:48 - Already, yeah.
1:35:50 - No, now I have to speak.
1:35:52 So anyways, I just wanted to say thank you
1:35:56 for everything that you guys do.
1:35:57 I really appreciate it.
1:35:59 There was a time period when I kept,
1:36:01 I heard you guys were meeting,
1:36:02 and I kept trying to go meet with you guys and say,
1:36:04 “Look, this is what we need to do,” right?
1:36:06 And I get told by everybody,
1:36:07 “You can’t go in there, you can’t.”
1:36:09 So I’ve been waiting. - Of course you can.
1:36:10 - No, no, no, no, no, ‘cause I have a tendency
1:36:12 to just start throwing stuff around and everything else,
1:36:15 so I was told to just wait,
1:36:16 and I’ve been waiting for this moment,
1:36:18 and I can’t be happier.
1:36:19 What you guys have put forward literally,
1:36:21 like I am so excited.
1:36:22 There may not be another as excited moment
1:36:25 inside of school board as I am right now with you guys
1:36:27 because of all the student congress,
1:36:29 service learning, block scheduling.
1:36:31 I mean, these were all things that I did when I was teaching,
1:36:33 and I know ‘em very well,
1:36:34 and I know how much they impact students,
1:36:36 so I wanted to say thank you.
1:36:37 There was one thing as I was waiting,
1:36:38 as you were going like 24, 25,
1:36:41 I was waiting, when is football gonna be showing up
1:36:43 on this thing?
1:36:44 I kept, I said, “Wait, wait, wait.”
1:36:46 So I had said that,
1:36:48 you had said that there’s like sort of a supplant,
1:36:50 like we gotta look at athletics from a larger perspective
1:36:52 of feeding and all that other stuff.
1:36:54 So just out of ideas. - Yeah, so–
1:36:56 - Is it possible that we could do something in 25?
1:36:59 - Yeah, for sure. - I want my daughter
1:37:00 to be a kicker, that’s why. - So one of the,
1:37:02 we had hoped last year to be our trial year
1:37:05 for the other intramurals.
1:37:07 So volleyball and soccer, supply chain, logistical woes.
1:37:11 So the principals,
1:37:12 one of the things they sort of universally felt
1:37:14 was like, “Give us a minute, let’s see how this works,
1:37:17 “and let’s see where the demand is next.”
1:37:20 So for school year 24, I didn’t have it on the slide,
1:37:23 honestly, ‘cause it’s operational.
1:37:25 We’re ready to go.
1:37:26 I think Miss Vega has been at the warehouse
1:37:29 getting the equipment shipped.
1:37:31 So our number one priority is adding that,
1:37:35 and then seeing what that garners,
1:37:38 and then looking at, again, our sixth grade.
1:37:41 I really, I can’t emphasize it enough
1:37:43 for the elementary representatives on the team,
1:37:46 we are doing parallel work
1:37:48 to really create an identity in that,
1:37:50 almost like, and when we talked about branding,
1:37:53 when you walk into this hallway, looks different,
1:37:56 the signs are different, that it is part of,
1:37:58 you’re entering middle school,
1:38:00 and we wanna add it there too.
1:38:01 So absolutely on the table.
1:38:05 I happen to know someone over athletics right now,
1:38:08 and so we will definitely look it out.
1:38:11 We just have to be careful,
1:38:12 ‘cause capacity of our schools as well,
1:38:15 we wanna be super mindful.
1:38:16 - You don’t have a fields at the middle school either,
1:38:18 so it’s kinda difficult.
1:38:19 I get it, I get it, but I was just–
1:38:19 - We have soccer fields.
1:38:21 - Yeah, but I mean like, you know, yeah.
1:38:23 - So we wanna walk out more activities for sure.
1:38:26 - And then, do you have a volleyball program at Jefferson?
1:38:30 There was a couple of volleyball programs
1:38:32 that came up this year.
1:38:34 I had just gotten a slew of requests
1:38:37 that they play each other in some kind of a, like,
1:38:40 thing at the end of the year.
1:38:41 Is that something we can pull off?
1:38:42 - So we have, you know, we have our basketball group,
1:38:45 boys and girls, and they’re cheers in the fall.
1:38:47 And then we have our track programs
1:38:48 are riding here in the spring.
1:38:50 The plan was to have volleyball and soccer.
1:38:53 We never got the equipment.
1:38:55 So some schools, it depends.
1:38:57 In soccer, they had some soccer equipment.
1:38:59 Some schools had some volleyball nets,
1:39:01 so they try to do volleyball.
1:39:03 But I don’t think we really gave it–
1:39:05 - Yeah.
1:39:06 No, it’s understandable.
1:39:07 I just–
1:39:08 - Next year, we have all that.
1:39:09 We’ll have a definite winter volleyball
1:39:12 and soccer in a real program.
1:39:13 Then maybe we could do, like, a, at the end,
1:39:16 you could do, like, a neighboring school.
1:39:18 You play that, or you do, like, a tournament at the end.
1:39:20 So you have some, you know, inner-school–
1:39:23 - They’re talking right now.
1:39:26 Their season is ending, like, right now.
1:39:28 And track’s getting, somebody, basketball’s
1:39:31 getting ready to start.
1:39:32 - Track ends in two weeks.
1:39:34 - Volleyball.
1:39:35 Volleyball is ending.
1:39:37 So some schools have it,
1:39:38 and they’re requesting to play each other.
1:39:41 But they’re requesting right now to play each other.
1:39:43 Can we pull this off from Dr. Sullivan?
1:39:45 - I know nothing of these words you speak.
1:39:48 But, like you said, it’s been about a week
1:39:50 since athletics has been under me.
1:39:53 But I can certainly find out.
1:39:56 I think, again, our, we were picturing tournament style,
1:39:59 like, at the end, and, like, an all-day,
1:40:02 kind of Saturday tournament style,
1:40:03 which would decrease the burden
1:40:05 on transportation and other resources.
1:40:08 I don’t know if you want me to ask
1:40:09 if other schools are doing it,
1:40:10 ‘cause I don’t know if we want that answer.
1:40:12 So… (laughs)
1:40:13 - I’ll just, I’ll come with you.
1:40:15 I’ll show you the ones that want to.
1:40:16 Maybe we can pull something together.
1:40:17 I did wanna tell everybody that this is a unique factor
1:40:20 that not many people talk about,
1:40:21 but all of our school board members
1:40:22 actually have children that are inside of the schools.
1:40:25 And that’s the first time in Brevard County history,
1:40:27 as far as school board members, that you do.
1:40:30 So you have a unique, good opportunity
1:40:32 that we know kind of what’s going on,
1:40:33 and the bad one that we have our, you know what I mean?
1:40:35 Our kids inside the schools.
1:40:36 So I wanted to tell you from the bottom of our heart
1:40:39 that that comes from a good place.
1:40:41 I do the hands-on projects that they spoke to.
1:40:44 So I had an opportunity when I was approached in 2006
1:40:48 to bring on, it was FCATS,
1:40:51 and they had some kids that were really bad at FCAT,
1:40:54 and there was a math piece.
1:40:55 I can’t remember what it was.
1:40:56 It was in like ninth or 10th grade.
1:40:58 And the spinner at the time asked me, he says,
1:41:00 “Can you put together a hands-on project,
1:41:01 “teach these kids as a mentor,” and stuff like that.
1:41:04 So I looked up in Japan
1:41:05 where they do these project-based learning
1:41:07 where they just literally will throw together
1:41:08 like a tributary is what I used,
1:41:11 and they just throw the wood out there,
1:41:12 and the kids build it and all that stuff.
1:41:13 And then we launched potato or pumpkins
1:41:16 out at the baseball field.
1:41:17 And literally, the kids, the whole process
1:41:20 of learning how to do that and everything else,
1:41:22 these kids became geniuses, scored fives
1:41:24 on the FCATS at the time.
1:41:25 And it was just one of those things
1:41:27 that these kids were level ones,
1:41:28 but because they got that hands-on.
1:41:29 So I really applaud you going in that direction
1:41:31 because I know how much that means.
1:41:34 The other thing is the block scheduling.
1:41:35 I couldn’t agree with you more.
1:41:37 I actually taught block at Space Coast.
1:41:39 Here’s my experience.
1:41:40 Block scheduling as a roaming teacher
1:41:43 with 39 kids teaching American history
1:41:45 for an hour and a half in somebody else’s classroom.
1:41:48 And it was the best class in the world.
1:41:49 I still talk to those kids every day.
1:41:51 And as long as you know how to engage it
1:41:53 and you’re given the proper procedures of how to do that,
1:41:56 it’s very successful.
1:41:57 And I applaud you, Ms. Wright,
1:41:59 for talking about the transition
1:42:00 from elementary to middle school
1:42:02 and having that as part of that.
1:42:04 I know that my other daughter,
1:42:05 when she was in Fairfax, Virginia,
1:42:08 she was on a multi-block scheduling.
1:42:11 So some classes, like science, where they have the lab,
1:42:13 were available to be on block,
1:42:15 whereas other ones that you may not want to.
1:42:17 So those might be some opportunities
1:42:18 to give us some great things.
1:42:20 I think that that’s awesome.
1:42:21 But I do want to say, as the other 50%,
1:42:24 it was tough in the beginning,
1:42:26 but I was able to get through it
1:42:27 because I had some great mentor teachers.
1:42:29 And I think that that was something to look at.
1:42:31 And I wanted to reemphasize that.
1:42:33 Service learning, I also taught that.
1:42:35 It was a dump class.
1:42:35 So we got all the kids that literally had nowhere else to go
1:42:39 that were discipline issues.
1:42:40 Spinner put them in one room,
1:42:42 and then he made me teach the class in my first year, right?
1:42:44 So here I was with this service learning class,
1:42:46 trying to engage them all.
1:42:47 And what ended up happening is
1:42:49 they became the best service learners.
1:42:51 So when you had said that you moved away
1:42:52 from that higher tier individuals
1:42:54 to allowing the other kids,
1:42:56 some of these kids, from the bottom of their heart,
1:42:58 would love to give, even though they don’t have the GPAs.
1:43:02 And what ends up happening is,
1:43:03 is you watch what they do is astronomically past
1:43:06 what you would normally see
1:43:07 out of some of the other children.
1:43:09 So I wanted to say, if there’s anything in that realm
1:43:11 of allowing those students to do that, that’s a great thing.
1:43:14 And thank you so much for that.
1:43:17 Let me just do this.
1:43:18 I have all of these written.
1:43:19 I was so excited to move through this thing.
1:43:21 I honestly couldn’t stop.
1:43:23 But I did just want to say,
1:43:25 I’m literally so excited about what you guys are doing.
1:43:28 The Congress and the service learning, the Congress,
1:43:32 we have model student senate
1:43:33 that every year they come here and they compete.
1:43:35 Like I was one of those instructors when I was doing it.
1:43:38 I would love that when you guys put this together next year
1:43:40 to have the students come here,
1:43:42 because I would love them to feel a part
1:43:44 of our governing system too.
1:43:46 And some other things,
1:43:47 but I would love to see that kind of stuff.
1:43:49 So applaud everything you guys are doing.
1:43:51 Thank you very much.
1:43:53 Can I go to some of the meetings now?
1:43:54 ‘Cause you guys actually have like a plan.
1:43:56 We actually have a plan now, so I can’t like interrupt it.
1:43:59 - Anyone’s welcome.
1:44:00 And I have to say to the participants
1:44:02 that have from the community,
1:44:03 from just have just popped in on our meetings,
1:44:06 they’ve been invaluable.
1:44:07 So we really appreciate that.
1:44:08 I do have to take this chance to make one last plug.
1:44:12 On May 1st, we’re gonna roll out
1:44:15 our summer enrichment programs.
1:44:17 And they are plentiful and just amazing.
1:44:22 The ones in our middle schools
1:44:23 will serve incoming seventh graders.
1:44:26 So it’s a great opportunity
1:44:27 for the students to get to know the campus.
1:44:30 We are doing everything from lifeguarding,
1:44:32 to scuba diving, to ceramics, to…
1:44:35 We’re running comprehensive STEM program.
1:44:37 Yeah, we’ve got it all.
1:44:39 - Like getting their licenses scuba diving?
1:44:40 - Correct, they would actually get their official license.
1:44:42 - Well, where are we doing this at?
1:44:44 - Rockledge, Rockledge High Mitzi.
1:44:45 - At the pool?
1:44:46 - Yeah, that’s in the pool.
1:44:48 Our swim coach there is an Olympian, she’s pretty amazing.
1:44:51 So she’s running programs all summer long.
1:44:54 From the north area,
1:44:55 we’re running middle school STEM immersive programs
1:44:59 that include field trips to the Space Center,
1:45:01 Orlando Science Center, Mosey Science Center,
1:45:04 and we’re running them out of Madison,
1:45:08 Cocoa, Stone, and Southwest.
1:45:12 Just extensive programming, all free to our families.
1:45:17 And so we really hope
1:45:18 that our families take advantage of it again.
1:45:20 Students can learn to play guitar.
1:45:22 Just anything that you can imagine,
1:45:24 our amazing teachers are offering.
1:45:27 We’re offering our first…
1:45:29 Our amazing teacher at Southwest
1:45:31 is teaching students sort of layman, auto mechanics,
1:45:33 oil changes, all that kind of stuff.
1:45:36 So on May 1st, the sign up will be out.
1:45:39 And so just really encourage our community,
1:45:42 especially in this space for our sixth graders
1:45:44 to take programs in seventh grade.
1:45:46 Our four STEM classes are actually gonna have
1:45:48 rising sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.
1:45:50 So lots of opportunities there.
1:45:51 Bussing’s included, food’s including, all kinds of stuff.
1:45:55 So it’s coming soon.
1:45:56 - I just have to say,
1:45:58 you and the team have squeezed every…
1:46:02 last dollar out of this ESSER money and we continue to be
1:46:07 creatively squeezing
1:46:08 every last penny and so great job on this team but also the ESSER
1:46:13 team
1:46:13 because every pretty great team yes it was a blessing to have it
1:46:17 but you guys
1:46:18 are using in some strategic ways and I very much and we’re doing
1:46:21 middle school
1:46:21 musical theater one at Cocoa Beach and one at Melbourne and
1:46:26 those are rising
1:46:27 young ones too so lots of cool stuff coming my daughter’s
1:46:30 actually going from
1:46:31 sixth to seventh grade this year lots of opportunities they’re
1:46:35 all coming so May
1:46:37 1st we’ll be working with government community relations to
1:46:40 blast out all the
1:46:41 registration links yeah I’m laughing right now because I’m
1:46:44 looking over at
1:46:44 Russ and he had said that he wanted to put like a press release
1:46:47 out about what
1:46:48 we’re doing right now and I’m trying to figure out how the heck
1:46:51 he’s gonna do
1:46:51 that in the short like what do you do like 400 words because
1:46:54 there’s so much
1:46:55 stuff here that it’s gonna be incredible so I’m really excited
1:46:58 yeah thank you
1:46:59 very much I will punch myself if I forget to say this and I
1:47:06 apologize it’s
1:47:07 ridiculous that I forgot to bring this up but I didn’t flip the
1:47:11 page one of the
1:47:12 things that I care so passionately about and it was it’s on the
1:47:18 presentation but
1:47:19 I just I feel the need to make the pitch and I know that mr.
1:47:22 Brown is on the team
1:47:23 so we’ve got the best of the best when it comes to this but one
1:47:27 of the areas
1:47:27 that I am deeply concerned about is our ESC students our
1:47:30 students on IEPs and
1:47:32 504s how drastically different their experiences and their
1:47:36 support is when
1:47:36 they go from elementary school to middle school it is wildly
1:47:40 different and for
1:47:42 some of our students with significant needs it’s borderline
1:47:45 deficient and so
1:47:48 I know that that’s something we’re considering you were talking
1:47:50 about it in
1:47:51 the presentation but I hope that we continue to make that a
1:47:53 priority and a
1:47:54 focus for our students as well as focusing on the families and
1:47:58 having them
1:47:58 understand that transition of what their students and what they
1:48:02 can expect their
1:48:03 students are going to get when they get into middle school
1:48:05 because some of them
1:48:05 don’t understand that there is a significant difference there
1:48:09 and so thank
1:48:10 you sorry thank you dr. Sullivan I have a couple of the board
1:48:16 members have said
1:48:17 that they don’t mind to keep going but I was gonna give the
1:48:19 opportunity for us to
1:48:20 take a five minute break if you needed to if you guys are okay
1:48:24 we can keep
1:48:25 moving let’s go let’s roll okay thank you everybody for coming
1:48:30 thank you so
1:48:30 much for your dedication we really appreciate it now moving back
1:48:34 that
1:48:35 concludes the the reimagining task force update the next topic
1:48:40 is transportation
1:48:41 incentive proposal are we ready for that is dr. Miller proposing
1:48:47 this what is he
1:48:48 doing
1:49:18 for all drivers having to double back
1:49:48 this isn’t really a cost-functional
1:50:18 um perfect explanation I would ask if the board would we can
1:50:35 discuss this now
1:50:36 or we can wait until tonight when everybody’s there and a lot of
1:50:39 the bus
1:50:40 drivers are going to be there and stuff like that’s whatever you
1:50:41 guys want to do
1:50:42 I would suggest that we talk about it now and go ahead and give
1:50:46 our direction
1:50:46 and we can talk about it tonight too but I mean she’s asking for
1:50:49 us direction so
1:50:50 we can put it on the agenda I was I was saying we could give
1:50:52 direction but the
1:50:53 deep dive discussion and the you know what I mean those kind of
1:50:56 conversations
1:50:56 we might be able to do tonight but all right so miss Campbell go
1:50:59 ahead thank
1:51:00 you I appreciate this I think I’m this is one of those
1:51:03 situations where I’m
1:51:04 glad we had ESSER because reading the documents that you sent us
1:51:07 today or
1:51:08 yesterday looks like we didn’t have as much in the kitty as we
1:51:11 thought we did
1:51:12 and so I appreciate that we found a way the staff found away now
1:51:17 we as a
1:51:18 district we found a way to make it happen I just just to clarify
1:51:21 so I know
1:51:21 you guys have been in contact with the 1010 Union so this is not
1:51:26 something has
1:51:27 to be right but we can just because they’ve already given their
1:51:30 their
1:51:30 approval we can move it on through okay okay so that because
1:51:35 otherwise we can’t
1:51:36 get it done by April 28th if we have to do it in a more
1:51:39 complicated way so I
1:51:40 appreciate that no I am in support of the plan that you guys
1:51:44 have created and
1:51:45 I appreciate it very much miss Jenkins yeah I’m not gonna spend
1:51:50 too much time
1:51:50 on this miss Campbell basically asked what I was gonna ask
1:51:52 making sure that
1:51:53 10-10 was a part of this and you know when this is articulated
1:51:56 tonight I think
1:51:57 it would be helpful to make that very clear that those
1:52:00 conversations were had
1:52:01 mr. Trent no need to take any extra time good we’re good miss
1:52:09 right all right I
1:52:11 am wearing I am wearing bus driver earrings today they have
1:52:18 buses on them I
1:52:20 just want to say thank you to this team because let me tell you
1:52:22 since January
1:52:23 when when mr. Wilson and I started our tours boy did we just
1:52:26 start them right
1:52:27 I’m like this was a I didn’t know we were getting into when we
1:52:30 started this
1:52:31 but we started going and looking at these depots and talking to
1:52:34 our drivers
1:52:34 and our staff and and it was very apparent something had to be
1:52:37 done and
1:52:37 it had to be done immediately and here we are in April I mean
1:52:40 this is I guess
1:52:41 immediate and government timeline terms but I just want to thank
1:52:46 you guys for
1:52:47 the support on this one this one will be a huge win I think our
1:52:49 drivers will be
1:52:50 very appreciative this is a thank you for them picking up where
1:52:54 we needed them
1:52:55 and they stepped in and they went above and beyond and the same
1:52:59 thing with our
1:52:59 mechanics so we need to make sure that the people that we have
1:53:01 in place
1:53:02 understand that we appreciate them that we see you working these
1:53:06 double backs
1:53:06 these triple backs working the extra hours and we appreciate you
1:53:10 guys
1:53:10 tremendously so I am very excited about this that’s all I’ll say
1:53:13 I’m wearing
1:53:13 these bus driver earrings and hopes that that this gets across
1:53:17 tonight so yeah
1:53:18 I’ll speak some more tonight about it but one of the things I
1:53:21 agree concur
1:53:22 moving forward something to think about since scheduling is a
1:53:25 thing I think this
1:53:26 is massive what we’re doing here this is gonna be a huge
1:53:30 opportunity and a lot of
1:53:31 the credit goes to some of the board members here and everything
1:53:34 else but dr.
1:53:34 Miller if it’s okay with you I may want to come up and cheer the
1:53:38 bus drivers on
1:53:39 tomorrow morning I may go to one of these places you know what I
1:53:43 mean we can
1:53:43 kind of divide it up if we have the scheduling but it would be
1:53:45 nice for us
1:53:46 to send this message out broom files do you know what I mean the
1:53:50 press release
1:53:51 and then we show up and say thank you because I think that what
1:53:54 you’ve gone
1:53:54 through and what you’re continuing to go through is absolutely
1:53:58 beyond what you
1:53:59 ever thought you would do and I think that this is all on your
1:54:03 backs and I
1:54:04 wanted to say thank you so you know we’ll try to do something
1:54:07 like that but
1:54:07 I think you got your direction and we’re ready to go okay miss
1:54:11 right you had
1:54:12 something to say go ahead I want to say one more thing this this
1:54:17 is a temporary
1:54:17 fix to a problem that that is not going away I don’t think that
1:54:20 we will see the
1:54:21 shortage of bus drivers be resolved until we take our minimum
1:54:25 pay rate our
1:54:26 starting pay rate up significantly so I’m just putting that on
1:54:28 the record
1:54:28 board be aware of it that’s something that we’re gonna have to
1:54:31 make sure we
1:54:31 allocate appropriately for because when I look around the state
1:54:35 Brevard County
1:54:35 is pretty low and their hourly rate so and I was looking at that
1:54:40 as a
1:54:40 conversation from his hand is is that we may want to have those
1:54:42 conversations
1:54:43 prior to people leaving so that they know that we appreciate
1:54:45 them before they
1:54:46 go and that message goes out that this is what you will be
1:54:50 getting so that’s
1:55:04 awesome so without any more further discussion on the
1:55:07 transportation
1:55:08 initiative thank you dr. Miller for coming today I appreciate it
1:55:11 the next
1:55:12 one we have is conscious discipline proposal I think we have our
1:55:15 esteemed
1:55:16 former principal of Ralph Williams so come on up man I remember
1:55:26 when you
1:55:29 decided to move to endeavor and the heck that I dealt with
1:55:33 inside my school
1:55:34 inside that Viera East community which we’ll hear a couple from
1:55:36 them later on
1:55:37 tonight over this middle school thing but like you were like
1:55:41 yeah I thought
1:55:42 there’s like my first year and he was like the greatest day we
1:55:44 can’t leave him
1:55:45 he’s so amazing like I was like who is this guy anyways go ahead
1:56:01 okay Thank You miss Han and members of the board for this chance
1:56:05 to share some
1:56:06 important information about the work we’ve been doing in
1:56:08 conscious discipline
1:56:09 my name is Chris Reed I’m one of the directors in student
1:56:12 services and I get
1:56:13 to share the great work that we’ve done over the last couple
1:56:15 years I bring with
1:56:16 me Kathleen Erdmann who’s been my sidekick in this adventure
1:56:19 here that’s
1:56:20 been assisting me in this important work and this information
1:56:23 hopefully is to
1:56:24 help you be armed with information for the proposal that we’re
1:56:27 looking to move
1:56:28 forward with at the board meeting tonight for the 225 people to
1:56:33 attend an
1:56:34 academy this summer June 5th through June 8th so first I want to
1:56:40 share a
1:56:40 little timeline of our initiative with conscious discipline and
1:56:44 it started
1:56:44 before I was on this team back in 2019 the 1920 school year and
1:56:49 a team was put
1:56:50 together due to a grant being awarded and that team started to
1:56:53 think about
1:56:54 what could this look like and what should this look like across
1:56:57 our county
1:56:57 at an elementary level a middle school level or potentially a
1:57:00 high school level
1:57:01 it was decided to focus on that pre-k through true world but
1:57:06 then that
1:57:06 wonderful thing called COVID kind of set in when we made some
1:57:09 marching orders and
1:57:10 had some action plans so the great plans of 1920 turned into a
1:57:14 shift and we were
1:57:17 not allowed to deliver live professional development in that
1:57:19 year 2021 and what
1:57:21 we did with the vendor is asked that they provide us some video
1:57:26 PDS and those
1:57:28 video PDS being a principal that lived through those those
1:57:32 videos were not the
1:57:33 best alternative but it was the only alternative that we had we
1:57:38 did the best
1:57:39 work that we could do with them but it did leave what I would
1:57:42 say and a lot of
1:57:43 my peers a bad taste in their mouth okay it was a it was a
1:57:46 painful process to go
1:57:48 through the videos although they were very accurate and but they
1:57:51 were lacking
1:57:52 that that engagement that you need from that charismatic teacher
1:57:55 that educator
1:57:55 that great training that you would have so the 1920 year we did
1:57:59 the best that we
1:58:00 could or the 2021 year we did the best that we could vote I
1:58:03 myself came to to
1:58:04 Chris Moore at the Times Office and sat down as a principal and
1:58:07 said I need to
1:58:08 talk to you about this process right now and I delivered her I
1:58:11 gave her some real
1:58:11 feedback I said this is what’s working this is what’s not
1:58:14 working these are
1:58:15 some suggested changes to make and lo and behold I joined this
1:58:19 team on 21 22
1:58:20 part way through that school year and I got the opportunity to
1:58:23 lead this
1:58:24 initiative one thing that we shifted in that 21 20 school year
1:58:29 as we shifted
1:58:29 from the virtual presentation of information to the in-person so
1:58:35 we
1:58:36 recruited or some got recruited volunteers for what we describe
1:58:42 as eight
1:58:42 anchor schools and that 21 20 year 22 school year we provided
1:58:47 eight anchor
1:58:48 sites with some intensive training and coaching live and in
1:58:52 person and we
1:58:53 started to see a dramatic shift now I also got to be one of
1:58:56 those lucky
1:58:57 principals as I weaseled my way onto that eight person committee
1:59:00 and got to
1:59:00 see firsthand the benefits of that training as that evolved we
1:59:05 we grew and
1:59:06 we decided to hold a summer Institute last year the first one
1:59:09 that we had ever
1:59:10 held and we held it for I believe it was 150 participants and it
1:59:13 was a seven-day
1:59:14 Institute in the month of June it was highly participated and
1:59:19 engaging and we
1:59:20 invited seven new schools or six at the time which became seven
1:59:23 to join us for
1:59:24 that summer work this summer work that I’m proposing tonight is
1:59:27 a continuation
1:59:28 of that work so 21 22 we invited now we’re up to 13 anchor sites
1:59:34 we move on
1:59:35 to the 22 23 school year and we begin that work again we now
1:59:40 have what we will
1:59:41 refer to our phase one schools those that are just starting and
1:59:44 we have phase
1:59:44 two schools phase two schools are receiving a more in-depth
1:59:49 level of
1:59:50 coaching and training than phase one as you warm up to those
1:59:53 concepts and ideas
1:59:54 and again I have been part of that team on the frustrated you
2:00:01 know videos to the
2:00:02 receiving that first-hand coaching to now helping plan the long-term
2:00:06 implementation plan for our schools with this information but it’s
2:00:10 definitely
2:00:11 seen a value added with with regard to providing our our schools
2:00:15 with that
2:00:16 in-person training we have continued to leave the resources out
2:00:19 there for all
2:00:20 schools and those that are interested have seeked out the
2:00:22 information and
2:00:23 support that we offer but we’ve moved to an intensive model for
2:00:27 those to get some
2:00:29 first-hand in-person training is what we’ve learned has been the
2:00:34 best practice
2:00:34 and I’ll share with you some data that that will help you
2:00:38 understand why so the
2:00:40 first thing I want to do is share the data to show that we’re
2:00:43 moving in the
2:00:43 right direction with this so in our strategic plan we outline
2:00:46 that we want
2:00:47 to try and limit exclusionary factors for our students and then
2:00:51 exclusionary
2:00:52 factors would be suspensions both in and out of school or
2:00:55 discipline referrals
2:00:56 where you remove from the classroom anytime as you’ve heard me
2:00:59 say and when
2:01:00 I talk to you about attendance is a missed learning opportunity
2:01:03 is a missed
2:01:04 learning opportunity if you’re absent from school you never get
2:01:07 that chance
2:01:07 again it’s also a missed teaching opportunity so when we miss
2:01:11 that
2:01:11 teaching opportunity we’re fragmented now I’ve got to catch
2:01:14 student a up I
2:01:15 believe student BC and D behind because I’m having to catch that
2:01:19 student up that
2:01:19 was absent or missing for my class for that important
2:01:22 instruction when we look
2:01:24 at this data I needed to come up with a way to compare schools
2:01:28 receiving that
2:01:29 intensive coaching versus schools that were not so as you see on
2:01:33 the board here
2:01:33 in the left hand column there are eight schools lifted listed on
2:01:36 that second
2:01:37 column we selected eight sister schools to pair them with and
2:01:41 there was only to
2:01:42 cry two criteria that we used one they were either title one or
2:01:46 were not and
2:01:47 two that they had a very similar enrollment okay those were the
2:01:51 only two
2:01:51 pieces that we looked at same size title one or non title one I’d
2:01:57 like to draw
2:01:57 your attention to the columns with the arrows as I said in the
2:02:00 strategic plan
2:02:01 we address exclusionary factors the column under the first arrow
2:02:06 is going to
2:02:07 give you a percentage of students that are enrolled receiving
2:02:10 out-of-school
2:02:11 suspensions okay so we took the number of out-of-school
2:02:15 suspensions and divided
2:02:16 that by student enrollment to give us a percentage or ratio kind
2:02:20 of leveling the
2:02:21 field based on the size of the school and when you run down that
2:02:24 column you’ll
2:02:25 see green would be a more favorable result orange would be a
2:02:29 less favorable
2:02:29 result and you can see at times some of the conscious discipline
2:02:33 sites in phase
2:02:34 two or having a year and a half under their belt sometimes had a
2:02:39 more
2:02:39 favorable result sometimes had a less favorable result the
2:02:43 column at the end
2:02:44 shows office discipline referrals okay same thing it was number
2:02:48 of office
2:02:49 discipline referrals over student enrollment okay so as again as
2:02:55 you look
2:02:55 at that sometimes there was more favorable results sometimes not
2:02:58 as
2:02:58 favorable but the idea is some of the time there were more
2:03:02 teaching
2:03:03 opportunities and consistency for the classroom and some of the
2:03:06 times there
2:03:06 were not off to the side we’ve summarized the data by averaging
2:03:11 it
2:03:11 together and you can see here that the average students at a
2:03:15 conscious
2:03:15 discipline anchor site in phase two again this would be one and
2:03:19 a half years
2:03:20 of data had an average out-of-school suspension rate of four
2:03:24 point zero four
2:03:26 at a non conscious discipline anchor site they had an average of
2:03:30 five point
2:03:31 six six so one could make a hypothesis that those schools
2:03:34 engaging in those
2:03:35 activities or training are excluding students less frequently
2:03:40 again you could
2:03:41 look school by school we provide the averages they would provide
2:03:44 the same
2:03:44 data on the deck for you for those office discipline referrals
2:03:48 and we can
2:03:49 see that it was a more favorable result for the conscious
2:03:52 discipline anchor
2:03:53 sites at thirteen point zero three comparatively to eighteen
2:03:56 point zero
2:03:57 three when we move to the phase one schools there were seven
2:04:03 additional
2:04:04 schools that were selected and we follow the same procedure
2:04:06 because measuring
2:04:07 data across the same way is something that’s important remind
2:04:11 reminding you
2:04:12 that these are schools that now have engaged in this practice
2:04:16 for half of a
2:04:16 year rather than one and a half years and again same columns
2:04:21 same headers we
2:04:22 looked at OSS and our office discipline referrals again for that
2:04:27 inclusionary
2:04:27 factor in our strategic plan what you could see here though is
2:04:34 the results are
2:04:35 different you can see that in an office did our out-of-school
2:04:40 suspensions it was
2:04:41 higher for the sites that were current anchor sites then the
2:04:44 existing schools
2:04:45 and the same for discipline referrals one could hypothesize that
2:04:49 they’re on
2:04:50 their way one could hypothesize that they were confused and not
2:04:53 sure what
2:04:53 direction they were going at this time but again what I would
2:04:57 say to you is I
2:04:57 what I have seen as a principal of a school and having the
2:05:00 chance to meet
2:05:01 monthly with each of these principles and guide them and coach
2:05:04 them and
2:05:05 support them is this is moving the needle in the right direction
2:05:10 and that’s
2:05:10 working towards that that that increasing of that school culture
2:05:14 and
2:05:15 hoping fully decreasing exclusionary factors at our schools and
2:05:19 not
2:05:20 fragmenting our teaching opportunities so a little bit first
2:05:24 about conscious
2:05:26 discipline and I’m not going to give you a long background but
2:05:29 should we approve
2:05:30 this Academy I’m going to invite each of you to participate at
2:05:33 the five days but
2:05:34 first of all what I want you to understand is conscious
2:05:36 discipline is a
2:05:37 practice it’s not a program okay it’s a way of thinking there’s
2:05:41 no books there’s
2:05:42 no worksheets there’s no activities it is a a practice okay it’s
2:05:47 an
2:05:47 understanding of how the brain works and how we deliver that to
2:05:51 color create a
2:05:51 school culture and family so at the top of the slide you’ll see
2:05:55 all aspects of
2:05:55 conscious discipline focused on creating a safe connected
2:05:59 environment for
2:06:00 children to learn and practice the skills needed for healthy
2:06:05 social
2:06:06 emotional and academic environment development again safe and
2:06:11 connected is
2:06:12 the the hinge point of this of this process but again that
2:06:16 healthy social
2:06:17 emotional piece is something that we need to be driving for if
2:06:20 we take a look
2:06:22 at the triangle you’re gonna see that there’s there’s four areas
2:06:26 okay the
2:06:27 first is to the brain states and some of you participated in the
2:06:30 parent Academy
2:06:31 that we held and we spent a great deal of time walking you
2:06:34 through those and I
2:06:35 hope that when you left that parent Academy you’re like wow that’s
2:06:38 common
2:06:38 sense right that’s pretty easy stuff but really the easy things
2:06:42 we find are
2:06:43 sometimes the most difficult to make sense of and turn into
2:06:46 actionable items
2:06:47 so with the brain states adults learn the three phases in
2:06:52 themselves as well
2:06:53 as in children okay anyone that went to school on an educational
2:06:57 path that one
2:06:57 of the first classes you take is is psychology and you learn
2:07:00 this thing
2:07:01 called Maslow’s hierarchy and the bottom of the pyramid is am i
2:07:04 safe and am i fed
2:07:05 and if those two needs aren’t met nothing else happens and so
2:07:09 that’s the
2:07:10 foundation of this program as well as am I in a red state am I
2:07:13 in a blue state or
2:07:14 am I in a green state what is my my current mindset as an adult
2:07:20 or as a
2:07:21 child when we move to that next layer the seven powers of
2:07:25 conscious adults
2:07:26 what we’re looking for then is adults learn the seven powers
2:07:29 that allow us to
2:07:30 see behavior as a missing skill okay when we look at behavior as
2:07:35 just an
2:07:37 inconvenience that inconvenience is going to repeatedly show
2:07:41 itself again
2:07:42 and again when we look at behavior as a teachable moment it’s a
2:07:46 cry for help for
2:07:47 us to help arm someone with the means to handle their situation
2:07:51 differently in
2:07:52 children they only know we refer to it as a playlist they know
2:07:55 what they’ve
2:07:56 been explicitly taught or what’s been explicitly modeled when
2:08:00 they don’t when
2:08:01 that’s not appropriate in a school setting in a grocery store in
2:08:05 a mall we
2:08:06 need to explicitly reteach that so again in this area and the
2:08:09 powers we see that
2:08:10 as a call for help or a missing skill that that child may have
2:08:15 what we’re
2:08:16 always striving to do in an organization or in our classrooms is
2:08:21 to have that
2:08:22 connectedness of that that feeling of that school family and at
2:08:26 school
2:08:27 families where we built work to build on that that sense of
2:08:30 belonging so I share
2:08:32 orientation on Wednesdays with our new staff is cooperation
2:08:36 always comes on the
2:08:38 coattails of connections okay so you think about who you’re most
2:08:42 connected
2:08:42 with in your family with your friends when that phone rings you’ll
2:08:47 do anything
2:08:47 for them okay versus the person that stomps their feet and wags
2:08:51 their fingers
2:08:52 you may be intimidated and do something you may report to that
2:08:56 individual and
2:08:57 have to but that’s not due to that devotion or that that inner
2:09:00 desire to to
2:09:02 to assist and to make please them we strive to make that
2:09:08 connection with the
2:09:09 the work that we do with our learnings in these trainings to
2:09:12 help get people to
2:09:13 see that they want to cooperate okay so again our whole life is
2:09:17 a get getting
2:09:18 people to cooperate okay my wife wants me to cooperate by doing
2:09:21 my tasks
2:09:22 that I have on a list right okay we are connected but each in
2:09:25 everything that we
2:09:26 do stems from a relationship the last piece of consciousness
2:09:31 when the work
2:09:31 that we do is the seven skills and the seven skills is what
2:09:35 helps students with
2:09:36 regulation okay we I’ve learned that I know how to handle myself
2:09:40 in almost any
2:09:41 situation I get frustrated at times but the younger we are the
2:09:44 less likely we
2:09:45 are to know how to handle certain situations fight flight cry
2:09:49 flee head
2:09:51 down under the covers argue those are ways that are basic
2:09:55 instincts that we
2:09:56 have and how to handle situations we need to teach individuals
2:09:59 how to more
2:10:00 appropriately handle situations and that’s what we do with the
2:10:04 learnings
2:10:04 that we do with this training over to the side I just want to
2:10:08 point out two
2:10:09 things that again as I’ve said it’s a unique adult first child
2:10:13 second model
2:10:14 okay and it increases our consciousness of how we’re feeling you’ve
2:10:18 heard I hope
2:10:19 before that you have the opportunity to make or break a
2:10:21 situation with how you
2:10:22 handle that okay if I’m frustrated I am NOT bringing my best
2:10:27 version to the
2:10:28 table for our teachable moment if I’m calm I know I’m bringing
2:10:32 my best version
2:10:33 to that teachable moment and we talked about a scenario in the
2:10:37 parent Academy
2:10:38 if you were there about a kid running out in the road you grab
2:10:41 them you bring
2:10:42 them close and you yell don’t ever do that again the child is
2:10:46 panic that you
2:10:47 grab them and you’re trying to keep them safe you were panicked
2:10:49 they were gonna
2:10:50 have harm their panic that you’re yelling at them neither one of
2:10:53 you are
2:10:54 ready to handle that situation at that time so again it’s a
2:10:57 unique adult first
2:10:58 thing where we will get the brain states the last piece is we
2:11:01 ultimately look at
2:11:02 how we move through those brain states it’s recognizing of
2:11:05 myself when I’m not
2:11:06 there and it’s working at recognizing when my students are not
2:11:09 and that’s
2:11:10 illustrated here in this this infographic we can describe this
2:11:15 slide
2:11:16 as an outline for training and PD opportunities training is
2:11:20 typically
2:11:21 divided into three brain states with corresponding corresponding
2:11:25 powers
2:11:26 skills and structures that help us coach kids through these
2:11:29 brain states so I’ve
2:11:31 talked about these brain states and some of you have seen them
2:11:33 before some of you
2:11:34 haven’t so we’ll talk about them briefly there’s the red state
2:11:37 the blue state in
2:11:38 the green red is that flight or fight mode blue the largest area
2:11:43 is that
2:11:44 in-between face and then green is where we’re all at our optimum
2:11:48 problem solving
2:11:49 when we look at safety that’s that fight-or-flight mode okay I’m
2:11:53 not ready
2:11:54 to see or do or talk at all in that blue state I’m ready to talk
2:11:59 but it’s usually
2:12:00 not in a way that you’re happy about when I respond okay but in
2:12:04 that green
2:12:04 state that’s optimum we spend again the majority our time in
2:12:09 that blue state
2:12:10 when we look at the powers and the skills in that second column
2:12:13 we can see
2:12:14 that this is how we start to see conflict differently and see
2:12:18 skills help
2:12:18 us respond to behavior differently again it’s a very simple idea
2:12:23 but we we find
2:12:24 that when we explicitly teach these practices the light bulb
2:12:28 goes off I
2:12:29 can’t tell me you how many teachers have waved the book in front
2:12:32 of me and said I
2:12:32 wish I had this when I was raising my kids I would be so much
2:12:35 better right I
2:12:36 wish I had this when I was a first-year teacher I’d be so much
2:12:39 better but if we
2:12:40 take a look at this infographic again we take a look at that
2:12:43 safety line we see a
2:12:44 power is attention and the skill is assertiveness off to the
2:12:49 side we can see
2:12:50 some of the strategies what you focus on you get more of okay
2:12:54 that is a very
2:12:55 important concept that we a lot of times don’t we focus on we
2:12:58 what we don’t want
2:13:00 very much so most of the time okay what we do want is what we
2:13:04 want to make sure
2:13:05 is being heard and seen on the right around a regular basis we
2:13:08 want to set
2:13:09 limits respectfully and teach modeling and an assertive noise
2:13:13 not a dominating
2:13:14 voice and not a timid voice either so don’t take it from me
2:13:21 there’s many
2:13:22 there’s some stats here that I have for you conscious
2:13:24 disciplines and
2:13:25 evidence-based trauma-informed approach it’s recognized by the
2:13:28 substance abuse
2:13:29 and Mental Health Administration also the National Registry
2:13:33 evidence-based
2:13:34 programs and practices currently conscious disciplines
2:13:37 implemented in
2:13:38 many counties that are on the board on the slide for you to see
2:13:41 we were
2:13:42 recently reached out to by the Patrick Space Force base for
2:13:46 consideration for
2:13:47 them to find out how to access some of the training and supports
2:13:50 for some of
2:13:50 their child care centers so they’re hearing the work that we’re
2:13:53 doing in
2:13:54 there’s there’s some interest and desire child trends the nation’s
2:13:58 most respected
2:13:59 source of research and data on children would like to pilot
2:14:03 conscious discipline
2:14:03 implementation and an outcome tool in 22 23 and some other
2:14:08 highlights as I
2:14:09 mentioned in 22 2022 we had 150 participants at our Summer
2:14:15 Institute for
2:14:15 seven days was over Father’s Day on a Saturday and a Sunday -
2:14:19 that was a
2:14:20 commitment we’ve had the two parent academies and the most
2:14:23 exciting thing
2:14:24 that we put together this year was one of the e courses and to
2:14:29 our surprise
2:14:31 132 people from elementary middle high school charter all signed
2:14:36 up for our
2:14:37 course and that’s due to the excitement and the interest that
2:14:39 they had and those
2:14:41 aren’t just our anchor sites those are people that are seeking
2:14:44 this information
2:14:45 from some some people that have that expertise so that was an
2:14:48 indicator that
2:14:49 we are moving in the right direction and and people are out
2:14:52 there talking about
2:14:53 the work that we’re getting done as I mentioned we’ve got phase
2:14:58 two schools
2:14:59 we’ve got phase one schools phase two schools are in their
2:15:01 second year of
2:15:02 in-person coaching they’re listed on the left-hand side phase
2:15:07 one schools are
2:15:08 lifted on the right listed on the right hand side phase one
2:15:10 schools have had one
2:15:11 year of intensive coaching and training and I believe that all
2:15:15 of your schools
2:15:16 are represented and I’m hopeful that you have had the chance to
2:15:19 see some of the
2:15:19 the the results of the coaching and training at some of your
2:15:24 schools mr.
2:15:27 Susan we made you you know famous in our presentation here I don’t
2:15:30 know if you
2:15:31 remember reading a book at one of our exemplar classes at the
2:15:35 amazing sable
2:15:36 elementary sable elementary is one of our year two anchor sites
2:15:40 this was
2:15:41 actually one of the classroom teachers that is receiving the
2:15:44 coaching directly
2:15:45 from our vendor and support from our team on our monthly
2:15:48 meetings and through
2:15:49 miss Erdman what I hope you can remember is how how that school
2:15:55 family felt in
2:15:56 that classroom that there was that sense of respect that sense
2:15:59 of belonging that
2:16:00 sense of supporting one another in that room a picture speaks a
2:16:04 million words
2:16:05 about a video would tell even more but I don’t have that video
2:16:07 for you to see
2:16:08 today but some things that you would see in this classroom that
2:16:12 day mr. Susan that
2:16:13 and and team that I would like to point out is one thing that
2:16:15 you’d see here on
2:16:16 the side that I’ll elaborate on a minute in a minute is what we
2:16:19 call a wish well
2:16:20 board when students are missing from class for whatever reason
2:16:24 that is the
2:16:24 students wish that individual well not knowing why they’re not
2:16:27 there we begin
2:16:28 teaching the skill of empathy to students behind mr. Susan on
2:16:33 the wall up
2:16:34 here in the corner is a commitment board every day the students
2:16:37 in this commit
2:16:37 make a commitment to excellence they determine this is what I’m
2:16:40 going to be
2:16:41 best at today based on tomorrow or based on what my teachers
2:16:45 expectations are at
2:16:47 the back at this desk is what we call a safe place a safe place
2:16:51 is a place to go
2:16:52 after we’ve trained students about their emotions that they can
2:16:55 go to de-escalate
2:16:56 themselves it’s not a timeout because we want to make sure they
2:16:59 know how to use
2:17:00 that space how to recognize their feelings we want to help them
2:17:04 deregulate
2:17:05 themselves before they make some poor choices and again part of
2:17:09 that practice
2:17:10 is is is that talk of those brain states first and arming kids
2:17:13 with those powers
2:17:14 and those skills some examples of some of the things that we
2:17:20 learn and we put
2:17:21 to practice in some of our schools first of all for safety would
2:17:25 be what we cut
2:17:25 refer to as a safekeeper ritual we have those for both the staff
2:17:29 and for the
2:17:30 students on the left is an example at Creel of a safekeeper
2:17:34 ritual where all
2:17:35 individuals commit to keeping all the students and staff safe at
2:17:38 the school in
2:17:39 the middle again referring back to that Maslow’s hierarchy the
2:17:43 first step in
2:17:44 learning is feeling safe all of our students each day make that
2:17:47 commitment
2:17:47 to being safe you can hear things like my job is to keep you
2:17:51 safe your job is
2:17:52 to help keep us safe in our classrooms again if we’re not safe
2:17:57 we whether that
2:17:58 be truly physically safe or being fed safe or being safe to take
2:18:03 academic
2:18:04 risks we’re not going to leave that bottom rung of that triangle
2:18:08 so it’s an
2:18:09 important piece that again sounds so simple but has a very very
2:18:13 compounding
2:18:14 effect throughout a student’s day and the far right we’ve got an
2:18:18 example of a
2:18:19 safe place in a kindergarten classroom you can see that this
2:18:22 again would be
2:18:22 where our kid could go if they were feeling emotionally charged
2:18:26 in a place
2:18:26 to go regulate their emotions again they wouldn’t go there as a
2:18:30 timeout they
2:18:31 would go there because they’ve learned how to do that so you can
2:18:34 see what’s
2:18:35 referred to as some feeling buddies there’s some language that
2:18:37 the kids can
2:18:38 learn I feel mad I’m going to use the timer to deregulate so I
2:18:44 can re-engage
2:18:46 with the class okay we teach kids how to run through some of
2:18:49 these practices and
2:18:50 it’s ways that they’ve never been armed with these tools to help
2:18:53 regulate
2:18:53 themselves okay all our kids have that that instinctive actions
2:18:59 we it’s our job
2:19:00 to help them with home to keep teach them those skills that they
2:19:03 need to
2:19:04 regulate their emotions otherwise other ways we keep people safe
2:19:09 for years we’ve
2:19:10 been running the PBIS model where we talk about school-wide
2:19:13 structures and
2:19:14 routines and expectations and we post them all around the school
2:19:17 on posters
2:19:17 but we never thought you know there’s three or four grade levels
2:19:20 in every
2:19:21 elementary school that can’t read yet potentially right okay let’s
2:19:25 put some
2:19:25 pictures to that a picture speaks a thousand words see it hear
2:19:29 it do it okay
2:19:30 so again it’s a way of helping us just open our eyes a little
2:19:34 wider and say we
2:19:35 need to do a better job of communicating what those expectations
2:19:38 are one of my
2:19:39 favorites of these two where the students make a commitment each
2:19:43 day the
2:19:43 middle being a commitment board an intermediate across the top
2:19:48 it says care
2:19:49 it says cooperate active learner respect and responsible and
2:19:54 encouraging every
2:19:55 day a kid takes their little picture and determines what they’re
2:19:58 going to commit
2:19:59 to be better at that day or they’re going to be excellent at
2:20:02 that day in the
2:20:03 near the bottom it has I did it so they can celebrate that they
2:20:07 were successful
2:20:08 and what they planned for in the morning this is super powerful
2:20:11 in the younger
2:20:12 grades because planning time later is something that’s not a
2:20:16 real strong
2:20:17 concept in those five and six year olds yet so you can see it’s
2:20:20 it’s it’s more
2:20:21 appropriate on the right we’ve got walking feet cleaning up
2:20:25 helpful hands
2:20:26 and showing respect and again you can see every kid in this
2:20:29 classroom has made
2:20:30 some sort of some sort of commitment for excellence that day
2:20:34 based on their
2:20:35 classroom expectations good greetings are an important part we
2:20:41 talk about
2:20:41 class meetings we talked dr. Sullivan was talking about them
2:20:45 with the brain
2:20:46 start smart it’s an important piece of the day not everyone
2:20:49 understands the
2:20:50 importance of that and so we train them of importance and arm
2:20:52 them with tools to
2:20:53 do that so we’ve got different ways to greet in the morning
2:20:56 there’s tons of
2:20:57 different ways to do this this being one a kindness tree
2:21:01 everyone deserves to be
2:21:02 be talked to and about their accomplishments and be me proud of
2:21:06 what
2:21:06 they’re doing this is a celebration in your your classroom again
2:21:09 helping feel
2:21:10 that that power of empathy I know every day when I come to work
2:21:14 I fit and I feel
2:21:14 successful I feel good about you know I’m gonna do that again
2:21:18 right I got to
2:21:18 raise the bar like I got to do better than yesterday well same
2:21:21 thing with kids
2:21:22 so we give them jobs right we help them feel part of the team
2:21:24 help them feel
2:21:25 part of the process again it’s a very simple thing that has a
2:21:29 very strong
2:21:30 effect and if we don’t have a combination of these things in
2:21:33 place we
2:21:34 aren’t developing that school culture as much as we need to be
2:21:38 in and we find
2:21:39 that these skills and these learnings help help classroom
2:21:42 teachers with tons
2:21:43 of experience and with minimal experience create that stronger
2:21:47 classroom culture and expectations as I already shared with you
2:21:50 we’ve got the
2:21:51 wish well routine where we develop empathy and kids for those
2:21:54 that are
2:21:54 missed again when you return we missed you yesterday Chris this
2:21:58 is what we
2:21:59 learned I’m here to help you get back on track conflict
2:22:03 resolution is a very
2:22:04 difficult skill in our trainings over time and after we’ve armed
2:22:10 teachers and
2:22:10 students with the necessary skills to talk about their feelings
2:22:15 we teach them
2:22:16 strategies to roll back time and talk about how they would
2:22:19 handle this
2:22:19 situation differently and there’s a board that they can stand on
2:22:22 and walk
2:22:23 through the problem-solving process with an adult in the early
2:22:27 stages and then on
2:22:28 their own once they’ve mastered that skill but just imagine a
2:22:32 group of
2:22:33 students in a room in a school in a building in a district that
2:22:36 are all
2:22:37 armed with these problem-solving school skills that help them
2:22:41 pause before they
2:22:42 make a bad decision or recognize that they’re about to make a
2:22:45 bad decision and
2:22:45 they need to regulate but then solve and address that problem
2:22:49 later as well as we
2:22:52 do this in our faculty meetings I didn’t for time I didn’t do
2:22:55 that with you today
2:22:56 to regulate us you’ve had a lot of content today we could have
2:22:59 done you
2:22:59 know an opportunity to unite and connect but I chose for for
2:23:03 that to save that
2:23:04 for a later day and time with you I’ve mentioned a couple times
2:23:09 that brain
2:23:09 start smart it’s a super important piece of every day as dr.
2:23:13 Sullivan shared that
2:23:14 we were looking to grow that piece in the middle schools as well
2:23:17 there’s four
2:23:18 aspects of a strong brain start smart the first is uniting
2:23:22 together coming
2:23:23 together as a team okay the second is disengaging stress to
2:23:27 ensure that no
2:23:28 matter what happened on the walk to school the ride to school
2:23:32 the dinner
2:23:32 table last night that we are at our optimal state the third wave
2:23:37 of that is
2:23:38 connection connecting with my group so that I can bring the
2:23:41 breast to all best
2:23:42 to all of you and then a commitment I like to think of this and
2:23:45 it took me a
2:23:46 while to make this connection but you think about a sports team
2:23:49 you think
2:23:50 about you come onto the field or the court or you’re leaving the
2:23:52 bench again
2:23:53 with the team the one thing you always do before a game is put
2:23:56 your hands
2:23:56 together as you huddle up that idea is to unite together to
2:24:00 increase that
2:24:00 energy that idea is to increase your intention and to commit to
2:24:05 to that team
2:24:06 working together to win this is no different than what you’re
2:24:09 doing in a
2:24:10 classroom each and every day but making sure that you have that
2:24:13 strongest start
2:24:14 possible I’ve got a short video it’s about 15 seconds I hope we
2:24:20 can hear it
2:24:21 but it’s an example of a brain start smart where a group of
2:24:24 students do a
2:24:25 commitment together now in this instance it’s a class commitment
2:24:29 and there’s some
2:24:30 power behind that whole crew whole class united commitment of
2:24:35 understanding those
2:24:36 rules and expectations and so this classroom repeats this each
2:24:41 and every
2:24:41 day what you’ll see in some of our sites is they’ll get on the
2:24:44 intercom they’ll
2:24:45 get on the news they have school-wide commitments that they make
2:24:48 each and
2:24:48 every day so I would challenge you to go out into your schools
2:24:51 and see what some
2:24:52 of those are and I’d be happy to advise you on some of those
2:24:55 sites that that you
2:24:55 can see some of those whole schools hopefully my video works and
2:24:59 as you can
2:25:00 hear it here this is a class at Discovery Elementary
2:25:06 (students speaking)
2:25:28 volume wasn’t that great sorry I apologize but again they were
2:25:31 uniting
2:25:32 together and you could see the hand gestures you could see the
2:25:35 movement you
2:25:36 could see the sense of all of them together understanding what
2:25:38 was expected
2:25:39 it for them and she wished them for a positive start to their
2:25:42 day that day so
2:25:44 again there’s the power of making sure we repeat that message
2:25:46 and practice it
2:25:50 so again you’ve heard from me I’ve given you some data I’ve
2:25:53 given you some some
2:25:54 some organizations but here is some insight data from some of
2:25:58 our teachers
2:25:59 and I’ll spotlight only two you have the slide in more awareness
2:26:03 to the role we
2:26:03 play more successful management of behavior and increased class
2:26:08 and
2:26:08 learning time for all students again back to where I started
2:26:12 with those are
2:26:12 our strategic plan is trying to limit those exclusionary factors
2:26:18 and again I
2:26:19 won’t read you the other quotes but I see you have them on your
2:26:21 screen and
2:26:22 have the opportunity to to reflect on those at another time so
2:26:27 looking at the
2:26:29 budget for 23 24 22 23 if we look at the first cop second column
2:26:35 there under the
2:26:35 22 23 you will see that the requests later tonight for the
2:26:41 training for the
2:26:42 225 individuals to participate is going to be at a tune of two
2:26:46 hundred twenty
2:26:47 five thousand dollars that funding source has been secured by
2:26:51 title four
2:26:51 dollars and has already been approved and would just be waiting
2:26:54 for your
2:26:55 approval if you would give that and then the summer pay to pay
2:27:00 the individuals to
2:27:01 participate and that will be will be from ESSER funding we would
2:27:05 hope to
2:27:06 continue our journey later but the first initiative is to secure
2:27:09 our summer
2:27:10 training so we can wind out one year and wind up for potentially
2:27:14 another year
2:27:15 moving forward we’ve we’ve put together an eight-year plan but I
2:27:20 didn’t think
2:27:20 that I should entertain you with an eight-year plan today when
2:27:23 we have
2:27:23 initiative for now but the idea is that we try and keep schools
2:27:27 on a three-year
2:27:28 cycle phase 1 phase 2 phase 3 and each year along that journey
2:27:33 continue to
2:27:34 bring new schools on I’ve worked with leading and learning and
2:27:37 we’ve already
2:27:37 selected the next eight schools I’ve not informed them of that
2:27:41 until we
2:27:42 determine that we’re gonna move forward with this this
2:27:45 initiative with that I
2:27:47 open up I open things up to all of you thank you for that
2:27:51 presentation do I
2:27:53 have any board participation in conversation I do I have some
2:27:56 Campbell
2:27:57 miss Jenkins all right miss right okay um couple quick questions
2:28:03 I participated
2:28:05 in the parent Academy I was one of those parents I wanted to
2:28:07 know what was the
2:28:08 overall participation that you saw from the district on parents
2:28:11 how many parents
2:28:12 participated in this Academy so that first one that you attended
2:28:16 miss rate
2:28:16 was very low including I was absent as well
2:28:20 during the hurt near and was it near or during the hurricane it
2:28:25 was minimal I
2:28:26 believe there were three parents there for parents maybe there
2:28:29 was more staff
2:28:29 than parents that day yes on the second event I didn’t get
2:28:33 account but we had
2:28:34 way more than that there was I would say 30 35 individuals that
2:28:38 were here that
2:28:39 night for that parent Academy okay one of the other things and I
2:28:42 mean I’m gonna
2:28:43 you’re gonna have to forgive my frankness with you on on this
2:28:45 because I
2:28:46 will be completely I’m gonna be transparent on where I stand on
2:28:48 this I
2:28:49 think the concept behind this is a really great concept I was
2:28:53 challenged
2:28:53 with reading the easy to easy to love difficult to discipline so
2:28:57 really diving
2:28:58 into this conscious discipline what is this and really what I
2:29:02 see this is is
2:29:02 more of an initiative for a parent’s perspective on how a parent
2:29:06 is going to
2:29:06 handle disciplining their child now while I see that this could
2:29:10 be
2:29:10 beneficial in our classrooms because I have actually heard the raving
2:29:12 reviews
2:29:13 of some of the teachers who are great sales for sales people for
2:29:16 this program
2:29:17 what my concern is is the reality of what does this look like in
2:29:21 the
2:29:21 classroom on on stopping and and really what are you gonna do
2:29:26 when you have 20
2:29:27 kids in the class and you have one child who you need to calm
2:29:30 down from a red
2:29:31 brain and get them to a green brain and what does that look like
2:29:34 and how do we
2:29:35 implement that so those are my concerns for this program the the
2:29:39 idea is great I
2:29:41 just I don’t know that it works and then I think the data is
2:29:45 reflecting that it
2:29:46 work doesn’t work all the time it does sometimes but not all the
2:29:49 time and we
2:29:49 really can’t figure out why so with those things in mind I think
2:29:54 it’s it’s a
2:29:55 great idea but I just would like to see some some solid
2:29:58 guaranteed successes out
2:29:59 of this and yes it’s moving the needle very very finally but
2:30:02 when I look at the
2:30:03 overall budget is there anything else that’s comparable that
2:30:06 maybe we could
2:30:07 look at that would do or achieve the same result that we’re
2:30:10 hoping to achieve
2:30:10 I mean there’s always gonna be another something the question is
2:30:15 do you want to
2:30:16 go through that initiative fatigue or do you want to stay the
2:30:18 course of something
2:30:19 and commit to it so so that that would be the first thing I
2:30:22 would say to you is
2:30:23 the if you were to speak to those principles they would say I
2:30:26 don’t know
2:30:26 that I have another initiative in me to continue I don’t know
2:30:30 that I can shift
2:30:31 left shift right this has been my constant and it’s I’m seeing
2:30:34 that needle
2:30:35 moving I would say to you with regard to the discipline is I’ve
2:30:39 said the word
2:30:40 discipline multiple times when I’ve said conscious discipline
2:30:42 but never did I I
2:30:43 reference consequences a kid or providing discipline that is not
2:30:47 what
2:30:47 this is about this is about setting up structures routines
2:30:51 establishing that
2:30:52 school family and recognizing when I’m not at my best that I
2:30:56 need to make sure
2:30:57 that I as the adult check myself before I handle could could
2:31:02 wreck that situation
2:31:03 and also help model that for my students so that they could
2:31:07 start to see that
2:31:08 it’s it’s a process that takes time and so again the classroom
2:31:12 is that optimal
2:31:14 time in place and that the classroom isn’t always that time in
2:31:17 place but what
2:31:18 we do then is when we know that it’s not working for Chris right
2:31:22 we start to
2:31:23 identify what skills isn’t Chris armed with what skills do I
2:31:26 need to explicitly
2:31:27 teach Chris what skills can I connect Chris with with his mentor
2:31:31 with his
2:31:32 guidance counselor with a social worker what skills at that
2:31:34 parent-teacher
2:31:35 conference can I talk about so we have a universal language
2:31:38 together that we can
2:31:40 bridge school to home so again back to the discipline it’s about
2:31:44 teaching you
2:31:44 what’s appropriate and how to conduct yourself through
2:31:47 activities to give you
2:31:49 that sense of belonging again that United that that that I don’t
2:31:54 want to
2:31:54 let you down yeah and I I can understand and respect that how
2:32:00 does this play into
2:32:01 like our PBIS schools because that is something that we
2:32:03 currently have sure so
2:32:04 we have PBIS and I oversee that program as well and as a PBIS
2:32:09 school PBIS and
2:32:11 conscious discipline do go hand-in-hand PBIS will PBIS will take
2:32:16 you so far and
2:32:17 depending on your environment that may be far enough PBIS gives
2:32:21 you many of the
2:32:22 structures needed for a strong tier one program and it gets you
2:32:27 started and I
2:32:28 would encourage all schools to start there that before they
2:32:32 begin on this
2:32:32 journey this first starts to provide all the pieces after that
2:32:37 PBIS is a process
2:32:39 where you set clear expectations you come up with procedures to
2:32:42 monitor those
2:32:43 you reward them you come up with plans to mentor for them
2:32:47 sounding very similar
2:32:48 right in some ways and shapes and forms we are seeing different
2:32:52 results in those
2:32:53 two programs right now PBIS versus conscious discipline with
2:32:58 regard to some
2:32:58 of that disciplinary data so people so PBIS would stay in place
2:33:02 is that what
2:33:03 you’re saying yes we would continue it down both journey again
2:33:05 both are
2:33:06 important I I would say that that was a starting on that PBIS
2:33:10 journey is the
2:33:11 building blocks of helping arm our administrators and our
2:33:15 teachers with the
2:33:17 first layer the first step of giving clear expectations and
2:33:22 communication it
2:33:23 is not enough for that second and third step and I say that as a
2:33:27 principal of a
2:33:28 building that relaunched PBIS at a school committed to everyone
2:33:34 to
2:33:34 retraining and then there was not enough after that so we had to
2:33:39 bring on other
2:33:40 tools to to to add to and it just it has us it’s a great start
2:33:45 and it
2:33:46 procedure eyes things for a time but you have to grow out of
2:33:50 that and that has
2:33:51 kind of a ceiling that at least in my opinion and what I’m
2:33:54 seeing it in the
2:33:56 data from our sites that are identifying that what as a PBIS
2:33:59 site okay thank you
2:34:01 thank you miss right is there anybody else that wishes to speak
2:34:04 on this miss
2:34:05 Campbell thank you mr. Reed you know this is an important
2:34:10 conversation for us
2:34:11 to have because we’ve been having the conversations about
2:34:13 discipline and you
2:34:16 know I just just to just to clarify you know when we talk about
2:34:21 when you this is
2:34:23 about behavior regulation behavior self-regulation and not
2:34:28 because they’re
2:34:29 you know when I we talk about that data up in the early slides
2:34:33 this doesn’t this
2:34:34 the the goal of this program the results of this program is not
2:34:37 that students are
2:34:38 committing the same behaviors but at this school they’re not
2:34:41 being
2:34:41 disciplined that is not what this is about the these are these
2:34:44 numbers are
2:34:45 about there’s less behaviors to have to deal with which is which
2:34:50 is our goal
2:34:51 right hat right not not always but you know we’re pretty early
2:34:54 in you know I
2:34:55 and one of the things I was thinking about this data is I mean
2:35:00 looks like
2:35:01 there’s some good starting points in some places but what even
2:35:04 though you
2:35:05 guys did a good job of trying to match up I was like okay these
2:35:07 are pretty
2:35:07 close and whatever it really can’t account for some other things
2:35:12 some other
2:35:12 challenges such as teacher turnover and lack of staffing that we
2:35:18 had so this
2:35:19 data can’t some of these schools might have been more successful
2:35:21 if they hadn’t
2:35:22 had eight to fifteen teacher openings so you know I hate to
2:35:27 judge a school based
2:35:28 on this data because you know some of them just that was just a
2:35:32 challenge that
2:35:33 it doesn’t matter you can be the best PBIS conscious discipline
2:35:35 school in the
2:35:35 district and you were going to have some challenges there
2:35:37 because you had you
2:35:39 know revolving door of teachers in certain classrooms so I I
2:35:47 went to the
2:35:48 teacher at one of the low attended parent academies appreciated
2:35:52 it actually
2:35:52 even though I’ll like I said I’m almost done with middle school
2:35:55 with my last
2:35:55 child but really picked up some things that helped with my child
2:35:59 that needs
2:35:59 some help with self-regulation I’m like oh I probably need to go
2:36:02 through it
2:36:02 again because I forgot how to get from one brain to the other
2:36:05 brain maybe you
2:36:06 can share your book with me when we get done I’ve seen the
2:36:09 kindness tree at one
2:36:10 of my schools loved that idea we’re recognizing things that get
2:36:14 to the heart
2:36:14 of the matter I strongly think that I appreciate your invitation
2:36:19 that we were
2:36:19 challenged before previously and last year I think sometime to
2:36:22 visit some of
2:36:22 these schools that are in phase two so we can get in those
2:36:25 classrooms and see
2:36:26 the difference of you know just the creating the structure it’s
2:36:31 creating a
2:36:32 structure which is a tool that our teachers really especially so
2:36:34 many
2:36:35 coming into teaching without the experience with coming in from
2:36:39 other
2:36:39 fields you know just creating that structure that is a school-wide
2:36:42 structure so if you have a situation like what you described
2:36:48 where it miss
2:36:49 right where you have a kids who’s melting down someone steps in
2:36:53 or or if
2:36:54 maybe they’re not in the classroom maybe it’s in the cafeteria
2:36:55 maybe you’re on
2:36:56 the playground someone else in that building is speaking the
2:36:59 same language
2:37:00 using the same vocabulary as the teacher who trained that child
2:37:04 because they’re
2:37:04 the whole school’s on the same page and that gets a little
2:37:07 challenging when
2:37:09 you’ve got experienced teachers who kind of have this method and
2:37:11 new teachers who
2:37:12 don’t have a method at all and you’re you know you’re trying to
2:37:14 get everybody
2:37:15 on the same page so that that’s one thing that’s powerful about
2:37:18 something
2:37:19 like this but we need to get in there and I need to I I’m now
2:37:22 obviously I
2:37:23 visited my schools but I want to get in some of these
2:37:25 recommended classrooms too
2:37:26 so I can see it more closely I appreciate what you said Chris
2:37:30 about
2:37:30 initiative fatigue I just have to remind this board over the
2:37:35 last two years we’ve
2:37:36 had brand new reading curriculum instructional materials we’ve
2:37:41 had brand
2:37:41 new math curriculum instructional materials and we’ve had an
2:37:47 addition to
2:37:49 this new technology initiatives we’ve had to switch over to
2:37:52 focus which was a
2:37:53 good switch but it was just more to add on in addition to just
2:37:57 the other
2:37:57 challenges that we have and I remember as when I first got on
2:38:01 the board one of
2:38:02 my very first meetings with Jane Klein talking about initiative
2:38:05 fatigue was we
2:38:06 went from I can’t remember all that I max I not I max but I
2:38:13 station and Moby
2:38:14 max that’s what a Moby max ice station now we’re doing I ready
2:38:17 why do we keep
2:38:18 doing these new things and it in our teachers were really
2:38:21 feeling it because
2:38:21 we’re changing things every year so I I think that we need to
2:38:25 continue on with
2:38:26 this and with this structure you know we’ve got something that
2:38:31 people are
2:38:32 buying into that we’re seeing some success at the classroom
2:38:35 level even if
2:38:36 all the data doesn’t show exactly where we’d like to be we in
2:38:38 this world of
2:38:39 instant gratification we want to see the numbers we want the
2:38:41 percentages we want
2:38:42 to see him now I don’t care if it’s been a year and a half you
2:38:44 need to prove to
2:38:45 me that it works I don’t think we’re there yet to say that it’s
2:38:48 not working
2:38:49 and again when we’re so focused on the discipline issues I we’re
2:38:53 gonna have to
2:38:54 deal with things on the back end of how do we deal with things
2:38:57 we are dealing
2:38:57 with that of when the behaviors happen can we deal with them
2:39:00 better but
2:39:02 ultimately it’s it’s more important to not have those behaviors
2:39:06 to begin with
2:39:07 because we have good structures in place that are keeping our
2:39:10 kids focused on the
2:39:11 right kind of behaviors the right kind of actions so that we don’t
2:39:15 have to
2:39:15 deal with them on the back end so you know I don’t want to send
2:39:20 more kids to
2:39:21 the ALCs I want them I mean I that’s an ideal world we just stop
2:39:27 having to that
2:39:27 because everybody starts behaving we’re not an ideal world but
2:39:30 if we can do some
2:39:31 things to get kids to stop and think to me that’s what this is
2:39:35 about stop and
2:39:36 think and give them the tools and the vocabularies that
2:39:39 everybody’s on the
2:39:40 same page and getting them stop and think and that empathy
2:39:43 because you know
2:39:44 when I talk to even my own child who struggled with some of
2:39:47 these things you
2:39:49 know they don’t frequently don’t think about how my behavior
2:39:53 affects someone
2:39:54 else we are living in a world of adults who cannot figure out
2:40:00 how their behavior
2:40:01 affects someone else so now we’ve got this that’s intentionally
2:40:08 focusing
2:40:09 students on how does my behavior not just affect me but how does
2:40:12 it affect
2:40:12 the whole class we just had a conversation about that youth
2:40:15 truth data
2:40:15 you know how one of the items was students disrupting class can
2:40:21 we can we
2:40:22 get a hold of that so that that’s not happening and students don’t
2:40:28 fear what’s
2:40:29 going on in their classroom they don’t fear other students but
2:40:32 they’re starting
2:40:33 to be empathetic they’re starting to realize oh my behavior
2:40:35 doesn’t just
2:40:36 affect me it affects the people around me and I just messed up
2:40:38 the class but
2:40:39 yet there’s room for grace that I see grace in this I’ve you
2:40:42 know places for
2:40:44 second chances and learning and reteaching all those things it
2:40:47 could be
2:40:47 this it could be something else but this is where we’re already
2:40:49 this is I think
2:40:51 we need to stay on this horse and ride it and and and to I
2:40:55 always hate I think
2:40:57 the word fidelity is overused but you come up another word that
2:41:00 means same
2:41:01 thing but with fidelity to get it done with fidelity especially
2:41:04 in these
2:41:05 schools that are struggling so much and and see where we go from
2:41:11 here yeah what
2:41:13 is can tell me again what is ODR mean office discipline referral
2:41:18 okay thank
2:41:19 you sorry I need a key at the bottom thank you Chris I’d agree I
2:41:26 think that
2:41:26 the underlying thing that you may not be aware of is is that we’re
2:41:29 gonna discuss
2:41:30 it later on but there’s a push by the board to start putting
2:41:33 together the true
2:41:34 metrics on whether things are or are not gonna be valuable
2:41:38 enough to continue
2:41:39 those processes I know as an individual that conscious
2:41:42 discipline follows a lot
2:41:44 of the other teachings as a former teacher that there’s a lot of
2:41:47 stuff that
2:41:47 you do just naturally as a good teacher inside of this right
2:41:50 like those are some
2:41:51 of the actions so I didn’t want you to misunderstand like some
2:41:55 of the stuff
2:41:56 that we were having a conversation about I think the move is is
2:41:59 we have X amount
2:42:00 of dollars what are the metrics that show that it works if that’s
2:42:03 there then
2:42:04 you know that mean and that’s where I think our board is gonna
2:42:06 end up going
2:42:07 with the budgetary process so oh you oh I’m so sorry I cut off
2:42:11 you guys oh I’m
2:42:12 so sorry miss Jenkins go ahead I’m sorry I apologize gene go
2:42:17 ahead so sorry so
2:42:28 again thanks for putting this together I’m gonna be similar to
2:42:32 what miss Wright
2:42:33 said is we’re gonna be frank it’s nothing personal and those
2:42:36 numbers are
2:42:37 very subjective if that was a sales pitch I would probably said
2:42:41 leave those
2:42:41 out because one would has the right to say those that clientele
2:42:48 is not the same
2:42:49 between the two schools and this is where school leadership
2:42:52 matters I’ve
2:42:53 been in these schools and and I see where it’s working and where
2:42:55 it’s not
2:42:56 and school leadership is crucial and I think that leads to a lot
2:43:01 of issues in
2:43:02 schools period if we are admitting that we have to pay basically
2:43:10 to teach
2:43:11 individuals how to be quality teachers I mean we do have to
2:43:15 admit then our
2:43:16 universities universities as a whole are not preparing teachers
2:43:20 to teach in in
2:43:20 the classroom and that’s just that’s just a fact I heard and
2:43:26 nothing miss
2:43:27 Campbell’s when you said that new new teachers have no no plan
2:43:32 at all I I
2:43:34 couldn’t read my writing no method you said no method and this
2:43:38 has nothing to
2:43:39 do with you but they do these new teachers we do have methods
2:43:43 and they
2:43:43 should have really good methods coming out of our universities
2:43:47 and what they’re
2:43:47 being what they’re being paid to be taught you know they called
2:43:50 it
2:43:51 apprenticeships but I call it student teaching that’s where you
2:43:54 do develop
2:43:54 your methods and they should have the state-of-the-art methods
2:43:57 right there
2:43:58 but in the state of Florida we have alternative certification to
2:44:02 teaching
2:44:02 this is not a knock at any of our teachers that are coming out
2:44:06 of
2:44:06 professions that have no clue on the teaching aspect so here we
2:44:10 are paying
2:44:11 for them to learn a method it’s it is frustrating to when I look
2:44:20 at dollars
2:44:21 because I’m responsible to people that are going to be emailing
2:44:25 me and calling
2:44:26 me about spending money on teaching teachers how to teach and is
2:44:30 that a job
2:44:31 that we’re supposed to be doing is it we mentioned is is really
2:44:34 about parenting
2:44:35 but you know our it’s hard enough that I mean I can see the
2:44:38 emails coming now our
2:44:40 kids can’t read and this is what we’re focusing on those are
2:44:43 questions that we
2:44:44 have to answer and hopefully we can say we can walk and chew gum
2:44:47 and we are
2:44:48 worrying about them not being able to read or do math at a
2:44:51 certain age but
2:44:52 this is an awful lot of money with very little data backing that
2:44:57 up I do
2:44:57 understand do we start another initiative that’s one thing
2:45:00 teachers say
2:45:01 okay every two years we go to something new and it’s really the
2:45:03 same thing yeah
2:45:04 it’s a very expensive throw it on the wall and see what sticks
2:45:07 however and
2:45:09 this is where we’re at all over again so I don’t want to repeat
2:45:14 what some of you
2:45:15 have already thrown out there but you know when I see programs
2:45:20 that talk a lot
2:45:21 about safe spaces in classrooms there’s a lot of issues I see
2:45:28 with that when we
2:45:29 when we need to be teaching so there’s there’s only so much time
2:45:33 we have in a
2:45:34 class day and if we’re spending a lot of it on developing that
2:45:37 culture this is
2:45:38 when when we really need to be teaching those kids how to read
2:45:44 and that’s the
2:45:45 bottom line and I know you’re doing your job and it’s all from
2:45:47 the heart not it’s
2:45:48 all good but again when you see the cost of this over the amount
2:45:52 of years this is
2:45:53 just one more step and one more phase you know I just hope and I’m
2:45:56 assuming
2:45:57 it’s gonna go forward but I just hope moving forward you hear
2:46:00 this and we can
2:46:02 really see that this is working that we measure it and just
2:46:05 because now we’re in
2:46:06 year two because now you’re saying we were in year one so we
2:46:08 really need year
2:46:09 two I hope it’s not just we’re in year two we really need year
2:46:13 three we need to
2:46:14 be able to measure it and be willing to say this really isn’t
2:46:18 making a
2:46:19 difference yeah my crystal ball is working only halfway that’s
2:46:23 my
2:46:23 prediction for you yeah but again these are real conversations
2:46:27 and I’m sure
2:46:27 we’ll get hit back from it that we’re not supporting things but
2:46:30 these are
2:46:31 concerns and I think I’m gonna end it right there but I do
2:46:35 appreciate all what
2:46:36 you’re putting forth if I could just add to that I would say as
2:46:39 a leader I had to
2:46:40 saying that I said that all of my staff all the time and it is
2:46:43 you don’t have to
2:46:44 be bad to get better and the best leaders of the buildings are
2:46:48 the best
2:46:49 coaches and if you aren’t coaching people they aren’t growing
2:46:52 you’re stuck
2:46:52 where you are so the best leaders of the people I mentor the
2:46:56 people that I’ve
2:46:57 trained be a good coach and this is giving them those skills to
2:47:00 be a good
2:47:01 coach Thank You Chris miss Jenkins I appreciate that you went
2:47:09 back mr. Trent
2:47:10 because I recognize that how many of our teachers we had that
2:47:14 presentation by
2:47:15 dr. Green just a few weeks ago how many of our teachers are not
2:47:18 coming out of
2:47:19 college prep programs of teacher academies and that trend is
2:47:24 going to
2:47:25 continue because colleges are actually shutting down their
2:47:27 programs because so
2:47:28 few peoples are people are going into education programs so that
2:47:34 is only that
2:47:35 trend is only going to increase not decrease we’re recruiting
2:47:38 teachers out
2:47:39 of everywhere to be from subs from the military the governor’s
2:47:43 put the military
2:47:44 program from growing from IA some of them are going to now be
2:47:47 able to come
2:47:48 into the classroom without even a bachelor’s degree so moving
2:47:51 forward into
2:47:52 one but you know so we it’s really important to recognize that
2:47:55 people
2:47:56 haven’t had classroom management instruction and the other thing
2:48:00 I would
2:48:01 suggest is I I hear you we need to be teaching reading right but
2:48:04 you can’t
2:48:05 it’s really hard to teach kids to read and to do math when you
2:48:10 can’t get them
2:48:11 all to sit and listen and be respectful when you are constantly
2:48:16 you talk about
2:48:17 whack-a-mole earlier if you’re constantly whack-a-mole in
2:48:20 behaviors
2:48:20 instead of having the standard set and I I know there’s out
2:48:23 there there’s talk
2:48:25 about conscious discipline and where it might come from and what
2:48:27 it might lead
2:48:28 to and I hear you’re concerned about the safe space because it
2:48:30 sounds like other
2:48:30 it’s there’s connotations in that language that sometimes we get
2:48:34 worried
2:48:34 about but this is really important that whatever we do some kind
2:48:39 of program of
2:48:41 this self-regulation is important because we our teachers can’t
2:48:44 teach if
2:48:44 they can’t get everybody focused you know it would be in an
2:48:47 ideal world they
2:48:48 all come in and they sit down and we learn math and we learn
2:48:51 science and we
2:48:51 and then we go to PE and then we go home and but it’s takes it
2:48:56 takes more
2:48:57 nowadays to get everybody on the same page and our kids are
2:49:00 coming from
2:49:00 multiple directions I would also suggest you know the con I went
2:49:03 back and look at
2:49:04 the agenda item for tonight we are it’s committing for one year
2:49:07 it’s actually
2:49:08 we’re all we’re doing is committing to this training where the
2:49:11 agenda item
2:49:12 tonight is to approve for these how many people 225 people to go
2:49:20 to a conference
2:49:20 and so a week-long right five days five days so we’re at that’s
2:49:27 a pretty long
2:49:27 conference so that’s what we’re committing to I hear what you’re
2:49:32 saying
2:49:33 then it’s the next year next year next year right right right
2:49:35 but we but when
2:49:36 we get to this place next year and they come back to us they
2:49:39 decide you know we
2:49:39 need to keep it going and they come back to us then we will have
2:49:42 more data and
2:49:42 we’ll have longer data and we’ll have had the time to get in and
2:49:45 see how is it
2:49:45 working on a class to class school to school level but I
2:49:49 appreciate that we’re
2:49:50 giving it to us in bits and pieces because that’s probably a
2:49:53 smart idea
2:49:54 right now miss Jenkins I’m gonna use some of my skill sets I
2:50:02 learned in
2:50:03 conscious discipline right now I speak bluntly too and conscious
2:50:08 discipline has
2:50:09 been villainized politicized criticized without an understanding
2:50:17 or willingness
2:50:17 to understand what it is it’s not new it’s been here a really
2:50:24 long time I had
2:50:25 the opportunity of using it when I worked for our pre-k ESC
2:50:29 itinerant
2:50:30 department and I also had the opportunity of being exposed to it
2:50:35 as a
2:50:35 new mom and it’s all about self-regulation it’s not about
2:50:41 stopping
2:50:42 negative behaviors especially when you’re working with our
2:50:45 little guys
2:50:45 three to five years old is what we were working with it’s about
2:50:48 lessening that
2:50:49 behavior potentially maybe ceasing it but at least lessening it
2:50:53 in order for
2:50:54 that child to be able to self-regulate at some point giving them
2:50:58 that skill set
2:50:59 to get back to focusing on work a lot faster than they may have
2:51:03 if they didn’t
2:51:03 have that skill set it’s about modifying behavior replacing
2:51:07 behavior not just
2:51:09 simply discipline which I wish they would change the name
2:51:13 because quite
2:51:14 frankly it doesn’t make any sense to the concept of the theory
2:51:18 behind it the F
2:51:20 the belief system behind it is not just about having a
2:51:24 consequence in punishing
2:51:25 that child it’s about talking about why you feel that way for
2:51:29 adults to
2:51:30 recognize that children have emotions too and they have a right
2:51:33 to feel those
2:51:34 emotions identify those emotions live through those emotions
2:51:37 understanding
2:51:38 there’s consequences for those decisions and emotions sometimes
2:51:42 but giving them
2:51:44 a safe space to feel them and figure out when it is appropriate
2:51:48 and how to react
2:51:49 to them I had the opportunity to be at the parent Academy that
2:51:55 probably had
2:51:56 more attendance of brain states and I felt it was a really
2:52:02 healthy mix of
2:52:02 parents and staff I was actually really happy to see staff there
2:52:07 as much as it
2:52:08 was geared towards parents I was happy that the that the staff
2:52:11 was inquisitive
2:52:12 enough maybe they weren’t participating it in their school yet
2:52:15 and wanted to
2:52:16 figure it out and hear what it was about and I appreciated that
2:52:19 very much it’s
2:52:21 about establishing healthy adult to child child to adult
2:52:25 relationships and
2:52:26 in some of our schools that is so so critical because they aren’t
2:52:30 necessarily
2:52:31 always getting that in their home environments and so it’s a
2:52:34 bigger
2:52:35 picture than just providing that safe and connected environment
2:52:38 because you
2:52:38 can’t learn if you’re not safe and connected like you said but
2:52:42 we have to
2:52:42 look at the world we’re living in right now we’re well aware
2:52:45 that our children
2:52:46 are struggling with mental health we’re well aware that we don’t
2:52:50 have enough
2:52:51 social workers guidance counselors to address those needs and
2:52:55 meet the needs
2:52:55 of those students we don’t have enough resources in the state of
2:52:58 Florida to
2:52:58 meet the needs of pediatric mental health in the first place and
2:53:02 so if we
2:53:02 can at least try to arm some of our students with a personal
2:53:08 skill set to
2:53:09 attack those challenges from a very young age we’re at least
2:53:13 giving them
2:53:13 some kind of toolkit to take with them throughout the rest of
2:53:16 their life to get
2:53:16 through those challenges but we’re also opening the door for
2:53:19 that relationship
2:53:20 with an adult in the building that hopefully they can connect
2:53:23 with and
2:53:24 communicate with you know we just and we’re gonna be
2:53:27 acknowledging it tonight
2:53:28 but you know child abuse prevention month and it’s a grim
2:53:34 statistic and data
2:53:36 but quite frankly our teachers and our staff members in our
2:53:43 schools are often
2:53:44 the ones who are making the calls about what a child is
2:53:46 experiencing in the
2:53:48 world around them and so those connections are critical on so
2:53:51 many
2:53:51 different levels not just education wise miss Campbell said this
2:54:01 too but I’m just
2:54:02 gonna say it again I mean this is something that we just
2:54:04 discussed in this
2:54:05 middle school presentation our students are telling them they
2:54:08 don’t feel
2:54:09 connected and the kids that we have in middle school right now
2:54:15 didn’t
2:54:16 experience conscious discipline or a mindset of PD for teachers
2:54:20 to kind of
2:54:20 rethink the way that they’re thinking about things the question
2:54:23 of help paying
2:54:24 for for teaching teachers how to teach is just interesting to me
2:54:29 because we do
2:54:29 PD constantly we spend a ton of money on professional
2:54:33 development for our staff
2:54:34 and so to not recognize the value in developing our educators in
2:54:44 the area of
2:54:45 social emotional skills not only for the students but for
2:54:48 themselves I struggle
2:54:50 with that one and I encourage people there’s a viral video right
2:54:54 now on the
2:54:55 internet and I don’t know I feel like everybody’s seen it at
2:54:57 this point of a
2:54:59 little four-year-old little son and his mom and he’s talking to
2:55:03 his mom in his
2:55:04 bedroom about a bad choice that he had made and it’s the most
2:55:08 incredible thing
2:55:09 in the world to watch but to me that’s an experience of a child
2:55:13 who was raised
2:55:14 in an environment that had the same concepts of conscious
2:55:16 discipline being
2:55:17 able to identify your feelings and emotions and talk about them
2:55:21 and
2:55:21 identifying that yeah I made a bad choice it wasn’t okay you
2:55:24 know maybe I
2:55:25 can do better it’s the most incredible thing to watch and I
2:55:28 encourage people to
2:55:29 find it if they haven’t seen it yet but thank you thank you for
2:55:32 all that you do
2:55:32 I hope that we continue to do those parent academies I know it’s
2:55:37 tough to
2:55:38 get parents in here after a long work day and some parents are
2:55:42 working but
2:55:43 again I was really encouraged that we had staff members there
2:55:45 too so maybe
2:55:46 kind of rethinking the way that we’re doing it offering maybe
2:55:49 more of an you
2:55:50 know e-learning opportunity of some sort
2:55:54 all right thank you mr. Reid how are the school selected because
2:55:58 it seemed like a
2:55:59 lot of mine were on there a lot of years it was all about you
2:56:03 know the first the
2:56:04 first year they were the opportunity was put out there and they
2:56:07 volunteered so
2:56:08 that’s where the eight came in an eighth school fell off and
2:56:11 that’s how I joined
2:56:12 that team the following year I went on some recruitment and said
2:56:15 I have an
2:56:16 opportunity for you this next round if we move forward with that
2:56:20 would be I sat
2:56:22 down with leading and learning and we select them together with
2:56:24 all of their
2:56:25 directors I’ve yet to make those phone calls yet so there there
2:56:28 may be
2:56:28 principles that don’t voluntarily come into this they’re kind of
2:56:31 selected
2:56:32 through a process and said hey you should do this yeah again
2:56:35 they’re not
2:56:35 ready at that moment they currently have something that they’re
2:56:38 launching or
2:56:38 they’re continuing and they want to continue and see that
2:56:41 through until
2:56:41 they’re ready for that piece so okay I don’t want to demand
2:56:44 someone to take out
2:56:45 yeah no I was just I was just curious um the other thing that I
2:56:49 and I’ll be
2:56:49 honest with you like I said like these are practices that I didn’t
2:56:52 go to an
2:56:53 educational institution I came in from the outside I was
2:56:57 certified over three
2:56:58 years and did a darn good job at teaching and the bottom line
2:57:03 was is that
2:57:03 a lot of these practices they come natural and they’re taught
2:57:06 through the
2:57:06 process of having somebody there so the issue is is that a lot
2:57:11 of the things
2:57:12 that that when I look at this this is the core of what a good
2:57:16 teacher does in
2:57:17 many different ways and then there’s some other things that I
2:57:19 truly believe
2:57:19 the when I look at this sustainable model so if it’s going to
2:57:23 cost two
2:57:23 hundred twenty five thousand dollars for two hundred and twenty
2:57:25 five people to go
2:57:26 to then if we’re gonna do say a third or a quarter or you know
2:57:31 you start adding
2:57:32 that it starts to exponentially get more and more expensive so I
2:57:35 think that one
2:57:36 of the comments is is that I agree with Miss Jenkins in many of
2:57:40 the comments
2:57:41 that she says about best practices and stuff like that I think
2:57:43 where the
2:57:44 divergent from the where I take a look at it is is over a series
2:57:48 of time we’re
2:57:48 gonna be expanding a budget like we are now to have deliverables
2:57:52 that we’re
2:57:53 gonna look at and where I would say is is that it gets to a
2:57:56 certain point where
2:57:57 at some point we could actually hire our own staff to do a lot
2:58:00 of these different
2:58:01 things and they could also do other things that are more in line
2:58:04 with some
2:58:05 of the stuff that maybe some of the other principles may want to
2:58:07 do stuff
2:58:07 like that you see what I mean so that’s all so looking at it
2:58:10 from a perspective
2:58:11 of sustainability over a long period of time it gets bigger and
2:58:14 bigger cost more
2:58:15 and more are there metrics to support that and then if not then
2:58:18 can we do this
2:58:19 ourselves and have it come up because we now have experts inside
2:58:22 the building we
2:58:23 have multiple schools as sites stuff like that and I think that
2:58:28 those were
2:58:28 just some of my things you know when we when when when I was
2:58:31 teaching they
2:58:32 taught us about having a structure inside the class and sticking
2:58:35 to the
2:58:35 structure because that keeps kids engaged right and I heard
2:58:38 somebody say
2:58:39 and I may have been mr. Trent that like when you have to stop
2:58:43 and do this then
2:58:44 all of a sudden the rest of the class and I can see that
2:58:46 happening so like if
2:58:47 I’m dealing over here with something then the rest of the class
2:58:49 starts going
2:58:49 if they haven’t been trained if there’s not engagement and stuff
2:58:52 like that so I
2:58:52 think that there are a lot of good best practices out there that
2:58:56 people use to
2:58:56 engage inside their classrooms this may be one of them and we
2:58:59 just take a look
2:59:00 at it from a metrics perspective that’s all so is everybody else
2:59:03 good on that
2:59:04 miss handed you have anything to say we’re good all right thank
2:59:08 you very much
2:59:08 I think it is now yes sir great presentation hey thank you for
2:59:12 all your
2:59:13 your exuberance when you’re speaking and stuff like that I can
2:59:16 tell that you
2:59:17 really love this and that you’re you know you’re invested in it
2:59:19 so thank you
2:59:20 just like you were when you were a principal and you left me
2:59:22 with all those
2:59:23 parents I always try and leave my mark no I know I know I know
2:59:29 all right so miss
2:59:30 hand you have 22 minutes would you like to you you know and then
2:59:34 there’s a
2:59:34 couple other things we would like to talk about but I can push
2:59:37 my stuff to
2:59:38 the evening what would you like to do I would like to cover the
2:59:41 Thule agreement
2:59:42 and the capital very quickly you can do it in 22 minutes okay
2:59:45 yes I can push the
2:59:46 other stuff to the meeting and we can get them out of here about
2:59:48 4 30 so the
2:59:49 floor is yours okay you have the Thule agreement on your agenda
2:59:52 tonight this
2:59:53 was tabled from the previous meeting miss curry had requested a
2:59:57 50-year lease
2:59:59 term in order to secure financing for the construction
3:00:03 improvements the scope
3:00:03 of which has grown quite a bit over time met with them miss
3:00:07 curry and we added
3:00:09 some deliverables to the lease agreement based on the board’s
3:00:12 request one of
3:00:13 those deliverables is an annual report and that will give the
3:00:17 board and a kind
3:00:18 of a summary of the performance of Kyler as a community resource
3:00:23 in terms of
3:00:24 providing classes to the community they were focusing on stem
3:00:28 and workforce
3:00:29 development type of work so the annual report has been added to
3:00:32 the lease
3:00:32 agreement we also put some construction deliverables into the
3:00:36 lease agreement
3:00:37 and those are listed on I believe it’s page 7 and those include
3:00:43 obtaining a
3:00:44 building a permit for improvements necessary to occupy the
3:00:47 building by
3:00:48 December 31st 2023 starting construction of the renovations
3:00:52 necessary to occupy
3:00:53 by July 1st 2024 and completion of those renovations by July 1st
3:00:59 2025 and this is
3:01:02 included in the termination clause so that we may terminate with
3:01:06 a 90 to 90
3:01:07 day notice in the event that those milestones are not met by Thule
3:01:12 community development group this curry is here today if you have
3:01:15 questions of
3:01:15 her but we both agree that these are appropriate terms and
3:01:19 hopefully meet the
3:01:21 board’s intent for the milestones any conversations miss Jenkins
3:01:27 no okay good
3:01:29 that’s right now thank you for for being willing to to amend
3:01:34 this lease just so
3:01:34 that we have some some deliverables that really help us make
3:01:38 sure that we are you
3:01:39 know that this that the organization is doing what they’re
3:01:41 promising us they’re
3:01:42 gonna do which I know your your heart is to change the community
3:01:44 and I think of
3:01:45 this this building will definitely do that so I’m comfortable
3:01:49 moving forward
3:01:50 with the amended lease is mr. Lee so I can director when I talk
3:01:55 where is he in
3:01:56 the crowd I just want to say thank you for starting this
3:02:00 initiative we we fully
3:02:02 support you and everything you’re doing I would love to come up
3:02:04 there say hi see
3:02:05 how I can help I was trying to miss miss miss hands was having
3:02:10 heart palpitations
3:02:10 when I was saying we should just get all our contractors and
3:02:13 show up there and do
3:02:14 it for free right like some sort of home renovation project yeah
3:02:18 yeah I know but
3:02:20 I just want to say you know the lifeblood of our communities are
3:02:24 set
3:02:24 with individuals like you that commit themselves to something
3:02:27 greater than
3:02:27 just what they do on a regular basis and I think that you are
3:02:31 doing something
3:02:32 amazing so if there’s anything we can do to help you out just
3:02:35 reach out to me I
3:02:36 know how to do like plumbing and wiring and stuff like that so
3:02:39 it may not turn
3:02:40 out so well and this hand again is having heart palpitations but
3:02:43 I just
3:02:43 want to tell you that I am committed to you so if you need me I’m
3:02:47 there and I’ve
3:02:48 been excited about this from the beginning so miss hand is that
3:02:51 all you
3:02:51 needed on that yes sir thank you all right next up capital the
3:02:55 capital
3:02:55 allocation plan I’m gonna ask miss Sosinski to kick us off and
3:02:58 talk as fast
3:02:59 as I do but this is important because the tail end of this has
3:03:02 the recommended
3:03:04 capital allocations and some of these projects are projects that
3:03:07 I’m working
3:03:07 on right now from my facilities perspective that you’re going to
3:03:11 start
3:03:11 to see on your board agenda so we’d like to get some feedback
3:03:14 from the board so
3:03:16 miss Lisinski thank you so one thing that I can do is I can move
3:03:20 forward to
3:03:21 that portion if that’s to save time and also send out the slides
3:03:27 to you with
3:03:28 some more explanation so you can understand where we’re going
3:03:33 you guys’s
3:03:34 presentation however you want to do it okay I’d like to see a
3:03:37 little bit of
3:03:38 overview but if you could move through that pretty quickly sure
3:03:42 thank you
3:03:48 so you’ve seen this slide before and where I wanted to focus
3:03:52 today is the
3:03:54 capital projects the yellow circle where you can see that’s part
3:03:58 of our funding
3:03:59 and this slide breaks that out a little bit further you can see
3:04:04 on the left side
3:04:05 the capital projects about 20% of all funds and then when you
3:04:11 break out the
3:04:12 capital funds on the chart on the right you can see how things
3:04:16 are broken out
3:04:17 sales surtax and tax levy are pretty much the same and I think
3:04:24 that’s a very
3:04:25 important point because we’re very very fortunate to have the
3:04:29 community support
3:04:30 us for this sales surtax if we didn’t have the sales surtax you
3:04:35 can see as we
3:04:37 go on the funding that we would have to repair facilities by
3:04:42 equipment in those
3:04:43 kind of things and so capital funds they’re they’re unique they
3:04:50 have unique
3:04:51 rules you cannot move fun funds between these funds within the
3:04:57 capital and some
3:04:59 common goals guardrails that you might want to keep in mind is
3:05:04 equipment
3:05:05 purchased or facility projects should not should last at least
3:05:09 five years and
3:05:10 it can’t be used for instructional materials or staff custodial
3:05:14 or grounds
3:05:15 functions and instructional materials as textbooks or something
3:05:20 like I ready or
3:05:22 you can’t pay for the staff of instruct of instructional
3:05:29 teachers and custodial
3:05:31 or grounds functions that one is a little bit odd but you can
3:05:36 pay for a
3:05:37 repair of the equipment so a floor scrubber a scrubber or a lawnmower
3:05:42 that
3:05:43 you’re replacing is something that you can do with capital funds
3:05:47 I I know sue
3:05:49 it talked last board meeting a lot about the importance of
3:05:56 infrastructure for
3:05:57 schools the bottom line is school facilities affect health
3:06:01 behavior
3:06:02 engagement learning and growth and achievement so we really it
3:06:06 is a very
3:06:07 very important part of the pie and again you can see the half
3:06:12 cent sales surtax
3:06:14 split out by facility renewal education technology and security
3:06:20 again we’re very
3:06:21 very fortunate that the voters approved the six-year extension
3:06:25 and I don’t want
3:06:28 to speak for Sue but I might try to say this and correct me if I’m
3:06:31 wrong the the
3:06:32 initial the previous referendum was for things like you know the
3:06:37 the basic
3:06:37 blocking and tackling of roofs and H back and those kind of
3:06:42 things and and
3:06:44 this renewal is looking is we’re able to actually look to the
3:06:49 classrooms and labs
3:06:51 and athletic equipment and facilities so this is you know around
3:06:57 that we can
3:06:59 really start focusing on in on all the things that we’ve been
3:07:04 talking about
3:07:05 with reimagining middle school but I’ll move on this next slide
3:07:12 I just the
3:07:13 capital fund impact fees and that is a you know one time
3:07:17 assessed on new
3:07:18 residential development so and it’s meant to offset the cost
3:07:24 because if you
3:07:26 build a new development that’s gonna cost taxpayers more money
3:07:30 for new
3:07:31 schools additions things like that so on the other side you can
3:07:35 see the uses for
3:07:36 impact fees and then capital fund Pico I put this in here
3:07:46 because it’s gonna come
3:07:46 up again in in a couple slides but Pico used to be I think in
3:07:52 2020 or 19 I
3:07:55 believe we used to the district used to get those dollars now
3:08:00 the Pico goes
3:08:02 straight to charter schools and we are a pass-through and that
3:08:06 in it’s for a
3:08:07 maintenance repair renovation remodeling
3:08:12 and so now what we’re really here to talk about is the capital
3:08:18 fund tax levy
3:08:20 you’ll hear it all kinds of different ways it’s the local
3:08:25 property taxes that
3:08:28 we get for capital we get 1.5 mills and the allowable expenses
3:08:38 you can see our
3:08:39 remodeling construction maintenance renovation school buses
3:08:44 replacement of
3:08:45 equipment replacement of a cuter a computer equipment and
3:08:49 software property
3:08:50 and casualty insurance and that’s going to be big because it
3:08:53 really went up this
3:08:54 year motor vehicles which includes the white fleet payment of
3:09:00 opening day
3:09:02 collection I like that what that really is is the library books
3:09:06 of a new school
3:09:06 so for the middle school that’s going to open up LCI will pay
3:09:11 for those library
3:09:12 books and also this last line is is interesting to me but it
3:09:21 says you can
3:09:22 pay for facility maintenance with capital millage but not in a
3:09:25 capital
3:09:26 fund so Hillsboro included a I’m sorry
3:09:40 but well one of their legislative initiatives was to change some
3:09:46 of that
3:09:47 and what they wanted to do was just have the capital being able
3:09:52 to fund facility
3:09:54 maintenance within the capital fund because now we can fund it
3:10:01 and but we
3:10:02 have to transfer it to fund 100 and then pay it out that way so
3:10:07 this would save a
3:10:08 lot of different you know counting and it brings more clarity
3:10:11 and you’re able
3:10:12 to track expenses much better but the way that HB one included
3:10:20 the language
3:10:21 you can see on the very bottom it says payment of salaries and
3:10:25 benefits for
3:10:26 employees who job duties support activities funded above so when
3:10:31 you just
3:10:32 read that lap so I called Hillsboro to say what was your intent
3:10:36 and the intent
3:10:37 was just to be able to spend capital dollars for the fillet
3:10:42 facility
3:10:43 maintenance portion that we normally transfer over but the way
3:10:47 that reads it
3:10:48 looks like you could almost pay for any salary that supports
3:10:52 anything above
3:10:54 there so there’s I sent out some requests and Hillsboro’s going
3:10:59 back out
3:11:00 to have the audit general look at that and see what that line
3:11:04 means now so it’s
3:11:06 going it is in HB one the slide just real quick just shows you
3:11:16 that through
3:11:17 these capital committees we have funded white fleet replacement
3:11:24 over sent you
3:11:25 know for the last four years you can see last year and this year
3:11:29 we’re continue
3:11:30 to robust that replacement and that’s just so important we don’t
3:11:34 want to put
3:11:34 dangerous vehicles on the road we want people to be safe so we’re
3:11:40 collaborating
3:11:40 and formalizing a replacement plan for the white fleet since I
3:11:46 just want to
3:11:47 remind you we have ten minutes before the 430 sorry okay okay I
3:11:51 thought I was
3:11:52 going fast you’re doing great I don’t know how long it is I just
3:11:55 wanted to
3:11:55 remind you that’s okay language here and the reason that I said
3:12:00 that Pico is
3:12:03 important is the new language that is passing are the the house
3:12:11 side they
3:12:13 appropriated money for Pico but they do want to do this create
3:12:17 up they created
3:12:18 this formula and and so charters will are most likely get a
3:12:26 portion of our LCI
3:12:28 which didn’t happen before the Senate side they they added
3:12:35 another change and
3:12:37 what they’re saying is the seven largest school districts will
3:12:43 pay the funding
3:12:44 for charters maintenance so more to come on that but you can see
3:12:51 that there’s a
3:12:51 move to in share our LCI dollars with charters and that will
3:12:59 just you know
3:13:00 reduce our pie in the amount of money that we can spend on
3:13:04 facility maintenance
3:13:06 the debt schedule you can see that Brevard’s tax assessment
3:13:12 history and you
3:13:14 can see that amazing growth that we’ve had and then 2021 current
3:13:27 tax assessment
3:13:28 is the pre coded so you can see how much what is that 70 million
3:13:46 represent out of
3:13:48 which taxes from oh no that is the the taxable values of
3:13:54 property and we take
3:13:57 how much of a percentage of that in order to the 1.5 million
3:14:03 okay and you
3:14:08 can see here we take 96 percent collection of 103 million we
3:14:16 have to pay
3:14:17 the debt we also transfer out maintenance transfers like I said
3:14:22 the
3:14:22 property insurance has increased tremendously and when you look
3:14:31 at the
3:14:31 bottom line we have forty point nine million dollars to spread
3:14:37 to fund all the
3:14:39 capital requirements for next year that are to prioritize and
3:14:44 this next slide is
3:14:46 the committee that we are in and I have to tell you that you
3:14:49 know we look at
3:14:50 health and safety support of the learning environment upgrading
3:14:56 existing
3:14:57 equipment innovation affordability and we work very well
3:15:03 together there’s times
3:15:05 where other people are advocating for
3:15:09 items that aren’t there it’s just because we’re so passionate
3:15:12 about it and
3:15:13 want to do the best for kids and for the district so that said
3:15:19 we’re gonna have
3:15:20 I’m gonna take over just to you’re gonna go I’m gonna go quick
3:15:24 okay so we have
3:15:25 several groups of projects that are on the capital list the top
3:15:29 of the list are
3:15:30 the educational FF&E this is our typical FF&E allocation we also
3:15:36 work with
3:15:36 students are with secondary on CTE projects so we include their
3:15:40 requests so
3:15:42 those are kind of off the top the next off the top are school
3:15:45 buses so they
3:15:47 have requested four point five million that’s what we included
3:15:50 in the program
3:15:51 and then there’s some very small items relating to
3:15:55 transportation and warehouse
3:15:57 and distribution that we just leave off the top and then mr. Cheatham
3:16:01 and I in
3:16:02 terms of ET and facilities we basically negotiate the rest
3:16:06 because both of us
3:16:07 have more than one funding source for our projects and programs
3:16:11 he’s got ESSER
3:16:14 funds he’s got sales surtax I’ve got sales surtax and we try to
3:16:17 do as much as
3:16:18 we can within the funding that is available for me I have many
3:16:23 multi-year
3:16:23 programs so some of these attracts for example you’ll see 2.1
3:16:27 million in the
3:16:28 program that is those are the last two tracks that we are going
3:16:32 to rubberize
3:16:33 this is important because you’ll see on your board agenda for
3:16:37 April 25th the
3:16:38 Titusville high school track renewal and that’s really coming
3:16:41 out of this pot of
3:16:42 money so would appreciate a head nod on that so that we can move
3:16:46 forward and
3:16:47 we’ll advance fund that out of this year’s capital but I need to
3:16:50 make sure
3:16:51 that it’s in next year’s capital program and there’s there’s a
3:16:54 handful of things
3:16:56 like that that’s the big one you also see on my list for
3:17:01 facilities there are
3:17:02 several programs that we are starting design with the intention
3:17:06 of moving
3:17:06 forward with the construction projects if there’s additional
3:17:11 money available I
3:17:12 think Cindy has estimated conservatively based on our
3:17:14 uncertainty as to where the
3:17:16 legislature is going to land on sharing this resource of the
3:17:19 charter schools so
3:17:20 if we have additional resources available you see on the list
3:17:23 that there
3:17:24 are priority ad backs but where we are right now we’ve balanced
3:17:28 the project
3:17:29 list with the resources that we have available you see modern
3:17:34 classrooms in
3:17:35 there on the ET side on the facility side you’ll also see some
3:17:40 investment in
3:17:42 classrooms flooring that type of thing we’ve done a really good
3:17:45 job on our
3:17:46 science labs those middle school science labs those are coming
3:17:49 to you at the next
3:17:51 board meeting as well the maintenance capital funding increase
3:17:56 that is moving
3:17:58 additional money into maintenance to support those activities we
3:18:01 do that
3:18:02 every year it gets pulled out of the capital renewal and I
3:18:05 transfer it over
3:18:06 and I’d like to start budgeting it appropriately we are doing
3:18:09 more in terms
3:18:11 of contracted services because we have to we’ve been hit with
3:18:16 issues with
3:18:17 rentals for chillers if chiller breaks chiller breaks and we’ve
3:18:21 got to rent
3:18:21 chillers I’ve got no choice so we’ve got that type of thing we’re
3:18:26 doing student
3:18:27 restroom renovations we’re investing heavily in athletics we’ve
3:18:31 had literally
3:18:31 no investment in athletics until the last couple of years so you’re
3:18:35 starting
3:18:36 to see some multi-year projects to do athletic renewal
3:18:40 elementary pavilions
3:18:41 that’s an ask that we have on the part of the elementary schools
3:18:45 and then the
3:18:45 one that that I’m going to just really advocate for is the
3:18:49 little one that says
3:18:51 basketball goal renewal you know you heard dr. Sullivan talking
3:18:55 about middle
3:18:56 school basketball elementary basketball if you have wandered
3:18:59 around our schools
3:19:00 our basketball goals are in just horrible condition they want to
3:19:06 play so
3:19:07 we want to make those look nice and where we’ve done that at a
3:19:11 couple
3:19:11 schools it’s been very impactful another one you see is
3:19:15 athletics FF&E there’s a
3:19:17 pretty big chunk of money there that’s not that is for specific
3:19:22 things that we
3:19:23 have been funding out of maintenance so scoreboard renewal is
3:19:27 probably the best
3:19:28 example another example is goal posts where our schools call
3:19:33 maintenance and
3:19:33 say hey our XYZ broke maintenance says that’s nice we have no
3:19:37 money and things
3:19:38 don’t get fixed so we’re taking a capital approach to those
3:19:42 types of items
3:19:43 and want to fund that a different way rather than running it
3:19:47 through the
3:19:47 maintenance budget so we can look at our assessment and say
3:19:50 these scoreboards
3:19:51 need to be fixed we’re going to get new ones this is a project
3:19:55 not a maintenance
3:19:55 item wrestling mats inside no they’re not and then we have a
3:20:03 couple of
3:20:04 projects that have come about because of issues at school so a
3:20:10 galley stadium
3:20:12 restroom is one where continually having problems with the
3:20:17 plumbing when there’s
3:20:17 an event and if you go out there it is just it’s just bad let me
3:20:23 just say that
3:20:24 satellite stadium restroom that is a continuing problem too they
3:20:28 have big
3:20:28 events we believe that that is a function of inadequate design
3:20:33 for big
3:20:34 huge events so we’re taking a look at what we need to upgrade
3:20:38 their West Shore
3:20:40 press box that’s been a need at that school for quite some time
3:20:42 and they have
3:20:44 been a strong advocate and they really they don’t have other
3:20:46 facilities so they
3:20:48 need a press box because their scores are sitting out in the
3:20:51 rain and then
3:20:52 we’re looking at middle school tracks in cooperation with the
3:20:56 sale surtax that is
3:20:57 not a funded project in the capital plan but it’s going to we’re
3:21:01 gonna try to
3:21:01 cover that with surtax and get rolling but you might see this
3:21:04 back at a second
3:21:05 year for middle school tracks and then we also have four schools
3:21:09 with no tracks
3:21:10 so we want to start looking at do we want to add tracks to those
3:21:13 schools in
3:21:14 the future so some of these have smaller numbers because we’re
3:21:18 just getting
3:21:18 started so that concludes our presentation and happy to answer
3:21:25 questions so this is the first round so this is a recommendation
3:21:31 to the board
3:21:32 and you you’re more than we’re more than willing to and happy to
3:21:35 have you make
3:21:36 recommendations change things if you like but I just wanted to
3:21:42 let you know
3:21:44 that and it is a recommendation we’ll we’ll come back this is
3:21:47 just the first
3:21:48 round a starting point and we also know needs change and stuff
3:21:53 breaks so we’ll
3:21:55 come back in June when we get the the new estimate for property
3:22:00 values and I
3:22:05 just want to add that yeah and I would add one more thing there
3:22:08 is a project
3:22:09 for ESF facility renewal that you may ask me about and what that
3:22:13 is about is
3:22:14 the the flooding that occurred we are doing a drainage project
3:22:19 at an as-yet-to-be
3:22:20 determined cost and the other piece of that is the colonnades
3:22:23 coming into the
3:22:23 building if you look up there’s been significant corrosion and
3:22:27 as we’ve
3:22:28 gotten into it there’s some structural elements that need to be
3:22:30 addressed so
3:22:31 that’s that’s what that project is about miss Campbell no I
3:22:37 appreciate this I
3:22:39 know that a lot of thought goes and thank you for sharing their
3:22:42 priorities
3:22:43 because some of the you know there’s some things on here that we
3:22:45 would like
3:22:46 to have but safety has to come first and when we have things
3:22:48 that are falling
3:22:49 apart we’re gonna create unsafe situations we obviously have to
3:22:51 prioritize those I appreciate starting on the middle school
3:22:56 tracks as a middle
3:22:57 school track mom this season yeah I see those and then they got
3:23:00 to have a meet
3:23:01 at a high school and went oh it was amazing so I appreciate that
3:23:07 look I know
3:23:08 the the middle school coaches would appreciate that I just just
3:23:12 you know I
3:23:13 always go to the things that didn’t get funded or didn’t get
3:23:15 funded fully and
3:23:16 just just I know that I appreciate that you guys are finding
3:23:18 other ways and
3:23:19 frequently we have extra capital because we we budget for the 96%
3:23:25 but frequently
3:23:25 we always go over this 96.7 is the norm right so we can add some
3:23:30 of that back in
3:23:31 and obviously we have it has it have sent sales tax which is
3:23:33 over performed
3:23:34 and hopefully we’ll continue to do that our expectations and
3:23:37 budget but I can
3:23:39 you talk to me about the elementary pavilions I see it’s you
3:23:42 know priority
3:23:43 list design only and then combining with the with the outdoor
3:23:46 classrooms we’re
3:23:47 kind of doing that together so we’re just kind of getting
3:23:50 started on that or
3:23:51 is some of that in the seltzer tax or some of it was even an Essar
3:23:55 I thought
3:23:56 was there was one in Essar okay and we are starting on design I
3:24:00 think we have
3:24:01 three under design right now and so those those tend to end up
3:24:06 being like
3:24:07 $300,000 projects they’re big projects right so we’re just
3:24:11 sticking our toe in
3:24:13 the water on right and I love that idea and have advocated for
3:24:16 that idea but at
3:24:17 the same time we’ve got some safety issues here that have to be
3:24:20 prioritized
3:24:21 so but we’re so I what I’m hearing you say is that we all have
3:24:24 the planes in
3:24:25 place so that if we have the funding we’re ready to go at such a
3:24:28 time that’s
3:24:29 where we’re heading yes thank you I’m I am looking to listen and
3:24:33 and supportive
3:24:35 of what you guys have come up with so far thank you miss
3:24:38 Campbell miss Jenkins
3:24:40 all right mr. Trent that’s right um I think for me Cindy if you
3:24:48 can send out a
3:24:49 list of the budgetary we’re getting to a point where we’re
3:24:52 starting to get this
3:24:53 right like we’re like okay because I I immediately when I look
3:24:56 at this I’m like
3:24:57 hey I’m gonna try to talk to sue about covering some of those
3:24:59 athletic things
3:25:00 like the mats and stuff like that see where we can look at that
3:25:02 for the future
3:25:03 there’s some other things I was gonna talk to her about and this
3:25:05 is good for
3:25:06 the prompt but you and I had sat down and we had mapped out okay
3:25:09 we know that
3:25:09 unlike May 9th there’s gonna be a budget that comes out all that
3:25:12 if we can put
3:25:13 together a schedule so the board members know here’s when this
3:25:16 is here’s when
3:25:17 this is so that like today’s meeting we knew that this was on
3:25:20 the agenda but
3:25:21 knowing like hey you guys might want to bring some of your
3:25:23 capital requests to
3:25:24 miss hand prior to this to make sure that there’s there’s some
3:25:27 sort of a plan
3:25:28 going forward so if there’s a way that you can put together not
3:25:31 only the dates
3:25:32 of when we’re getting stuff like the budget comes out it’s
3:25:35 finally approved
3:25:36 all that but then also Tammy and I were looking at some of those
3:25:41 proposed
3:25:42 Tuesdays and stuff like that to give to you to talk about budget
3:25:45 sue and I were
3:25:46 talking about that so if we can kind of tentatively put
3:25:49 something together so
3:25:50 that the board’s prepared ahead of time to go talk to the
3:25:52 communities and stuff
3:25:52 like that yes we’re absolutely doing that you will see a
3:25:56 schedule coming out
3:25:57 soon and we anticipate numerous workshops especially as we
3:26:00 transition to
3:26:01 more zero based budgeting that’s gonna require some conversation
3:26:04 between the
3:26:05 board and our departments about what our priorities are so Cindy’s
3:26:09 got the
3:26:10 process started where we’re all filling out lots of forms and
3:26:13 got some metrics
3:26:14 and we’re talking about what may or may not be eligible for a
3:26:18 millage so we’ve
3:26:19 got that piece in the mix and so we anticipate a lot of
3:26:22 conversations with
3:26:23 the board coming up in the next eight weeks or so regarding
3:26:26 budget perfect and
3:26:28 then and then yes we can take a look at those be prepared for
3:26:33 them the other
3:26:34 thing that I was gonna do is is our property insurance and stuff
3:26:38 like that I
3:26:39 think we’re in the process of going out I don’t know if we are
3:26:42 right now or not
3:26:43 but we’re going out for consultants and stuff like that but our
3:26:46 property
3:26:47 insurance and stuff like that I think I’m gonna do a deep dive
3:26:49 on because
3:26:50 there’s some extreme savings inside of there that we can use
3:26:52 both with boiler
3:26:54 and everything else that I don’t think we’ve been taking a look
3:26:56 at because
3:26:56 we’ve been focused so much on health but there’s a lot in that
3:26:59 property side that
3:27:01 we can take a look at so I think that you bringing that up is
3:27:03 great and having
3:27:04 high concerns over having a major increase in there with you
3:27:08 know we may
3:27:08 not be bidding that thing correctly the other thing is is that I
3:27:12 would miss Sue
3:27:13 I would talk about those you know there’s a couple of things
3:27:16 that I think
3:27:16 dynamically we just look at from a perspective of we’re asking
3:27:20 schools to
3:27:21 fund some of these things whether it’s athletics or something
3:27:24 like that but
3:27:25 sometimes it’s just not fair because like when I was coaching
3:27:28 wrestling I
3:27:28 coached at Space Coast right we had just fundraised and got
3:27:31 brand new mats but we
3:27:32 went down to cocoa they didn’t have proper mats and we were
3:27:36 dragging them
3:27:36 all over they would borrow our mats so just some stuff like that
3:27:39 that’s just
3:27:40 an example but you know all good mr. Susan I think now that dr.
3:27:44 Sullivan has
3:27:45 grasped athletics we’ll be looking at those needs there’s some
3:27:49 funding in
3:27:49 this year’s capital plan for athletic FF any and we just need to
3:27:53 kind of figure
3:27:53 out where all that is because there’s quite a bit an S or two
3:27:55 and many schools
3:27:56 used their us or funding so I want to get with dr. Sullivan and
3:27:59 absolutely get
3:28:00 where you’re going and then I also think there were some
3:28:02 questions on hey what
3:28:04 classrooms what pavilions and stuff like that so if when we’re
3:28:06 going down this
3:28:07 process if there’s a way to say here’s where we have those three
3:28:10 you know what
3:28:10 I mean kind of give them so they can get excited about the
3:28:12 projects at their
3:28:13 schools and stuff like that other than that I’m good without any
3:28:16 further
3:28:16 conversation we can get out of here and go get something to eat
3:28:19 prior to 530 we
3:28:20 all good good miss Cindy good all right let’s rock
3:28:34 you