Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 ♪♪
4:10 So, our first topic this afternoon is a mowing plan. Miss Sue, I’m
4:20 going to turn it over to you. Good afternoon, everyone.
4:20 I’m really excited to have an opportunity to talk about mowing
4:23 and hopefully in a positive vein because we do spend a lot of
4:26 time talking about mowing.
4:29 I do want to introduce our director of maintenance, Jim Ross,
4:32 and Richard Vogt, supervisor in our maintenance department who
4:36 actually knows where all our money is.
4:38 So, they will be helping out as we go through the presentation
4:42 as you have questions.
4:44 So, I’m going to talk a little bit about mowing and one thing I
4:46 want to talk about from the start is that we fund mowing out of
4:50 the general fund and that is by statute.
4:53 So, a lot of our budget is capital and you’ll see that later on
4:56 in the presentation on our budget, but the mowing piece is
4:59 general fund.
5:00 So, I just wanted to set the stage for that in the conversation
5:04 around both mowing and our budget later on.
5:07 So, all of you are familiar with our mowing issues and these
5:11 kind of started back in 2013 when we had some fairly severe
5:15 budget constraints.
5:17 And so, one of the things that was done at the time to kind of
5:21 come within our resources was we took the mowing out of the
5:25 school, centralized mowing in maintenance, reduced custodial
5:29 positions, and saved some money.
5:33 We added some positions in Plan Ops, but saved some money in the
5:37 general fund and that was solely the intention.
5:41 I think there was perhaps not a good level of clarity as to the
5:46 impact on the level of service, but clearly as we’ve seen since
5:53 2013, we’ve just not been able to keep up with the mowing with
5:55 the resources that we have in Plan Ops.
5:57 So, this has been an issue for a while. So, in 2019 we started
6:05 to look at this again and we looked at it relative to level of
6:10 service versus cost.
6:13 And in 2019 we were still just kind of coming out of the era of
6:17 severe budget constraints and we’re working through the first
6:20 couple of years of the sales surtax and kind of making some
6:24 improvements with our air conditioning systems and our other
6:27 building systems.
6:29 But we really just didn’t have the support on the general fund
6:32 side to add significant resources to the budget to address mowing.
6:37 So, at that time you can find a presentation where I said I
6:41 think this is not the time. We had other priorities for general
6:45 fund at the time and we didn’t add resources back in 2019.
6:49 We have, as you see, been working around the margins a little
6:52 bit. We’ve got a couple of robotic mowers and those are up and
6:55 down.
6:56 We use those for kind of our play field type of approaches where
7:00 we just put a kind of an electronic fence, so to speak, around
7:04 the area and let the mower go.
7:06 So those have been working pretty well. We’ve got a few that are
7:09 on order, so we are trying some new things.
7:13 We did try special purpose ruminants. Those are goats. They are
7:17 only really usable for messy sloped retention ponds.
7:22 They’re not the fine trimming type of apparatus that you might
7:26 want. And then we’ve been experimenting with limited contract mowing.
7:31 So, in 2021 we started contract mowing at 12 schools. We funded
7:36 through the general fund, fund balance at the time. It was about
7:39 $225,000 and this really worked pretty well for those 12 schools.
7:45 And then in ‘23 going into ‘24 we transitioned from 12 schools
7:50 to 27 schools. We eliminated four grounds technicians positions
7:56 in maintenance to fund those, to fund that additional level of
8:00 service.
8:00 And this has worked pretty well. So we’ve got about a third-ish
8:04 of our schools that are under contract mowing.
8:08 If you look at the kind of the work orders and the customer
8:11 reactions that we get, the schools that are under contract mowing
8:15 are pretty happy with the service that we’ve been providing.
8:18 Now, that depends a lot on the contractor and the management of
8:22 the contractor, so that is not a 100% solution all the time, but
8:26 in this particular case we’ve had a good vendor, they’ve done a
8:31 good job, and we’ve been using that technique into fiscal year ‘24.
8:35 So, one of the lessons we learned last year is we really didn’t
8:40 start that soon enough. We kind of waited until the start of the
8:44 fiscal year and that was on us.
8:47 And we got behind in the mowing to start. So in terms of the
8:52 plan going forward for 2025, you’ll see a recommendation from me
8:57 that we start April 1st versus waiting to start with the start
9:01 of the fiscal year.
9:02 And that will allow us to get ahead of the mowing versus
9:04 starting from behind. So that was the purpose of mentioning that
9:09 in terms of a lesson learned.
9:11 So, where we are today, as you all have experienced, we’re still
9:15 under resourced to provide the level of service that we’d like
9:19 to have.
9:20 And I think over time we have taken care of some of our major
9:23 issues in terms of like air conditioning and other building
9:27 systems.
9:28 And we’re starting to be more cognizant of the importance of
9:32 curb appeal at our schools, and so we’re doing more in painting
9:36 and we need to do more in grounds maintenance.
9:39 So this has really become a higher priority than it was back in
9:42 2013 or it was back in 2019.
9:45 And so this is a kind of a summary of our recommendations for
9:51 our mowing plan.
9:53 We’d like to upgrade the level of service that we have at the 27
9:56 schools to all schools.
9:58 And so that would be weekly mowing between April and September
10:02 and biweekly between October and March.
10:05 And we had put a contract out for bid and I got to give some
10:08 shout outs to our friends in procurement and our folks in
10:12 maintenance.
10:13 We literally walked every single site with our contractors and
10:17 made sure that everybody was clear on the scope of services.
10:22 Because when you say mowing, it’s kind of we got a lot of stuff
10:25 out there.
10:26 So we’ve got to be clear what is in the contract and what is not
10:29 in the contract.
10:31 And so our folks in procurement really did a great job
10:34 supporting us and they literally spent a couple of weeks walking
10:36 around school sites with our folks in maintenance.
10:39 So we’ve got good bids. The pricing that came in was pretty
10:43 comparable to what we’re paying at the 27 sites.
10:46 So it’s their valid bids. Procurements kind of working through
10:51 who the apparent low bidders are.
10:54 We’re looking at potentially doing a primary, secondary and
10:57 possibly even a tertiary contractor award.
11:00 So that if for some reason the primary low bidder can’t do the
11:04 job, we have a backup and a backup.
11:07 The award is going to be done in I think it’s nine, nine chunks
11:12 of schools.
11:13 There are about nine to ten schools in each chunk.
11:16 So we’ll have probably two to four contractors that are awarded
11:22 the bid.
11:23 So it’s not all one vendor. The cost of this is about $850,000
11:33 on an annualized basis, more than what we have budgeted now.
11:37 The last quarter of 2024, we’re estimating about $250,000.
11:43 These are numbers based on the bids that came in, but we’re not
11:48 settled on exactly who the low bidders are, and we want to make
11:53 sure that we’ve at least accounted for an eventuality where we
11:56 might have to go to a second low bidder on certain groups of
12:00 schools.
12:01 So these numbers are probably a little bit on the high side, but
12:04 it gives you an order of magnitude of what it would take to
12:07 transition from where we are to where we want to go relative to
12:11 level service for mowing.
12:13 So this is the scope of work that our contractors bid on, and I
12:16 want to be like super clear about this.
12:19 This is school site mowing. This isn’t athletic field mowing.
12:24 This isn’t play field mowing.
12:26 This is just kind of the school front, you know, when you pull
12:30 into the school, it will look like a well-maintained school.
12:34 That’s what’s in the scope. They’ll be doing some light
12:38 retention pond maintenance.
12:40 Litter is not their job, but it’s also not their job to mow over
12:44 litter, so we have an expectation that if it’s in the way, they
12:48 pick it up, but litter control is still on us.
12:51 There’s edging of sidewalks, curbs, parking lots, flower and shrub
12:55 beds, so again, the kind of the basics of the front door of the
12:59 school, so to speak, will be part of this contract.
13:03 Also asking them to weed whack our fence lines, and we’ve got a
13:06 lot of fence lines.
13:08 We’ll still be doing the herbicide, but the general like knock
13:11 down the weeds will be part of this contract, and then rake and
13:15 remove any excessive grass clippings.
13:17 So basic lawn mowing-ish type service for each of our schools.
13:23 We’re also proposing, at least for now, to retain the grounds
13:27 technicians positions that we have.
13:30 We have 14 FTEs, 13 are filled. One was vacant as of January 31st.
13:36 I think we may be in the process of filling that, but we’ve got
13:39 a lot of work for these folks to do.
13:42 First and foremost, we want to make sure that this contracted mowing
13:46 experiment is successful.
13:48 So we don’t want to get rid of all of our personnel and our
13:52 equipment until we are sure that this is going to work.
13:56 I’ve had some experience with this in a prior life where it
13:59 seemed like a great idea to contract out this type of service,
14:03 and it was until it wasn’t.
14:04 And then you don’t have the people, you don’t have the equipment,
14:07 and it’s impossible to recover.
14:09 So having this sort of hybrid where we do contract mowing but we
14:13 also retain mowing capabilities in-house allows us to backstop a
14:18 contractor if for some reason that doesn’t work out.
14:22 We and our contractors experience issues with, well, we can’t
14:28 match the labor force, we have people on vacation calling in
14:31 sick, we have bad weather.
14:34 The same things that we experience that affect our level of
14:37 service will affect their level of service, too.
14:40 So we want to make sure to have a backup plan or two in mind.
14:44 One of the things that is technically a custodial responsibility
14:50 is to rake playground mulch, and that kind of keeps it safe for
14:54 our kids.
14:55 And with our custodial shortages, we are concerned that that is
14:59 not a high enough priority for our onsite custodians, and we’d
15:03 like to take that back as our responsibility and maintenance.
15:07 And kind of like we’ve been doing with our preventative
15:11 maintenance crew is to put up a crew and they go site to site
15:15 and make sure that our playground mulch is adequate depth and is
15:19 raked and make sure that it’s safe.
15:22 Eventually we’ll be transitioning to the rubberized play tiles,
15:25 but that’s going to take a few years to get there.
15:28 So that’s one of the primary functions of the retaining our
15:32 ground stacks.
15:34 Also assisting with mowing our play fields and athletics fields
15:37 as we start school and everybody’s like, “Oh my gosh, the
15:39 whatever field is not mowed or it is not ready,” we’d like to be
15:42 able to help and respond to that a little bit more effectively.
15:46 So it’s really hopeful that we will do a better job all around.
15:53 So the front door of the school will look better, but some of
15:56 the backside things will also be better as a result of being
15:59 able to focus these positions on some of that other work that
16:02 gets neglected.
16:03 Mrs. Wright, you had sent me an issue at University Park, and
16:08 that was like a perfect example of work that just doesn’t get
16:12 done because nobody has time to do it.
16:15 And it was a drainage issue, you know, water’s coming into the
16:18 courtyard, and it’s just flooding.
16:21 And we sent some folks down and we wandered around and it’s like,
16:24 “Well, geez, you know, we could jet out this pipe, we could take
16:27 the grass that’s growing out of the drainage structure, and
16:31 perhaps it might work a little better.”
16:33 So we have a lot of those things that are just kind of neglected
16:36 general maintenance.
16:38 And I think, again, we can stand up a crew or two or three and
16:41 start to address some of these things that are affecting us in
16:44 other ways and costing money and affecting our learning
16:46 environment, affecting our schools.
16:49 So I think we’ve got plenty of work for these folks, and that
16:53 will provide an overall better level of service for our schools.
16:58 So that’s the end of my presentation. I wanted to ask the board
17:03 for some guidance on your thoughts on this approach. If you
17:08 would like us to move forward, what we would put on the board
17:11 agenda for the 27th would be the award of bid.
17:15 As I mentioned, low bid and secondary and possibly a tertiary
17:19 vendor for each of the chunks of schools would include a budget
17:23 amendment to implement April 1st, and then we would include
17:27 contracted mowing in our FY ‘25 budget.
17:30 So that concludes our mowing presentation.
17:37 Thank you. Appreciate you. Board, I want to give you guys an
17:44 opportunity to ask questions.
17:48 If that’s what it takes to get it over the finish line, I
17:50 believe Mr. Raymer can work on that, because I know this is
17:53 important to his schools.
17:55 No. My first concern was about the gentlemen that are actually
18:00 doing this, because they’ve been working their booties off for
18:05 so long against numbers. It keeps raining, and they have to sit
18:07 and watch it grow and then know that they have to get out there
18:08 and do it, and I wanted to make sure they were taken care of.
18:10 So I think they’ll be glad to know that they no longer have
18:12 different duties, but the other stuff’s being taken care of.
18:15 Appreciate you taking preference to our athletic fields, because
18:18 it’s a different type of mower. It’s a real mower, as opposed to,
18:22 and companies that come in to do that are completely, they don’t
18:25 understand the need behind it, so thank you for that.
18:28 I like this. I love it. Every year we have a situation when
18:32 school opens that, you know what I mean, some of the schools are
18:34 still trying to race to mow the grass, our teams are trying to mow
18:37 the grass, and this takes care of that.
18:39 We need to look professional if we’re going to be, and this is
18:41 part of the imaging and attraction campaign that we have, so
18:44 thank you. That’s it.
18:46 But it’d be nice if some of those animals could make it out
18:53 there.
18:55 Can you go to slide number seven?
19:03 If you want to get respect for your meme game, that’s all. I
19:06 felt like we went over that really fantastic meme of you fought
19:10 the lawn and the lawn won.
19:12 I just want respect for that one. So the animals are cute too,
19:14 but that was great. I may have borrowed that from someone else
19:17 who was more creative. I love it. I love it.
19:19 No, all kidding aside, I know that this isn’t easy work by any
19:23 means. This is beyond a task, and it’s probably one of the most
19:27 common complaints that we get as school members from both
19:30 schools and from parents.
19:32 Thank you for finally tackling this, and I hear you that don’t
19:36 rush into it. It may not work out, but fingers crossed, so
19:41 thanks.
19:42 I’ll add to that list of people that we hear from is our
19:46 community members, especially along certain roads. Thank you for
19:52 giving us this information, and I will tell you it hurts just a
19:57 little bit to spend almost a million dollars mowing the grass,
20:03 and I know it hurts you guys too because it’s got to come from
20:03 somewhere else.
20:03 Part of me is fiduciary responsibility. I want to know where it’s
20:07 going to come from. Do we have the 850 additional funding that
20:11 we can set aside? That’s one question that I have.
20:15 Also, I want to make sure I understand the role of the
20:19 contractor versus our team, because is it just in front of the
20:24 fence? I also hear from our schools frequently the areas that
20:29 are behind the fence that are still central areas and, of course,
20:33 those play fields, because when the grass is 9 to 12 inches high
20:38 or taller, we have snakes.
20:40 We have all kinds of things that cause a problem, so any clarity
20:45 on that?
20:46 I’m going to ask Jim to weigh in on that, since you know a
21:02 little bit more about this.
21:11 The contractor will basically mow around the school, around the
21:16 sidewalks, everything from around the building out to the street.
21:21 So behind the fence, but not out in the…
21:24 Not out in the play fields and things like that, yes. Currently,
21:27 that’s the way we do it. Our heavy equipment operators and
21:31 grounds crew do that. Our grounds maintenance techs do around
21:35 the school.
21:36 So we’re just taking that grounds maintenance tech and wanting
21:40 to reutilize them and then have contracted mowing do that part
21:44 of it.
21:45 Okay. So this should enable those 13, 14 employees, BPS
21:57 employees, to do more frequent field mowing. Okay, fantastic.
22:08 And then you had put in there on something about the current
22:08 contractors, so will these groups of nine schools, these
22:09 clusters,
22:10 will that, that’s not going to be in addition to, that’s just
22:12 kind of wiping this late cleaning we’re starting over.
22:15 Correct. Once we do the notice of award, and then once the board
22:19 awards the contract, then we’ll let our existing vendors know
22:22 that we’ll be transitioning to the new contract as of April 1st.
22:25 Okay. Are some of those the same?
22:28 Possibly.
22:29 Okay.
22:30 We’re purchase procurements evaluating all the bids, so I’m not
22:33 crystal clear on, but our existing vendors are in the mix.
22:36 Right. Well, I appreciate the secondary tertiary, so they’ll be
22:39 basically on call. So if we have extenuating circumstances, we
22:42 can call up the second line of defense.
22:45 Yes, but keep in mind, they’ll staff for this type of job, like
22:49 this is a fair amount of work, so whoever gets the bid award
22:52 will staff up for this, those that don’t will not necessarily
22:56 and probably, you know, they may be able to respond on a moment’s
23:00 notice, they may not because they won’t be staffed for the
23:03 project as a whole.
23:05 Right.
23:06 But we do want to have that opportunity to at least ask.
23:09 Right. Well, I thank you for answering the questions. I just,
23:12 you know, I mean, I was here for the goat conversation, and by
23:15 the way, we talked about a lot of things that day, and the only
23:18 thing that made the news was the goats.
23:21 But, you know, and that was, I appreciate always the creative
23:25 solutions that we come up with, but this is, as much as I do
23:29 hate to spend almost a million dollars on the grass, it affects
23:33 the learning environment, it affects our community, and our
23:36 community’s perception of the schools.
23:38 It affects safety, because when we do have more hiding places
23:41 for our, you know, creepy critters, we live in Florida, it
23:45 becomes a problem, and so very much appreciate you taking this
23:49 deep dive.
23:50 So I’m supportive.
23:52 Mr. Trent, anything to add?
23:54 Yeah.
23:55 Sue and I, we’ve gone way back talking about the appearance of
23:59 schools, so I’m glad we’re tackling this now.
24:02 I was in a school recently that was a contracted landscaping,
24:07 and they just couldn’t brag enough on how smooth it had gone
24:12 from one situation to the next, you know, that it was, they were
24:17 just very, very pleased.
24:19 And I’d like to see it continue, and I think it just makes a lot
24:23 of sense.
24:24 So we appreciate all the work for all of you, especially going
24:27 to every single site and walking through what we’re expecting to
24:31 have done.
24:32 We’re getting used to you guys doing 100 percent, so thank you
24:36 so much.
24:37 Thank you.
24:39 Quick question.
24:40 I wanted, I think you hit on this a little bit.
24:42 So you guys walked every single site, correct?
24:45 Those guys.
24:46 Those guys, okay.
24:47 And you did this with the contractor hand in hand, so the scope
24:49 of work they gave you was site specific to each one of the
24:52 schools, and they were comfortable with what they were doing
24:54 there.
24:55 Yes.
24:56 And then was that turned into us when it came time for the bid
24:59 for the procurement, so we have a very specific scope of what is
25:02 being done at each school site in case there’s ever a, “Hey, you
25:05 should have mowed this,” and they say, “No, that’s not in our
25:08 contract.”
25:09 I can’t say it’s specific to each site, but there’s a general
25:12 guideline of what’s to be mowed, and that was one of the reasons
25:16 we walked it, because we wanted them, everybody, to be on the
25:19 same page.
25:20 So, no, we didn’t, we don’t have, like, at this school you’re
25:23 going to mow this, this.
25:25 We did give them maps, so they do have that, but we felt it was
25:29 in the best interest of the district to have them walk the sites
25:32 with us, so there were no surprises.
25:35 And it took, like, three weeks to do that.
25:38 I imagine that would be quite a process, but I think it would be
25:41 smart of us just to make sure we have that clearly outlined in
25:44 the contract, because I could see where they could, we could end
25:46 up with an issue where it’s a, “Hey, you should have mowed this,”
25:49 and they’re saying, “No, that wasn’t part of what we talked
25:51 about.”
25:52 So when we look at that, that would make me feel a little more
25:55 comfortable with it.
25:56 I think it’s a great solution.
25:57 Obviously, we do get a lot of phone calls from people in the
25:59 community when it comes to the grounds maintenance, and as a
26:02 parent, my perspective is, if you’re not taking care of the
26:05 outside of the building, what makes me think that you’re going
26:06 to take care of the inside of the building?
26:07 Which is where my child’s at.
26:08 So I think it’s very, very smart of us to make sure we’re making
26:11 a focus on keeping our buildings appealing, and it helps the
26:14 neighborhood overall.
26:16 So my only one ask would be just to clearly define in those
26:20 contracts where the expectation is for mowing, so there can’t be
26:24 a pointing fingers kind of situation.
26:27 So the list I had on the second to last slide or so, that is
26:30 actual language from the contract, so what we don’t have, I don’t
26:34 think, is maps that are attached to each site, but we do have
26:38 the specifics on what’s in the contract expectation.
26:42 So that bulleted list of what we’re doing, that is taken exactly
26:47 from the RFQ or RFP, or ITB, it was an ITB.
26:51 Okay, so that’s, except for that piece that’s underlined, that’s
26:55 actual language in the invitation to bid.
26:58 Okay.
26:59 All right, no, I’m in favor of it, honestly, I think it solves a
27:02 huge issue that we have, and we get a lot of phone calls and
27:05 emails about the maintenance of the outside of the building,
27:07 especially sidewalks, that one gets, you know, a lot of phone
27:10 calls and maps.
27:11 So thank you for the presentation and being forward thinking on
27:14 a way to solve this, so hopefully next year we won’t have those
27:17 same phone calls.
27:18 All right, any other comments on this one?
27:21 If you look at the overall cost, too, at the number of sites
27:25 that we have, if you divide that by the amount of money, you
27:28 start to really see that it’s not as much as you think.
27:32 But to have, you know, 86 or 100 and something sites that we’re
27:36 going to be mowing at, you divide it by that, it becomes $800 or
27:39 $1,000 a year to be consistently mowed for the entire year,
27:43 which is, it’s understandable when you’re talking about
27:46 commercial mowing.
27:48 Yeah, it is pretty reasonable, and it’s really, the force
27:51 multiplier is kind of on the back end with our folks and being
27:55 able to get more work done at the schools that’s currently not
27:58 getting done, so I’m pretty excited about that, actually.
28:02 Yeah, really good.
28:04 All right, so our next topic that we have is the facility
28:07 maintenance and staffing budget update, and Sue, you have the
28:10 floor again.
28:11 Okay, so the purpose of this is just to kind of give you all a
28:15 little bit of a framework of our FY 25 budget requests, and I
28:19 know we’re moving into the era of zero-based budgeting, and I
28:24 just want to make sure that everybody understands kind of where
28:29 we are in facilities.
28:31 We are trying to be performance-driven, and by being performance-driven,
28:36 I can literally spend any resource we have in an excellent way
28:40 in our schools, and so you won’t be seeing budget reductions in
28:44 facilities, you’ll be seeing expectations of better performance
28:49 that comes with more resources.
28:51 I wanted to kind of just give you the framework of things that
28:55 we’ve been talking about and dive in a little bit to the capital
28:59 side of our house in maintenance.
29:02 The capital project or capital program cycle is coming up, and
29:05 you’ll be seeing that ahead of the FY 25 budget, and just wanted
29:09 to kind of let you know where we’re going and where we think we
29:12 should go with the capital side of the house relative to
29:16 maintenance.
29:17 So I’m going to give you guys a lot of information, probably
29:21 really fast.
29:22 You have seen some of this before.
29:25 Some of this you haven’t seen because we haven’t had the tools
29:28 to give you this information.
29:30 Jim’s team has implemented not only our facility assessment
29:33 project, but also we have new work order software, and so
29:37 between those two things, we have a really good handle on our
29:40 assets, so we can actually tell you how much stuff we have.
29:45 And now that we can tell you how much stuff we have, it’s pretty
29:49 scary because we have a lot of stuff.
29:52 But our current replacement value, over 2 billion, use that
29:55 number a lot.
29:56 Like we have a lot of stuff, and if you’re just focused on one
29:59 school or two schools, it seems kind of manageable, but over 85
30:04 schools, it’s a lot of stuff.
30:06 And this is a little bit more detail on the lot of stuff that we
30:12 have.
30:13 You know, 142 chillers, almost 1,000 transformers, it is a lot.
30:20 And we are pretty thinly staffed to maintain all of this stuff,
30:26 and you’ll see later in the presentation where we talk about
30:29 going to contracted maintenance much more out of necessity.
30:33 And we’re adding stuff pretty much every day, so this list keeps
30:38 growing.
30:39 This is our chiller team, and these guys do an incredibly good
30:44 job.
30:45 And chiller’s kind of the tip of the iceberg in terms of better
30:49 performance from your facilities group.
30:52 This is where we started with the sales surtax program in 2014.
30:57 We had seriously bad air conditioning issues, and we have done a
31:01 really good job of refreshing our chillers.
31:04 And you see every year as we go through our construction
31:07 contracts that we’re kind of doing a handful of chillers every
31:11 year.
31:12 And we’ve kind of gotten ourselves to a place where our chillers
31:16 are on a really pretty good replacement schedule.
31:20 So this is something that I’m really, really proud of.
31:23 A big asset to the district, very important to the learning
31:27 environment, and we’re doing pretty well.
31:30 The one thing that has really slayed us is when we need
31:35 temporary air for some reason, a chiller is down, it takes us a
31:39 year and a half to get a new chiller.
31:42 So our temporary air bill has been crazy high.
31:47 We literally could buy chillers for the amount of money that we
31:51 spend on temporary chillers.
31:53 And in fact, we recently bought a small temporary chiller trying
31:57 to avoid that circumstance.
31:59 But the heavy duty lead time that we have for temporary air is
32:03 one of the things that is impacting the budget on the
32:06 maintenance side.
32:08 So I also wanted to talk a little bit about our work order
32:11 software.
32:12 So we implemented this system in FY21, and we do about 36,000
32:18 work orders a year.
32:20 And every one of those 36,000 work orders has gone through one
32:23 of those two ladies that you see on the slide.
32:26 So we have two folks, and they manage all of those work order
32:31 systems.
32:32 As we do our zero-based budgeting, you might see us thinking
32:37 about some staff in terms of scheduling work.
32:42 So we’re looking at different types of positions, so you might
32:45 see some potential new positions coming on your agenda just to
32:49 kind of set the framework for making that happen.
32:52 So nothing that I’m ready to really talk about today other than
32:57 just to say this is a big area of our system.
33:01 And we put a lot of work through these two nice ladies in
33:04 maintenance that answer the phone and take care of anything that
33:08 comes through our impulse work order system.
33:11 So we do about 3,000 work orders a month, and the fourth bullet
33:15 there, 4,400 or 4,500 preventative maintenance work orders
33:21 created.
33:22 That is a huge, huge step for us.
33:26 This is kind of a distribution of our work orders.
33:31 You see about half of them are in the urgent or emergency.
33:35 About half of them are in routine, and that’s going to become
33:38 important later on.
33:39 But also 12.6% of all of our work orders are preventative
33:44 maintenance.
33:46 That number was zero in FY21, and I believe it was probably zero
33:51 prior to FY21.
33:53 So we had this monstrous backlog of work that we needed to do,
33:57 and I’m really proud of our team because we are now preserving
34:01 our assets versus just replacing them and forgetting about them.
34:05 We’re really changing the game in terms of how we do business,
34:07 and I’m super proud of our folks for the work that they’ve
34:10 accomplished here.
34:11 And as a result, I’m going to show you some pictures that just
34:14 kind of give you the sense of what it did look like and what it
34:17 looks like now.
34:18 This is little stuff, right?
34:20 We just scraped the rust off and put some paint on, but it’s so
34:23 impactful in terms of preserving the life of our assets.
34:27 And as you saw in the beginning, we have lots and lots of assets.
34:31 So our guys are like really making a difference in terms of
34:35 making sure our equipment remains reliable for our teachers and
34:40 our students.
34:42 So anyway, very proud of our preventative maintenance efforts.
34:47 And as we do more to refresh and rebuild and renew our major
34:51 assets in terms of like air conditioning and electrical and all
34:55 that, we can put more effort into preventative maintenance.
34:58 So there’s a big game changer this year in our maintenance
35:01 department.
35:02 So our staffing got lots of statistics about staff, but
35:08 basically we have about 100 of our 160 are allocated to the
35:13 trades.
35:14 And that means carpenters, electricians, that type of thing.
35:18 Fourteen of those are vacant.
35:21 This is a slide that just kind of shows you our increasing
35:24 amount of square footage and it’s about to go up again with the
35:28 new middle school and our sort of decreasing-ish amount of
35:36 people to do all of this maintenance.
35:39 If you look at this back in like the early 2000s, we had another
35:44 30 or so people that we have now working the trades.
35:49 So this is a concern.
35:52 This kind of graphically illustrates that a little more clearly.
35:55 So the Florida DOE recommended formula is one tech per 45,000
36:00 square feet.
36:01 So that’s this line.
36:03 And we’re at one tech for about 15,000 square feet or I’m sorry,
36:07 150,000 square feet.
36:09 So we’re about a third staffed as to where we should be in terms
36:13 of the trades.
36:14 So we’re always running like our hair is on fire, like literally
36:18 that’s how we operate pretty much 100% of the time.
36:22 We also struggle with vacancies, as do our contractors, trying
36:27 to find folks that can do this work for us.
36:31 And we literally have every single system. Like it is
36:45 complicated. We have air conditioning, electrical, plumbing,
36:47 carpentry, building automation systems, flooring, masonry.
36:47 I literally have any trade you can imagine, we have that need in
36:52 our schools.
36:53 And you can see we have staff, but typically we have vacancies
37:00 within all of our trades.
37:04 So I’m going to just give you a sense of where we’ve been
37:08 struggling.
37:10 And this is I think there’s four or seven positions that have
37:15 been vacant for a year-ish or more.
37:18 We cannot find another roofer. And sometimes this is churn and
37:22 sometimes this is just inability to fill the position.
37:27 Part of this is the rates that we pay. Part of this is just
37:31 these folks are not available.
37:34 So I think we have both challenges.
37:39 Similarly, some other trades that have been carrying vacancies
37:42 for several months.
37:44 And this is a graphical representation of this and you can kind
37:48 of see by trade how many folks we have versus how many folks we’re
37:54 missing.
37:55 So we have a couple of concerns around staffing. So first of all,
38:00 we have experienced people who are retiring.
38:04 So we have folks who know everything and they are retiring.
38:07 We also have new folks that are coming in that are eager and
38:11 excited to learn.
38:13 We teach them great stuff and then they find a job in the
38:16 private sector or in another public sector.
38:19 We compete with some of the other public sector employers here,
38:23 like the Port, for example, Kennedy Space Center for our tradespeople.
38:28 So we’re really in a competitive environment for skilled trades
38:33 workers here in Brevard.
38:36 So it’s pretty challenging to fill our vacancies.
38:40 We also have a situation where our needs are evolving because a
38:46 lot of the assets that we’re buying now have more technology
38:50 embedded in them.
38:52 So our chillers, our building automation systems, our lighting
38:55 systems, our intercoms, all of our security cameras, much more
39:00 high tech than they were ten years ago.
39:03 So the skill set that’s needed is different. In fact, Mr. Cheetah
39:06 and I have been, and Mr. Ross, we’ve been talking about is there
39:10 a better way to staff some of these maintenance projects.
39:16 So you might see maybe some positions coming from my department
39:20 going over to Russell’s department just because the skill set
39:23 that’s needed on that side of the house would better serve some
39:26 of the functions that we have in our budget and facilities.
39:30 So just something to give you a heads up on that we collectively
39:34 might be looking at what’s the better way to make sure that we
39:38 are maintaining those assets that have that high tech component
39:42 to them.
39:43 We’ve been, as I mentioned, going to more contracted work. And I’m
39:47 going to talk a little bit about the financial side.
39:51 Richard has developed this. Many of you, I think, are familiar
39:56 with Smartsheet. This is actually in Smartsheet. And if we want
40:00 to go into lots and lots of detail, I can pull it up.
40:02 But he tracks the budget pretty much on a daily basis. So on any
40:06 given day, we know where we are.
40:08 And I want to kind of highlight a couple of lines. So this gray
40:14 line is FY23. Green line is FY24. Blue line is our budget in
40:21 plant operations and maintenance.
40:25 And every year, we kind of do the same dance where we start our
40:30 year off with a backlog of work that we need to do because we
40:36 kind of ran out of money at the end of the prior fiscal year.
40:42 And so in May and June, we accumulate lots of work orders that
40:45 we don’t fund. And they sit there until July. And then the
40:49 system wipes them out. And then we reenter them all. And then we
40:53 do a bunch of work in July.
40:55 And we start spending money and implementing work. Now, there’s
40:59 very rarely a work order that we shouldn’t do. Like, we do have
41:03 a few where it’s like, no, we’re not going to do that.
41:06 But everything from, oh, my gosh, the air conditioning doesn’t
41:09 work to, hey, your tree is overhanging our property and needs to
41:13 be trimmed. That all goes through our system.
41:16 And Jim is in the position of having to prioritize those as to
41:20 whether we got to do it for our schools or whether this is
41:24 something that is bothering the neighbor and we just need to get
41:28 it done.
41:29 And all of those things run through this system and run through
41:34 this budget. So every year, we do a little bit more work. And
41:38 the work has gotten a little bit more expensive.
41:40 But in particular this year, I wanted you to notice that the
41:44 delta between where we are more or less today and where we were
41:49 a year ago is about $2 million.
41:52 And if you kind of keep that going, you are going to be up here
41:56 somewhere. So our delta is bigger.
42:00 Now, where we cover that is through facility renewal capital
42:03 that comes through the capital program, comes into kind of the
42:07 project side of the house.
42:09 And that’s about a $6.2-ish million piece of the capital plan.
42:14 And I kind of sit on that because I know that maintenance is
42:16 going to run out of money.
42:18 And so I start to help them as time goes on. So you see these
42:22 little inflection points. That’s when I’m moving money from the
42:26 project side over to the maintenance side to try to cover that.
42:30 But what I’m really going to be advocating for as we go forward
42:34 in FY25 is to fund maintenance properly so that we don’t have
42:38 the big dips in the funding that we are experiencing.
42:42 So as I mentioned, we sort of do the self-created backlog
42:45 process every year as we get towards the end of the fiscal year.
42:50 And in fiscal year ‘22, we had about three-quarters of a million
42:54 in deferred work, 155 requests, 92 days in queue.
42:58 Now, think about that. So three months people are waiting for us
43:01 to get the work done, and then we start over in July.
43:04 So it’s probably another month and a half to two months. So it
43:08 might be five months before we get whatever that work order
43:11 request is done.
43:13 Now, our kind of perspective is if we’re going to do it, we
43:16 might as well do it now versus do it five months from now.
43:20 Like the answer should be no, we’re not going to do it or yes,
43:22 we’re going to do it and we’re going to do it soon.
43:25 So the span of time that is sort of artificially created by our
43:29 wonky funding cycle is really not in good service to our schools.
43:35 So we’d like to fix that.
43:39 The other problem is that the fiscal year change order is right
43:43 in the summer construction season.
43:45 So it’s kind of the worst time to have these wonky funding
43:49 scenarios given the time that’s when we want to do most of our
43:54 work.
43:55 So anyway, let me talk a little bit about facility capital
43:59 renewal.
44:00 So as I mentioned, I get the $6.2 million on the project side of
44:03 the fence.
44:04 I kind of don’t do much with that. Like I used to do some
44:07 projects with it, and now it just sort of sits there because I
44:10 worry about being able to fund anything they need on the
44:13 maintenance side.
44:14 I worry about whether we’re going to have any storms. We had a
44:18 couple fires.
44:19 I just, you know, do little stuff with it, but I’m not doing
44:21 anything substantial with that because I’m concerned about not
44:25 being able to get to the end of the fiscal year or until
44:28 December when we get our new capital revenue.
44:32 So put these graphs together to kind of illustrate that point.
44:36 We get our capital money in December.
44:39 So property taxes come in. We get a big chunk of money. I get
44:44 about $6.2, $6.3.
44:46 It varies every year for the facility capital renewal project,
44:50 and then we kind of spend it down.
44:53 And you see the kind of the low point here. July, August,
44:56 September, where I’ve got about a million and a half, two
44:59 million left.
45:00 That’s storm season. That’s school starting season.
45:04 And so it just concerns me that that’s kind of the lowest point
45:08 in our revenue stream in our department, and it coincides with a
45:14 potentially high demand season, especially concerning this year.
45:19 This yellow line is this year, is we’ve really had to supplant
45:22 maintenance, so I’m already into maintenance $1.6 million from
45:26 the project side to the maintenance side of the house, and you’re
45:30 estimating and saw in the graph we estimate another $2 million.
45:34 So this shows kind of the cyclical nature of this. So we get our
45:38 money in December, and these are actual numbers.
45:41 I pulled this out of AS400. So we get down to, you know, a
45:44 million and change. We go back up. We go back down.
45:47 And you see the lowest point of this is the worst possible time.
45:52 So really motivated to try to fix this so we don’t have this
45:57 situation.
45:58 This table shows you the transfer from facility capital renewal
46:02 to maintenance.
46:03 And, you know, it used to be kind of in the 800 to a million and
46:05 a half, 800,000 to a million and a half, but we’re going to be
46:09 probably over three and a half million this year by the time it’s
46:12 all said and done, because what’s coming into the work order
46:14 system is work that needs to be done.
46:16 And so I don’t want to just like not do it, so use the money on
46:20 my side of the house to the maintenance side of the house, but
46:24 it’s getting to where it’s a little bit unmanageable.
46:27 So why is this happening? So cost increasing, you know, we’re
46:31 using more contracted labor because of the fact that we don’t
46:33 have our in-house labor, more expensive just in general.
46:38 Price increases in labor and materials, lead time is crazy, and
46:44 we just have more costs that we have to cover to do the same
46:49 work.
46:50 This series of graphs shows you the change in contracted labor.
46:55 So this is our contracted labor, and this is our materials and
46:59 supplies line, which kind of stayed about flat because the cost
47:04 of materials and supplies has gone up.
47:06 So even though we may be using less materials and supplies, the
47:09 cost of those materials and supplies is about the same, but you
47:12 can clearly see that our percent of total budget is creeping up
47:17 to about 70-ish percent of the total maintenance budget is now
47:21 in contracted services.
47:25 So the other reason that our costs are increasing is our scope
47:28 is increasing. We’ve done a lot more work in athletics, we’ve
47:32 done big projects, but now we’re maintaining tracks and we want
47:36 to maintain our stuff.
47:38 Like we used to do projects and then that’s it, we do a project
47:41 in another 20 years. Now we want to actively do maintenance. We’ve
47:46 also added a lot of assets.
47:48 We have many more cameras than we used to have in the district.
47:52 Somebody’s got to maintain those. We’ve got to maintain the
47:56 miles of fences that we put up.
47:58 A lot of things that we are doing differently in the district in
48:02 service to our schools and our students, but all of that needs
48:06 to be maintained so the scope and the landscape over which we
48:10 need to do maintenance has been increasing over the years.
48:14 We’re also still getting older. Our schools are getting older.
48:18 We have some underground situations that I’m nervous about.
48:23 When we talk about site drainage, we’re going to need to be
48:27 doing some major drainage, major parking. That’s a set of assets
48:31 we haven’t really dealt with.
48:33 We also have aging water and sewer utilities. You all see the
48:37 water line broke at such and such a school. We should be getting
48:42 in there and doing some rehab on our water and sewer facilities.
48:48 A lot of underground stuff that we don’t know about that is
48:53 starting to age and break. I think the final thing is just an
49:00 expectation of a higher level of service. I would say we have a
49:03 higher expectation internally.
49:03 We used to be able to say we don’t have enough resources. Too
49:07 bad we’re not helping you. But now we’d like to help our schools.
49:12 We’d like to recognize the importance of our work in the
49:17 educational mission. People can’t learn if we don’t have air
49:19 conditioning.
49:19 If the mowing isn’t done, folks want to go somewhere else. So we
49:23 have a really important role and we have a higher expectation
49:27 and performance for ourselves.
49:30 So this is how we’re funded. The maintenance budget is about 17.3
49:36 million and we get about 11.3 of that through LCI as the capital
49:41 money.
49:42 So when you see the capital plan off the top, 11.3 has been
49:47 coming to maintenance.
49:50 And then this shows you the whole capital pie is about 101
49:54 million. The maintenance salaries and operating is 11.3 million.
50:00 We’ve got debt service comes out of that, property insurance,
50:02 charter schools.
50:03 This is a 20% share this year and that’s going on that glide
50:08 path going up. So that’ll be at least double next year if not
50:14 more. And then what’s left is for other capital projects. So
50:20 this is where we fund school buses and technology.
50:20 The 6.2 million that’s facility capital renewal is part of that
50:24 41.1 million and all of the other capital projects that you see
50:28 in the annual cycle.
50:30 This gives you kind of a detail of the 41.1 million that’s the
50:35 other capital projects. And this is the capital renewal amount
50:39 that I kind of sit over off to the side in order to support
50:43 maintenance and other unexpected things that come up.
50:47 So we’re thinking that there will be about a, Cindy said about a
50:51 4% increase in capital revenue in FY 25. So hopefully we can
50:56 support some additional resources going to the maintenance side
51:01 of the house.
51:03 So our goals are improving service to school, continue improving
51:08 our operations, maintaining the assets that we have and doing
51:12 that properly.
51:14 So this is kind of the end game and our recommendations are to
51:18 properly fund maintenance and our suggestion is to increase the
51:23 off the top capital allocation by three and a half million and
51:27 bringing that up to 14.8 million in FY 25.
51:31 So I say that because that will get rid of that big dip at the
51:36 worst part of the year. It will allow them to continue working
51:41 and will eliminate all those crazy budget machinations that we
51:46 do every year because our money keeps going like this.
51:51 So it’ll help us a lot but it may also be at the expense of
51:55 other capital projects so that’s why I wanted to show you the
51:59 full gamut of you know this is what we spend that pie on.
52:03 And if we take a bigger piece of the pie for maintenance and the
52:06 pie isn’t getting bigger. There will be some impacts to that.
52:10 But when we do our capital allocation process, and we do that
52:13 collaboratively with other members of cabinet.
52:16 I’m going to advocate for increasing that off the top share to
52:20 maintenance.
52:21 Also on the general fund side, just wanted to make you aware of
52:25 a couple of things will be asking for what is in the mowing
52:29 arena, and that’ll be an $850,000 ish change in FY 25.
52:35 We would like to redo our facility assessment. That’s the
52:39 project that we did in 2019 just ahead of the 2020 surtax
52:45 renewal.
52:46 It’s about time to update that we’re talking with a vendor about
52:49 scope and I think we’re going to broaden the scope because last
52:52 time we didn’t do our athletic facilities or portables or some
52:55 things that we left out to try to contain costs so we’re working
53:00 on that and should have a better budget figure but that’s about,
53:03 you know, broad level estimate.
53:04 And there’s just the cost of materials and the cost of services
53:07 that are not able to be funded through capital, specifically in
53:11 the grounds maintenance arena are going up so you will likely
53:15 see some increase requests in our general fund budget.
53:19 And I think, I think that’s it. So, I appreciate your time today
53:23 and I know this is like a lot of stuff, but I wanted you all to
53:27 see kind of what we’re doing, where we’re going and where we
53:31 think we can make some improvements with funding our operation a
53:35 little bit differently.
53:36 So, happy to take any questions. Thank you, Sue board members.
53:40 Any questions.
53:47 So I had a question about the change so you’re saying you’re
53:55 advocating for an increase in just overall, or is it a shift in
54:00 in the timing of it because I’m trying to figure out is it a one
54:05 time shift in timing, or is it just an overall, we’re going to
54:10 from this point on your, you know, have a $3 million increase to
54:14 the budget.
54:15 It is a three and a half million dollar increase to the budget
54:18 that will continue year after year. So we’ll still have that
54:22 cycle but it won’t get so close to the bottom, it won’t get so
54:25 close to the bottom.
54:26 In fact, you may not see that again because that graph was the
54:31 capital the facility capital renewal that was money on my side
54:35 of the fence. So if I don’t have to put any over on James Jim
54:39 side of the fence.
54:41 I won’t be so worried about that. Okay, so it doesn’t it. It
54:46 affects this this thing of affects the maintenance budget
54:50 because so much of that is going over to help them.
54:54 Okay, but if I don’t have to send so much over there. I can live
54:57 with that on my side and just manage the project costs. Okay.
55:03 That makes sense. And then, so we have, we do capital transfers
55:08 into the general fund. So I know you said things like mowing and
55:13 grounds maintenance can’t you has to be out of the general fund
55:17 but can it be taken care of with a capital transfer to the
55:21 general fund is that some of what you’re talking about.
55:23 No, no. So the capital transfer to the general fund goes into
55:28 Jim’s department for work that can be funded by capital. So
55:33 everything else. Right. Right. Okay.
55:37 We’ve had that conversation before I’m just trying to figure out
55:42 because actually this is the first time that I realized the
55:46 statute actually has written specifically you can’t know out of
55:51 capital yet. I seems like that should have been on some of the
55:53 deregulation bills that are work that’s going on.
55:54 Can we can we get that out of there. Because it seems like as a
56:08 school board, we should be able to handle things like that. So,
56:09 oddly, we can buy equipment. So, so there you see grounds
56:10 equipment in the capital plan but you don’t see any grounds
56:10 contract services.
56:11 Right. Or people over there. But just for mowing. Just for mowing.
56:16 Right. That needs to go to the D reg next year. All right, let’s
56:20 add that to the list please somebody may make a note. So again,
56:24 I just kind of like the other question what won’t get done so
56:24 you talked about if we if we have an increase of $3 million this
56:29 year then maybe we just won’t see an increase in the capital
56:32 dollars available.
56:34 But is that kind of how you’re anticipating this is going to go
56:38 this year is that we just this year it’ll be more flat because
56:41 we’re going to take this $3 million and move it to maintenance,
56:45 so I think it’ll be kind of flat.
56:48 And I also think that I may not need 6.2 million I might be able
56:53 to say look maybe 5.8 million so like I might be able to absorb
56:59 some of that on the side of the facility capital renewal. As we
57:04 start to fund maintenance more appropriately, the less I have to
57:04 worry about that I think that number can probably go down a
57:06 little bit.
57:07 That’s true. I just think about all the agenda items that I’ve
57:11 seen that it was a sales surtax project, but the scope of the
57:15 project went beyond the sales surtax plan and so it came out of
57:19 that that bucket.
57:21 Or it was something that couldn’t be done by that and so that
57:29 bucket is something that we’ve used so frequently. We need it
57:37 quite frequently and thankfully the surtax has done so much
57:37 better continue to do so much better than we anticipated so we
57:37 have that extra fun but there’s always that.
57:37 If it can’t be done right you know and do you absorb that out of
57:41 that funding so, but I will tell you Sue you you always do such
57:45 a great job in your team and very have proved yourself so
57:49 trustworthy I’m, I’m have to surrender to your expertise.
57:54 All your of your whole team and you know I mean I know how to
57:57 turn the lawnmower on I mean that’s just about it so, but I
58:01 appreciate the serious work you thought about the funding
58:05 because it is we have really seen a shift even since my
58:08 beginning time on the board to this idea of let’s take care of
58:13 it better on the front end.
58:14 So it’s not so expensive on the back end unfortunately it takes
58:17 a while to see that payoff, but I think we’re starting to see
58:20 some of that so hopefully we’ll keep moving forward I, I
58:23 appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.
58:26 Thank you, Mr. Susan.
58:28 You’re good, Mr. Trent. So, good. All right. No, I think this is
58:54 a great presentation honestly and I the facility assessment I
58:54 that part of it I’m very excited about honestly it was one of
58:54 the things I wrote was to go through each one of our facilities
58:54 every bit of property that we own and sit down with not only
58:54 just us from the building department or whoever it is but have
58:54 the staff at the school because I walk classroom sometimes and
58:54 silly little things like up we’re missing a tile here, little
58:54 things right which end up being a work order.
58:56 But just so we have a good a good idea of what needs to be fixed
58:59 in each one of our school sites.
59:01 You know, I think it’s interesting it’s very your slides are are
59:04 spot on, they highlight a lot of the issues we have we’re
59:07 increasing in square footage, we’re decreasing in personnel now
59:10 we have a longer backlog of work order obviously we can see like
59:14 what’s happening here.
59:15 And again, you guys do a phenomenal job so we have the utmost
59:18 respect I know I have the utmost respect for you and your team
59:21 there and what you guys are doing so you have my blessing to go
59:24 forward I trust all the things that you’re doing because you’re
59:27 doing an amazing job so we appreciate you.
59:30 Thank you miss right and thank you for it I will say like all of
59:33 the facility capital programming work is a collaborative effort
59:37 with my peers on cabinet and their, their support like we work
59:42 together on this really well so we all give and take.
59:45 And so, even though I’m the first one to tell you about all this.
59:49 I want to absolutely be a team player with my friends on cabinet
59:52 because we, we want to do the best work for our schools as a
59:55 whole, right, so if solving my problem entirely means it creates
59:59 a problem with them, we might solve my problem 80%, and try to
1:00:03 so.
1:00:03 So I want everybody that’s my peers back there to understand
1:00:06 that we will be working together on this and we want to do our
1:00:10 best job for the school so thank you very much.
1:00:13 Thank you so much we appreciate you.
1:00:19 Nope. All right. So we are on to our next topic which is the Orchid
1:00:22 Lake educational facilities impact fee deferral contract I think
1:00:26 we have some gentlemen here that are going to present to us.
1:00:34 This right just by way of introduction. I want to introduce Mr
1:00:48 Larson Mr crump.
1:00:50 They are Mr Larson’s representing the development group and scrums
1:00:54 representing housing for the homeless. They had proposed an
1:00:58 impact fee exemption for a portion of their project and wanted
1:01:01 an opportunity for them to discuss that with you before we put
1:01:05 it on the agenda.
1:01:06 Thank you.
1:01:08 Thank you. My name is Jason Larson on the housing trust group,
1:01:12 very affordable housing developer based in coconut Grove, and we
1:01:16 partnered with the rod cramp and his organization, housing for
1:01:21 homeless.
1:01:22 That’s based in Rockledge has a lot of experience in dealing
1:01:26 with homeless households and homeless families in Brevard County.
1:01:31 And then in 2001, we teamed up and we submitted an application
1:01:37 for funding, Florida housing for the development of a 90 unit
1:01:43 apartment complex called Orchid Lake.
1:01:46 It’s in cocoa.
1:01:48 It’s generally at the see the south east corner of Michigan
1:01:57 Avenue and clearly.
1:02:01 And we applied the program is a special set aside for homeless
1:02:05 families so of the 90 units, 45 are set aside for for homeless
1:02:10 households we’ve got one two and three bedroom units.
1:02:15 One is the Brevard County Housing Authority to get funding to
1:02:20 cover the rental income for the homeless units. So families that
1:02:25 qualify will only have to pay a portion of what their income is.
1:02:30 And so, they won’t be included from living there because they
1:02:35 don’t make enough money.
1:02:37 So, you know, we kind of working with this. We had come across
1:02:47 the
1:02:48 homeless development that the housing authority, or that the I’m
1:02:53 sorry the school board had just paid it in St. St. Stephen’s way
1:02:57 with a long term deferral of the school fee waivers, the school
1:03:02 fees.
1:03:03 And so we thought that it might be an opportunity for for us and
1:03:07 work at lake to maybe partner with the, with the school board,
1:03:12 and we give the school board.
1:03:15 Some participation in this development, such that we could work
1:03:19 with the school board for referrals or anything with your home
1:03:24 with your students that are experiencing homelessness in their
1:03:29 families.
1:03:30 So, so we wanted to come here and speak with you about.
1:03:37 Yeah, the executive director for housing for homeless, we’ve
1:03:41 been in Brevard since 1989.
1:03:44 We currently have around 90 units 90 properties across the
1:03:49 county that we find that we house homeless and low income. A
1:03:54 third of them are for veterans and their families.
1:03:58 And I think what a walk at lake is going to be different now,
1:04:03 the homeless support that had provides is as you know they
1:04:07 provide more funding than any other government authority, but it’s
1:04:13 not, it’s really just about housing it isn’t about.
1:04:17 Well, when you’ve got them in there. Now what are you going to
1:04:20 do, and there’s very little funding supply supplied for the
1:04:23 support of the people once they’re in there and children
1:04:26 particularly suffer from this lack of support.
1:04:29 So, to be frank, over many of the years that we’ve housed people,
1:04:33 we bring them in, and they, we help and stabilize the situation,
1:04:37 but they leave eventually and they 85% 85 90% of our residents
1:04:42 are able to transition to their own properties but they keep the
1:04:47 same issues, children’s issues, mental health issues substance
1:04:51 abuse, because there isn’t the support available isn’t the
1:04:56 funding for support or kid lakes going to be different we not
1:05:00 only have case management for the families.
1:05:03 We have what we call residents service coordinators who will
1:05:07 work with the case manager identify what the issues are that the
1:05:11 children or the adults may be having go out and find the health
1:05:16 health service provider that can provide that support, follow
1:05:20 through to make
1:05:21 sure it’s delivered and measure the results. And that is for
1:05:25 nobody else in provide is doing this at all there is nobody even
1:05:29 approaching this, and it’s so important because you’ll probably
1:05:33 well know yourself.
1:05:35 The medical health care communities is hopelessly fragmented. It
1:05:39 is very difficult case manager working you hear people talk
1:05:42 about case managers, they don’t have any time to go out and try
1:05:46 and find out who they should talk to about getting support.
1:05:50 And this way we feel we’re getting outstanding better support
1:05:53 with, we’re going to see spectacular results in, in the
1:05:56 improvement of family conditions.
1:05:59 And we don’t keep these homeless families separated on the other
1:06:03 half will be for what we call workforce housing that could be
1:06:07 first responders, it could be.
1:06:10 It could be teachers that could be firemen. They, they live will
1:06:24 next, they’ll be on the same landing as the homeless. The idea
1:06:25 is you set a model for the homeless families to aspire to
1:06:25 children will see the children of other families, higher income
1:06:27 level with prospects.
1:06:29 It’s, it starts to break the cycle of homelessness.
1:06:34 So, kind of our ask was for deferral school fees, it would, even
1:06:39 though it is $30 million development in this deferral would be
1:06:45 worth about $85,000 so in the grand scheme the development it
1:06:51 you know it’s not a huge sum money.
1:06:54 But we thought it would also give a relationship and we get the
1:06:58 school board kind of a financial interest in the property, such
1:07:03 that we could work together on any programs that you have or
1:07:07 initiatives that you have on housing any of your students or any
1:07:12 of the families
1:07:12 that come to the, that you understand are housing insecure, just
1:07:20 kind of wanted to explore that.
1:07:25 Okay, thank you. The board members Do you have any questions or
1:07:32 questions for you. So it says that 45 of these units will be
1:07:44 reserved for families with students enrolled in provided public
1:07:44 schools.
1:07:44 I’m looking at the sorry I’m looking at the domain.
1:07:52 Yeah, sorry.
1:07:55 So I mean, is that a guarantee is that a long term vision like
1:08:00 is that written somewhere. Yeah, yes, yes.
1:08:05 It’s part of the funding is controlled part of it comes through
1:08:09 the homeless coalition thing and the HUD funding is such that it’s
1:08:14 only allowed for families that are resident in provide.
1:08:19 Yeah, so it would be for families from Brevard County now we,
1:08:23 because we have some other commitments for the other funding we
1:08:28 couldn’t guarantee that the unit would only be occupied at all
1:08:33 times with, you know, child that’s hard schools.
1:08:36 But certainly are, you know, we do have, you know, the homeless
1:08:40 units that are set aside or 18 one bedrooms but we do have 19
1:08:44 two bedrooms and eight three bit three bedroom units that, you
1:08:48 know, certainly will will house children.
1:08:52 At some point, and it’s a it’s a 50 year set aside for the
1:08:56 building.
1:08:57 So, although we couldn’t guarantee that at all times it would be
1:09:01 students, but certainly majority of the time, the goal. Right.
1:09:07 I’m assuming that this is something that’s already, you know, it’s
1:09:10 all done with the city of cocoa I’ve seen the document there
1:09:13 with Mayor Blake.
1:09:15 I appreciate this just as an educator and as a school member for
1:09:18 provide public schools because, you know, we have over. I don’t
1:09:21 know at this point with the numbers anymore but about 3000
1:09:25 students homeless and in transition and one of my first
1:09:28 experiences
1:09:29 as an educator at Harbor City was in the daycare line after
1:09:32 school and watching families who legitimately lived in their
1:09:36 cars, all the things packed inside and on top of it, come in day
1:09:40 in and day out, and so having affordable housing in communities
1:09:45 that are in dire need
1:09:46 is meeting a need for our students and ultimately if we can
1:09:49 provide a consistent home for our kids. It’s benefiting us as a
1:09:52 school system as well because that stability is is absolutely
1:09:55 critical and especially in a city where the medium income is
1:09:59 about
1:10:00 $2,000. So, I mean to me it’s a drop in the bucket I don’t, I
1:10:06 don’t see any red flags as why I would have a problem with it
1:10:11 but somebody else might see something I don’t.
1:10:16 Thank you gentlemen for coming and sharing with us and thank you
1:10:19 for the work you’re doing. I am in support of, you know, every
1:10:23 community, trying to find solutions for affordable housing
1:10:26 especially in the area where we live, I very much appreciate
1:10:30 that.
1:10:30 I’m sure I understood the, the, the actual ask. And so, our, our
1:10:36 discussion items says that based on the deferral contract that
1:10:41 the impact fees the $87,000 will be deferred with a lien record
1:10:48 on the property if their property is sold or no longer being
1:10:53 used in accordance with the terms of the contract,
1:10:55 whether it’s being used for affordable housing or including half
1:10:59 dedicated to, you know, meeting the needs of the homeless, the
1:11:04 educational impact fees become due and payable but then it says
1:11:08 if the developer full, assuming that means that should be
1:11:11 fulfilled, the terms of the deferral contract for 10 years the lien
1:11:15 will be extinguished so it kind of says two different things
1:11:19 that it says to me, you know, if it’s, you know, if it any, if
1:11:24 the.
1:11:24 If it becomes something else and what was originally intended,
1:11:28 then those impact fees are payable, but not if it stays what is
1:11:31 supposed to be doing for 10 years, am I understanding that
1:11:35 correctly.
1:11:36 Yeah, that language we actually took from the St. Stephen’s way.
1:11:40 Okay, so that that’s kind of where that came from but as a
1:11:43 practical matter, we have a deed restriction from Florida
1:11:47 housing, who’s providing the, you know, $25 million of the
1:11:51 funding as a 50 year set aside, you know, and must serve, you
1:11:56 know, at least 45 homeless families.
1:11:58 Okay, so we’re sure that you know that for that 50 years this is
1:12:01 what it has to be and it can’t even if it’s sold to someone else
1:12:04 and it will follow that. Yeah, it runs with the land so even if
1:12:08 it was sold to someone else it would still be affordable.
1:12:11 I’ll just share with you and share with the board. And I do have
1:12:29 a little bit of hesitation and I haven’t had conversations with
1:12:29 with Miss hand about this talk to about it briefly with Dr. Rendell
1:12:29 but I do see a difference between the process that you guys are
1:12:29 following versus St.
1:12:29 Stephen’s way it’s it’s some of the same work. But, you know, St.
1:12:33 Stephen’s way from the ground up has been a donation based work
1:12:38 that getting the property doing the doing the building, you know,
1:12:42 it’s been a very slow process.
1:12:45 But I, and I know that there’s been some there’s some what’s
1:12:48 profit and what’s nonprofit and there’s coordination between it
1:12:52 but I have some hesitation to do the exact same thing for this
1:12:56 project, as far as impact these one because we do, we do need
1:13:00 those
1:13:00 fees we need those fees for what we’re doing next door we do
1:13:03 need this space for what we’re doing for all of our communities
1:13:06 across the district. But, which includes building schools for
1:13:10 the students who are coming in and including the ones that have
1:13:14 needs, but that is my hesitation
1:13:15 about the differences and those two projects, and I’m not saying
1:13:19 I can’t over that can’t be overcome in my mind but I’ll just
1:13:22 have to have some other conversations any any, you know, any
1:13:26 input into that, that you would have, I would appreciate it
1:13:29 either now or later or,
1:13:31 you know, those are some questions that I’m having to ask.
1:13:35 That’s a really good question you’re comparing you know private
1:13:39 donations to taxpayers taxpayers are funding, what we’re doing,
1:13:43 whether with whichever way you describe it.
1:13:47 But I think that the level of support that we are going to give
1:13:51 the children that are in our thing is because the end result is,
1:13:55 what’s the best for the children.
1:13:58 We will have a slash pad. We will have a play area.
1:14:04 And even though it’s, it’s still subsidized funding, it is the
1:14:08 focus is on protection of the children. And I don’t think you’ll
1:14:12 find any other development in bravado that’s giving the same
1:14:16 kind of support for the families that we will be doing in Orchid
1:14:21 Lake.
1:14:22 You know, Rob deals with the programs for the, for the homeless
1:14:26 units but kind of the idea is that, you know, because the school
1:14:30 board is is giving a contribution to the development that there
1:14:34 could be created some type of special special relationship where,
1:14:40 you know, it could be like with St. St. Stephen’s Way, you know,
1:14:44 as opposed to just going through the, you know, the coalition of
1:14:49 homeless providers waitlist that there might be some way to do
1:14:53 direct referrals or something.
1:14:56 That’s the way that that works, Rob, and we are like St. Stephen’s
1:15:01 Way that is very locally focused, we know St. Stephen’s Way, I
1:15:06 know John and the people on the board there.
1:15:10 Orchid Lake, Jason goes away after a couple of years, he’s a
1:15:14 developer, it’s our property then. We own it. We will in fact,
1:15:18 as soon as it before it even opens we’re moving our rock siege
1:15:22 office into the, onto the site we will operate from there.
1:15:26 That will be our headquarters.
1:15:28 So it’s very much a local operation.
1:15:32 Thank you. I appreciate that.
1:15:34 All right, Mr. Susan.
1:15:36 Thank you.
1:15:38 I got a couple of quick questions. Can you run that unit
1:15:41 breakdown again so many one bedroom two bedroom three bedroom,
1:15:44 if you had that. Sure, yes. So for the unit set aside for the
1:15:48 homeless families.
1:15:50 It’s 18 one bedroom units, one bedroom one bath, 19 two bedroom
1:15:55 two bath, and eight three bedroom two bath.
1:15:59 And basically the same unit count for the workforce units that
1:16:05 that are 60% ami maximum. So, for the workforce units, one just
1:16:11 needs to income qualify. Thank you.
1:16:14 Next question is is towards that workforce piece.
1:16:18 Yeah, I mean, I’ve been talking to my teachers and all these
1:16:21 other things and Sue knows that when that gets mentioned I get a
1:16:25 little excited about some things. Can you explain a little bit
1:16:28 more. Is there an application process are they going to be
1:16:29 applying through with their jobs like how does that work.
1:16:31 Or is it just because it’s within an income that matches what we
1:16:34 have for those jobs like if you can explain some of that. Sure,
1:16:37 so, so there is a application process and then you know as part
1:16:41 of the you know filling out a lease application and everything
1:16:45 we do you know background checks
1:16:46 and things like that. But as part of that is also income income
1:16:49 verification that goes into the file. And because it’s tax
1:16:54 credit finance. That’s an important part of ensuring compliance
1:16:59 with the tax credit regulations in the Florida housing comes in
1:17:05 audits those files and so we typically want to see
1:17:10 some at least two and a half times the rental rate to make sure
1:17:14 that there’s enough income that families can pay the rent.
1:17:18 And then there are some maximums so like for this year in Brevard
1:17:25 County and let’s say our 60% unit on a two bedroom. So let’s let’s
1:17:33 just say well let’s just say it’s a two person family in a, in a
1:17:36 one bedroom.
1:17:37 The maximum would be 41,280.
1:17:41 And you could in a, you know, we do allow two people per bedroom
1:17:45 so on a three bedroom you could have a family as large as six
1:17:49 other we typically don’t see that much but you could go up to 59,880.
1:17:56 That’s on the side that max does that mean the max that family
1:17:59 can make in order to become a part of it. Yeah, that’s, that’s
1:18:04 the most of a family could make. Now if a family has been there,
1:18:08 I think for two years, you can make more than that, because the
1:18:12 idea is that you don’t want to hinder people from, you know,
1:18:15 getting better jobs or things like that and you can stay in the
1:18:18 unit so.
1:18:19 And that is so. So who owns and man, I’m sorry I’m just
1:18:22 fascinated by what’s happening. Right. And I apologize if some
1:18:26 of these may go outside the scope, not sorry.
1:18:29 Who manages the overall process of what you’re saying, is that
1:18:32 your organization or is that another organization that runs the
1:18:36 workforce side of this how it worked.
1:18:40 The housing trust group have a management subsidiary housing
1:18:43 trust group management who manage many properties, they will do
1:18:46 the day take for three years they do to the day to day running
1:18:50 of the operation.
1:18:51 We take care of the of the homeless clients of the homeless
1:18:55 residents. We can we provide a case manager we provide a program
1:18:59 director and we provide this resident services coordinator.
1:19:03 And after three years, we take over the whole property. So, you
1:19:10 manage the workforce in the beginning for the first three years
1:19:11 he manages homeless and then after three years you take over the
1:19:13 right.
1:19:14 Yeah, as the, as the for profit developer and we are done, you
1:19:17 know, we currently have about 8000 units, like the affordable
1:19:21 units in our portfolio and over the past you know 25 years we
1:19:24 probably done 20,000 units.
1:19:27 Providing the financial guarantees and the kind of development
1:19:31 expertise. Yeah. To, you know, physically get the property
1:19:36 funded built.
1:19:37 You know there is a tax credit investor which is Raymond James
1:19:41 contributed about $16 million that way it works is it’s a
1:19:45 federal tax credit that then gets sold to private business so
1:19:49 typically it’s banks that buy into it so you.
1:19:53 You turn kind of a federal source into a private investment. And
1:19:56 then you’ve got you know private business interest involved and
1:19:59 so that’s you know what helps ensure that the property is
1:20:02 maintained and sure, and the property has to be, you know, kept
1:20:06 in compliance and maintained.
1:20:09 You know for 50 years and the the tax credit period is 15 years.
1:20:17 So, so after that Rob’s organization has a right of first
1:20:20 refusal to buy out the limited partner guy, and we’re in, you
1:20:24 know, just as long as we have to maintain operating deficit
1:20:27 guarantees on the property, which is typically three years and
1:20:31 since this is you know
1:20:33 a special needs, you know primarily special needs property,
1:20:36 which you know Rob’s organization specializes in and housing for
1:20:40 homeless already has 90 other units around the county. Yeah, we’re
1:20:45 exiting from the partnership.
1:20:47 So, let me ask you this now on that workforce side, and even on
1:20:51 the homeless side, there’s a bare minimum that they pay. Is
1:20:55 there an offsetting cost that you guys fill in to pay your
1:20:59 organization so like if I’m on the workforce side, and my rent
1:21:03 is $1,000 and I pay that is the federal
1:21:05 government subsidy subsidizing that and paying on the workforce
1:21:09 side but the, the rents are extremely competitive you’re talking
1:21:14 about three bedroom 13. Well yeah let’s say, let’s see 60%.
1:21:19 It’s around there from one to three bedroom is around 900 up to
1:21:22 1300 Now you can tell me where you can find the three bedroom.
1:21:28 Yeah, it’s ridiculous. I know on the homeless side, the deal
1:21:32 with the housing vouchers, which is what we’re getting for the,
1:21:37 for the housing authority, they’re guaranteed that they know
1:21:41 tenant ever pays more than 30% of their income ever.
1:21:46 That’s the deal. That’s good now what their income is small or
1:21:51 large, they never paid more than 30%. And then. Okay.
1:21:56 All right backtracking just a little bit.
1:22:01 All right, so got control over ease management, when I’m looking
1:22:04 at the 41,059 thousand many of our just so you know many of our
1:22:07 beginning teachers make above 41,000 so they wouldn’t qualify on
1:22:11 the website.
1:22:12 But you may have some families that have multiple units that may
1:22:15 qualify for that. We also have is bus drivers custodians
1:22:18 everybody else that may want to do that that’s where a lot of
1:22:20 this affordable housing comes into play.
1:22:23 I appreciate that I may have some follow up but I think I’ve
1:22:26 gone through thank you for taking the time to explain that.
1:22:29 I appreciate the partnership between public and private, I do, I
1:22:32 understand that we need to do this more often. I’m, you know, my
1:22:36 heart goes out to you for doing what you do for the
1:22:38 organizations and stuff like that throughout our county with 90
1:22:42 other units
1:22:42 that you’re working with so thank you.
1:22:44 I might want some other follow up but I just wanted to mention
1:22:47 that first.
1:22:48 Thank you, Mr. Trent, do you have questions.
1:22:51 Okay. All right. Thank you guys for coming and presenting to us
1:22:56 today and giving us a little overview. I was Campbell you said
1:22:59 it very well I guess I do have a bit of pause in the deferral
1:23:01 and I’m going to be honest and transparent I commend what you’re
1:23:03 doing.
1:23:03 I think it’s a great need that our community absolutely has. But
1:23:06 this application is significantly different than the St. Stephen’s
1:23:09 Way application and how it came to us and so that’s the part
1:23:12 where I just have a bit of hesitation because they came through
1:23:15 scraping every penny they possibly could.
1:23:18 You guys presented a projected expense with this already in
1:23:21 there. One of the other issues that I’m kind of seeing is when
1:23:25 we look at this contract for the deferral on page four of this
1:23:29 contract it says that if you transfer this property that the
1:23:31 deferral will only remain in place, should it be transferred to
1:23:35 another non for profit organization, and you’re not a non for
1:23:38 profit right now and so that seems to almost kind of counter.
1:23:42 That’s where I’m just having the issue I understand, I
1:23:45 understand your why I 100% do, but there is some things here
1:23:48 that just give me a bit of pause, and mainly it’s how it was
1:23:51 presented versus how the other one was presented and then being
1:23:55 so drastically different.
1:23:57 I know this, the community that it serves is the same and there’s
1:24:00 a huge need for this so I support this project 100% but I just
1:24:04 want to be honest and transparent on where I’m kind of having a
1:24:07 hiccup on saying okay we agree with deferral of these impact
1:24:10 fees that we obviously you sat through two presentations on our
1:24:13 capital projects that we have so you’ve seen there’s a lot of
1:24:15 deficit there that we need so that’s where my, if I’m being
1:24:18 honest and transparent with you where I have a bit of an issue.
1:24:22 Just a quick response on that St. Stephen’s Way aren’t the only
1:24:25 ones who are scraping for expense. The 30 million did not
1:24:28 include any not $1 in support of the, of the residents we’re
1:24:32 putting in that all the services I talked to you about, we have
1:24:36 to go out and find and do the same thing we have to scrape
1:24:39 wherever we could find funding to support those services.
1:24:42 So it’s, it’s not, you know, a complete package wasn’t had never
1:24:46 didn’t still don’t do this they still it’s a tragedy. I do
1:24:50 nothing to support clients once they’re in.
1:24:53 And one other quick question I had is, once they’re there do
1:24:56 they only, they have a year long lease and then do they, how
1:24:59 long can they qualify under the homeless portion of this, or is
1:25:03 it.
1:25:04 It’s called permanent supportive housing and that’s what it is
1:25:07 it’s permanent as long as they qualify. Okay, so they, so it’s
1:25:10 not like their lease can be extended forever then, so to speak.
1:25:15 Just like our other 90 product we recertify them every once a
1:25:18 year. And as long as their incomes fine and they’ve met all the
1:25:21 conditions of the lease and fine. Okay. All right. But yeah
1:25:25 their annual leases to start, they are annually, we have, we do
1:25:29 have a culture of trying to motivate them to kind of move on and
1:25:33 get into the private market.
1:25:33 The problem with the county now is, is the rate, the rates, the
1:25:37 market rates are so high above our subsidized rates. They can’t
1:25:41 move out, there’s no way for them to go.
1:25:44 It is a problem that you’re 100% correct because it does almost
1:25:47 set up a situation where there is no way out, so to speak, or to
1:25:51 better, you know what I mean, because the rent right now the
1:25:54 average rent is astronomical so I appreciate you guys
1:25:57 tremendously I may have some more follow up questions as I kind
1:26:00 of go through this and talk with Sue a little bit more and.
1:26:02 I’m sure we’ll be able to have your contact information should
1:26:04 we have follow up questions for them. Is that okay. Sure. Yes.
1:26:08 Anytime. Can I follow one and one thing to add to because of the
1:26:12 way the tax credit program works is the actual partnership that
1:26:15 owns the property.
1:26:17 It can’t be a nonprofit, but the general partner, who is, is Rob
1:26:22 is a nonprofit so when we applied to Florida housing for the
1:26:26 funding we actually qualified as a nonprofit application, kind
1:26:31 of under the Florida housing rules.
1:26:34 But just because the, the, the tax credit is something that, you
1:26:38 know, we’ll go to somebody’s tax liability which means that they
1:26:42 are for profit kind of by definition, kind of the entity that
1:26:46 that owns the property isn’t, you know, 100% nonprofit but like
1:26:52 I say the general
1:26:52 partner is in at closing there was a right of first refusal that
1:26:56 Rob’s housing for homeless sign. And so the tax credit investor
1:27:01 will sell their interest at the end of the tax credit period to
1:27:05 housing for homeless for $1, and then of course we’re exiting
1:27:10 before
1:27:11 and so it will at some point, become a, you know, 100% nonprofit,
1:27:19 once the tax credit periods run out. Okay. Thank you. I think.
1:27:23 Yeah, just real quick going back to it because I didn’t kind of
1:27:26 give you what my where I was at with things.
1:27:28 Can we. One of the things that have recently come in some of the
1:27:42 research that I’ve been reading is is that our number one
1:27:42 problem with many of the issues that we deal with in schools, is
1:27:42 both the family structure and the house that they live in right.
1:27:42 You’re bringing able to provide that that house that they live
1:27:44 in which also helps with the family structure. But what I was
1:27:47 going to ask you is is that when I’m looking at this between the
1:27:50 19 two bedrooms in the eight three bedrooms that gives us 27.
1:27:54 I know for a fact that area that we have there has 27 parents
1:27:57 that have children that are inside of our schools that would
1:28:00 qualify, but I didn’t hear a definitive.
1:28:03 Yes, there may be a first right of refusal for parents who have
1:28:06 children that are inside your schools to be a part of it is that
1:28:09 a possibility that we may be able to talk about splash pads and
1:28:12 everything else I figure that would be your goal was just
1:28:15 curious for that.
1:28:16 Absolutely we will work towards that you get some pushback from
1:28:21 from other people with other interests but yes the idea would be
1:28:25 to try and give priority to local people.
1:28:29 It’s very much. That’s the way we’ve never had, you know, you
1:28:33 hear of this nimby you’re familiar I’m sure with the phrase nimby
1:28:36 isn’t never happened here we had Mike Blake, as our biggest
1:28:40 cheerleader from day one.
1:28:42 And because we stressed it was local and it’s going to be for
1:28:45 local so shame on those if we go out now, push it out to a much
1:28:49 wider communities cocoa for us.
1:28:51 I was just, we have a lot of like Miss Campbell was saying, the
1:28:54 revenue that we received from certain places goes directly into
1:28:57 funding. Some of those areas and some of our major funding goes
1:29:00 into support some of the children that are inside that area.
1:29:03 If we were asking to offset that from something else. It would
1:29:06 be nice to know that the children that we are dealing with are
1:29:08 benefiting from that which would reduce the load that we have on
1:29:11 our employees based upon the structure that they’re given inside.
1:29:15 So I appreciate what you’re doing and I just want to let you
1:29:17 know where my head’s at with the approval and stuff like that.
1:29:20 So thank you.
1:29:21 Yeah, that’s kind of the idea is that by by doing the fee deferral.
1:29:25 Now the school board has a financial interest effectively in the
1:29:28 property so it should, you know, I would think and we have to.
1:29:33 I was speaking with Rob, because we’re kind of dealing
1:29:36 with multiple different organizations,
1:29:37 the homeless coalition.
1:29:40 But I mean, in my mind, it should get the school board
1:29:42 to see the table with, you know.
1:29:44 - And I would also say on the workforce side also,
1:29:47 if we could be a part of that.
1:29:49 I know that you’re saying that there’s there,
1:29:51 but if I’m gonna, if I feel like Ms. Campbell was saying,
1:29:54 that’s $86,000, I know in the scheme of the 30 million,
1:29:57 it’s not that much because I’ve done,
1:29:59 my dad did construction for many years.
1:30:02 But for us, it means a lot, right?
1:30:04 And for us, I would like to try to squeeze
1:30:06 as much as I can out of you guys for my kids,
1:30:09 is what it basically comes down to,
1:30:10 and I hope you would understand that.
1:30:12 - No, I think from a family’s point of view,
1:30:14 it doesn’t matter which unit they’re in,
1:30:15 whether they’re homeless or the workforce,
1:30:17 they’re gonna get the same level of care and attention.
1:30:19 - I tell you, my wife, she knows where all the great
1:30:22 splash pads are in the multi-county area.
1:30:25 And I will tell you, I visited them many times
1:30:28 out in the middle of nowhere, a new splash pad will go in,
1:30:29 my wife knows about it.
1:30:31 So I know how much that means to families,
1:30:32 especially some of the families that need a break.
1:30:34 So thank you for innovating this project and getting there.
1:30:38 I think for me, it would be having that seat at the table
1:30:40 and how that plays out, and I appreciate all your work.
1:30:43 Thank you.
1:30:44 - Thank you, John, I appreciate you.
1:30:45 - And you’re all invited to the ribbon-cutting.
1:30:48 - Okay.
1:30:49 - When is the projected time of completion?
1:30:50 - Can we bring our swim trunks and be in the splash pad?
1:30:52 - Sorry?
1:30:52 - Can I bring my swim trunks and be in the splash pad?
1:30:55 Or at least my kids?
1:30:56 - That’s a no, sir.
1:30:57 (laughing)
1:30:58 When is your estimated time of completion for this project?
1:31:00 - Right now, it’s probably going to be April, May time.
1:31:04 So ribbon-cutting, well, we’re moving into our clubhouse.
1:31:07 We’re moving into our office this year.
1:31:08 Yeah, we’re office first.
1:31:10 But then the buildings will be complete by about,
1:31:14 the last building, it’s four buildings plus a clubhouse.
1:31:17 And the last building’s complete by June.
1:31:19 So ribbon-cutting will be April, May time.
1:31:22 - Wow, okay.
1:31:23 All right, good work, thank you.
1:31:24 - You need our approval pretty quick.
1:31:28 - I know, we did it at the groundbreaking.
1:31:31 I gave it to him then and it turned into a revival meeting.
1:31:33 (laughing)
1:31:35 - I believe that.
1:31:36 Thank you gentlemen.
1:31:37 - All right, thank you very much.
1:31:38 - Thank you.
1:31:40 - Madam Chair, if we could take a break
1:31:41 while we sub for the next presentation,
1:31:43 give everybody a chance to.
1:31:45 - Absolutely, let’s take a five minute break.
1:31:46 All right.
1:31:58 (gentle music)
1:37:44 - All right, welcome back.
1:37:45 Our next topic is our VPK update.
1:37:48 So I’m gonna turn the floor over to Ms. Harris
1:37:49 and Ms. Chappie.
1:37:51 - Good afternoon.
1:37:52 We are very excited to be here
1:37:53 because we watched your offsite workshops
1:37:57 and VPK and possible exploring,
1:38:01 expansion opportunities came up.
1:38:04 So I’m going to turn it over to Ms. Chappie,
1:38:06 our director of early childhood,
1:38:08 that some of the things as she works through,
1:38:11 we’re going to inform you of all the pre-K opportunities.
1:38:14 And we are hoping that everyone either here live
1:38:17 or that is tuning in will have more clarity
1:38:19 ‘cause we have a lot of pre-K programs.
1:38:21 And so I think sometimes it can get confusing
1:38:24 for our stakeholders.
1:38:25 So we hope that this provides clarity
1:38:27 of what we currently have,
1:38:29 what it looks like if we want to pursue
1:38:32 some expansion opportunities,
1:38:33 just from an expense side and the requirements of the state,
1:38:37 as far as facility and teacher certification,
1:38:41 we wanna explore that.
1:38:42 And then we hope to have takeaways from our board
1:38:46 of what you want us to dive deeper into,
1:38:48 to explore with greater detail for possible expansion,
1:38:52 so that we can come back in a few weeks
1:38:53 with updates of the information that we find
1:38:57 based on that.
1:38:58 - All right, thank you.
1:39:01 Okay, we’re gonna start with our agenda today.
1:39:07 Okay, there we go.
1:39:08 All right, so we’re gonna start like Mrs. Harris said,
1:39:10 we’re gonna go over some program descriptions
1:39:12 because when we hear VPK, we think of all of our programs,
1:39:17 but we have VPK programs, Head Start VPK programs,
1:39:21 we have our pre-K ESC.
1:39:22 So we’re gonna kind of do a deep dive
1:39:24 into what those programs look like
1:39:26 and where we have those programs.
1:39:28 You will see that I’ve provided everyone a map today.
1:39:31 It’s kind of an overview of Brevard County
1:39:34 and it has little school houses to show you
1:39:36 where we do currently have pre-K programs in our district.
1:39:40 So you can see we have them from the north
1:39:43 all the way to the south end of the county.
1:39:45 All right, so we’re gonna do that.
1:39:46 We’re gonna talk about our locations,
1:39:49 our pre-kindergarten programs and locations,
1:39:52 teaching preschool and Florida public schools.
1:39:54 What are the requirements necessary for our teachers?
1:39:58 What are the required elements for VPK program?
1:40:01 Being that the VPK program is a state funded program,
1:40:04 we work with our early learning coalition
1:40:06 and we have funding that comes through them
1:40:09 through the state and because of that,
1:40:11 we have requirements that we have to meet
1:40:12 in order to have their programs in our schools.
1:40:15 What furnitures and materials are required
1:40:17 in our VPK classrooms and do a little overview
1:40:21 of what the expenses look like for that
1:40:23 and recruitment steps to maximize our current enrollment.
1:40:28 Okay, so for our program descriptions,
1:40:30 first we’re gonna start with our step forward VPK programs.
1:40:35 They are a class of 20 children
1:40:38 with a teacher to a child ratio of one to 10.
1:40:41 So in each of our step forward VPK classrooms,
1:40:45 you’ll have one teacher, one assistant and 10 students.
1:40:50 Children are eligible to attend the program
1:40:52 by living in the attendance area of the school.
1:40:55 So they must be zoned for the school they are attending
1:40:57 for a step forward VPK program, okay.
1:41:01 Next we have our blended VPK programs.
1:41:04 Our blended VPK programs consist of 18 children.
1:41:08 There’s 10 general education students
1:41:11 and up to eight ESE students in those classrooms.
1:41:16 Those classrooms, the children do not have to live
1:41:19 in the area to be in those programs.
1:41:23 We have high school VPK programs.
1:41:25 We have four high schools that currently house VPK programs
1:41:30 and they are run through our CTE program
1:41:33 and they have 20 children with a ratio of one to 10.
1:41:36 One teacher, one assistant and then there’s also
1:41:39 high school students in there
1:41:40 that are taking it as a CTE class.
1:41:50 We have our Head Start VPK program.
1:41:52 Head Start is a federally funded program
1:41:54 in which enrollment must adhere to family income guidelines.
1:41:57 Those classes house up to 20 children also.
1:42:01 Then we have our pre-K VE program,
1:42:03 exceptional student education program
1:42:05 that provides for the educational needs of students
1:42:07 with IEPs who are placed according to their home address
1:42:10 or designated service school.
1:42:12 So that is based on wherever they feel
1:42:15 the child’s needs will best be met.
1:42:19 So now we’re gonna look at our programs and locations.
1:42:21 So we’re gonna start with our Step Forward VPK.
1:42:24 Currently we have 15 classes in our schools
1:42:27 and here’s a list of the schools and the number of classes
1:42:30 that they currently have and how many children
1:42:33 can be served in those classrooms.
1:42:36 So Step Forward can serve up to 300 children currently.
1:42:41 - I just wanna add for these schools with Step Forward
1:42:44 that our District Title I funding offsets that full day.
1:42:48 And so this is where we have district funding
1:42:51 from Title I that supports this program being full day.
1:42:55 - Thank you.
1:42:57 Then we have our blended VPK.
1:42:59 Currently we have 17 classrooms
1:43:02 serving 306 children, up to 306.
1:43:07 It shows you the number of children
1:43:08 that are eligible to be in the classrooms.
1:43:10 It does not necessarily mean that these classes are full.
1:43:19 - Our Head Start VPK at 19 locations
1:43:24 serving up to 380 children.
1:43:34 - And while she’s flipping over, I’ll just interject
1:43:37 ‘cause I know you spend a lot of time
1:43:38 with Head Start information.
1:43:41 But the reason that this is not that 624 spots
1:43:44 is because Head Start also has a three-year-old program.
1:43:48 So for today, we’re just talking about four-year-olds.
1:43:52 - And then we have our high school CTE programs
1:43:54 that are four locations, Merritt Island High,
1:43:57 Palm Bay High, Satellite High, and Bear High.
1:43:59 And we can have up to 80 children in those classrooms.
1:44:06 And then we do have our Head Start 3s.
1:44:08 So the Head Start 3s are only 17 children to a classroom.
1:44:13 They are fully funded through Head Start.
1:44:15 Our Head Start 4-year-old programs,
1:44:17 that is funded through Title I and Head Start
1:44:20 because it’s a VPK program.
1:44:22 Head Start 3s are fully funded through Head Start.
1:44:25 And we have them at 15 school sites
1:44:27 serving up to 255 children.
1:44:31 - Those aren’t full day, correct?
1:44:34 - Yes, they are.
1:44:35 - They are full day, okay.
1:44:35 - They are full day.
1:44:36 - And that’s a good question because our certificates,
1:44:39 the state program through the certificates
1:44:42 is a three-hour school day.
1:44:43 So we allocate Head Start and Title I funds
1:44:46 in order to provide a full school day.
1:44:48 - Even for the three-year-olds.
1:44:55 Okay, then we have our Pre-K VE.
1:44:57 These are programs that are funded through FTE
1:45:01 because these children have been staffed
1:45:02 into an ESC program.
1:45:05 And we have currently 50 school sites or 50 classes
1:45:10 with Pre-K VE students serving 557 children in our district.
1:45:16 Okay.
1:45:26 Now, here are our schools that currently
1:45:28 do not have a VPK or Pre-K VE program.
1:45:34 The majority of these schools are not Title I schools,
1:45:37 as Mrs. Harris said.
1:45:38 In order for us to do the full day for our VPK students,
1:45:42 we have to place our step forward classrooms
1:45:44 in Title I schools in order to get
1:45:46 the additional funding to be able to staff the classroom
1:45:50 and meet the needs of the full day.
1:45:58 We currently have approximately 120 private providers
1:46:02 throughout the county that also do VPK.
1:46:05 And I know at your workshop,
1:46:06 I heard you discuss the private providers.
1:46:08 So we do have 120 private providers.
1:46:11 And that’s changing all the time,
1:46:12 but that’s an approximate number
1:46:14 that we do try to work with the Early Learning Coalition
1:46:17 with on getting information between us
1:46:20 and what they do at their programs
1:46:24 to have them aligned up with what we do for VPS.
1:46:30 So here is kind of an overview of VPK programs.
1:46:34 VPK step forward, total schools offering the program 12,
1:46:38 step forward with inclusion.
1:46:40 That’s where we have a step forward classroom,
1:46:42 but we have two slots in each of those classrooms
1:46:44 so we can have an ESE student in them.
1:46:47 We have that at nine sites.
1:46:49 We have our blended gen ed students at 17,
1:46:53 blended ex-ed at 17 programs, Head Start VPK 12,
1:46:58 Head Start three-year-olds 12 sites,
1:46:59 CT High School four, pre-K VE 37.
1:47:03 And itinerant services are where we’re meeting the needs
1:47:06 of four-year-olds and possibly three-year-olds
1:47:09 that their parents are,
1:47:10 you might have heard them called drive-ins.
1:47:12 That’s where parents will drive their child to the school.
1:47:16 They receive speech and language services or whatever,
1:47:19 you know, maybe OT services,
1:47:21 and then the parent takes them home.
1:47:23 So we currently have 76 children receiving
1:47:26 itinerant services that are four-year-olds.
1:47:28 But total right now in our schools,
1:47:30 we are serving the needs of 1,409 pre-K students.
1:47:38 And now we’re gonna look at our current openings
1:47:40 because like I said, not all of our spots are full.
1:47:43 Currently in our Step Forward and blended VPK,
1:47:46 we have 31 openings across the district.
1:47:50 In our CTE VPK High School programs, we have 20 openings.
1:47:54 And in our Head Start VPK and three-year-old programs,
1:47:57 we have 34 openings.
1:47:59 So we have total of 85 openings currently
1:48:02 for children in our programs.
1:48:05 - And this is where, to me, it’s gonna take a whole village
1:48:09 because we’ve had to actually move classes
1:48:11 or in some cases collapse classes due to low enrollment,
1:48:16 but we know the students are out there.
1:48:18 But if you are a first-time parent of a pre-K child,
1:48:22 you just may not know that BPS is a provider.
1:48:25 And so we wanna continue to grow in that area
1:48:27 because we wanna ensure that any student with Step Forward,
1:48:31 we’ve even, she mentioned that you have to live in the zone,
1:48:35 but if we have zoned, if we have spots available
1:48:38 and you are outside of the zone,
1:48:39 we have helped you to get into those programs
1:48:42 just ‘cause we want children in the seats
1:48:44 behind a certified teacher in our classrooms.
1:48:48 - You have a handout that looks like this in front of you.
1:48:51 And over on the left-hand side,
1:48:53 it’ll show you the school up at the top of each area.
1:48:56 It’ll show you whether it’s a Step Forward, a blended,
1:48:58 or a Head Start VPK program, and it does go to the back.
1:49:01 And it will show you the ARs for the area
1:49:05 that it’s in, North, Central, South.
1:49:07 And then it will tell you what the current enrollment is.
1:49:11 It has the data up at the top
1:49:12 because we do track it by the month.
1:49:14 And you can see over on the far right-hand side
1:49:17 how many open slots we currently have at those schools.
1:49:20 Like right now at Cape View Elementary,
1:49:21 we have nine openings.
1:49:24 Okay, yeah.
1:49:26 - And can they come in any point in the year?
1:49:28 - Yes, any point in the year.
1:49:30 They just have to get their certificate
1:49:31 through the Early Learning Coalition
1:49:33 or qualify through Head Start and then get a certificate
1:49:37 through the Early Learning Coalition.
1:49:40 So I thought this would help you see
1:49:42 where we have openings, okay?
1:49:48 - Well, it’s good to see really separate, you know,
1:49:50 Cape View being at the top of the list.
1:49:52 I mean, there’s not a lot of openings.
1:49:54 - No, there aren’t.
1:49:54 It’s really just a few spread out
1:49:56 throughout the district, but okay.
1:49:59 So what are the requirements
1:50:00 to teach pre-kindergarten Florida public schools?
1:50:03 There’s a lot of requirements.
1:50:05 First of all, the teacher has to have a bachelor’s degree
1:50:07 or higher from an approved teacher education program
1:50:10 to teach BPK in a public school system.
1:50:15 Florida’s certification in one of the two areas,
1:50:17 either pre-kindergarten, primary ed,
1:50:20 ages three through grade three,
1:50:22 or preschool education, birth to age four.
1:50:27 So the first thing they have to do is complete
1:50:29 an approved teacher preparation program,
1:50:31 including a 10-week field experience
1:50:33 in a preschool setting.
1:50:35 Step two, they have to take and pass
1:50:36 the required Florida teacher certification examinations,
1:50:39 beginning with the general knowledge test,
1:50:41 essay subtest, English language skills subtest,
1:50:44 reading and math, and take and pass the test
1:50:46 for either the pre-kindergarten, primary education,
1:50:49 or preschool education, and apply for
1:50:51 and maintain the education certificate.
1:50:55 They are not allowed to be out of field
1:50:57 to teach in our BPK classrooms.
1:50:59 You often hear that, oh, that teacher’s
1:51:01 just out of field for this year.
1:51:02 To be in a pre-K, or to be in a BPK classroom,
1:51:06 the teacher cannot be out of field.
1:51:08 They have to be certified.
1:51:10 - Conversely, if I’m a private provider
1:51:12 and I have a private childcare,
1:51:15 they will meet these, you know, the courses,
1:51:19 but they don’t have to be a certified teacher.
1:51:21 And so that’s what we really want our community
1:51:23 to know, too, is our teachers are certified teachers.
1:51:28 And I’m not saying that there are not high-quality programs
1:51:31 that are private, I’m just saying the bar is very high
1:51:35 for who is selected to teach in our pre-K settings
1:51:38 due to this requirement in public schools.
1:51:40 - So in a little bit, we’re gonna kinda talk about marketing
1:51:42 and how we need, that’s one of the things
1:51:44 that we need to get out to the community,
1:51:46 is that our teachers are certified teachers.
1:51:51 - Okay, so what does a BPK classroom look like
1:51:53 to set up furniture and materials to open a BPK classroom?
1:51:58 These prices are all current because back with COVID,
1:52:02 through the Early Learning Coalition in the state,
1:52:05 we received a large grant that enabled us
1:52:08 to purchase materials for all of our BPK classrooms
1:52:11 to update them according to the state standards,
1:52:14 how they wanted them, and that’s what the money
1:52:16 had to be used for when we received it.
1:52:18 So we redid all of our BPK classrooms in Brevard County
1:52:22 within the last two years.
1:52:25 So the furniture– - I sat on that rug
1:52:27 on Friday. (laughing)
1:52:29 - I would say all of our BPK classrooms
1:52:31 should look just like this.
1:52:33 It should be the model you see when you go to your schools
1:52:35 and have BPK classrooms.
1:52:38 So the furniture is 18,000.
1:52:41 The curriculum is 3,700.
1:52:44 Learning materials, 8,500.
1:52:46 There’s a lot of hands-on materials in a BPK classroom.
1:52:50 So the cost to set up the room is $30,950.
1:52:55 But look how nice it looks. (laughing)
1:52:58 Looks so nice.
1:53:00 Okay, so required elements for BPK programs.
1:53:04 We are required by the state to meet certain requirements
1:53:07 for our outdoor space.
1:53:09 45 square foot of open space per child.
1:53:13 The structural equipment, the playground equipment,
1:53:15 must be appropriate for four to six-year-olds.
1:53:18 Many of our schools have five-year-old playgrounds
1:53:21 for their kindergartens,
1:53:22 but they aren’t necessarily approved for four-year-olds.
1:53:26 So that’s something that we always have to look at.
1:53:28 Is there a playground that is able to be used
1:53:31 by the four-year-olds?
1:53:32 And if you have a three-year-old program,
1:53:34 then you also have to make sure
1:53:35 that it’s able to be used by your three-year-olds.
1:53:38 Enclosed with fencing, four feet or higher,
1:53:41 and mulch area is six inch deep.
1:53:43 You heard the son talking about keeping that mulch raked
1:53:48 and everything, that’s critical,
1:53:49 ‘cause when they fall, they break.
1:53:52 And a designated shade area is preferred.
1:53:55 You know, they like the big shade areas,
1:53:57 but if not, then you have to have at least a small area
1:54:00 where the children can get out of the sun.
1:54:03 The indoor space, 35 square foot open space
1:54:06 per child in the classroom.
1:54:09 Sometimes we hear like, oh, this classroom is big enough.
1:54:12 Actually, for the little ones,
1:54:13 sometimes you need a bigger space,
1:54:15 ‘cause they have to have the 35 square foot
1:54:18 open space per child.
1:54:19 There must be a bathroom and a sink
1:54:21 accessible in the classroom,
1:54:24 and space to have designated learning centers,
1:54:26 and appropriate size furniture,
1:54:28 and also appropriate size bathroom facilities.
1:54:31 Sometimes the facilities just aren’t quite right
1:54:34 for four-year-olds, so we have to make sure
1:54:36 that that’s appropriate when we’re looking at requirements.
1:54:39 - Is this the same for a private provider as it is for us?
1:54:43 - For private providers, this is the same.
1:54:45 - Okay.
1:54:47 - This is where it gets tricky
1:54:48 when we’re looking at moving programs, it’s the playgrounds.
1:54:51 The playgrounds become the tricky element,
1:54:53 because like Ms. Jethi said,
1:54:55 they could have the kindergarten with the playground,
1:54:59 but if it’s not certified for the four-year-olds,
1:55:01 then we’re talking with Sue about,
1:55:05 you know, where is there 40,000 for a playground?
1:55:10 And that’s where I have that right there.
1:55:12 New playground with ground cover is approximately $40,000,
1:55:16 and that’s if you don’t have to remove an old playground.
1:55:20 If you have an old playground that’s,
1:55:22 we have that at one school right now
1:55:23 where we’re having to remove a playground,
1:55:25 then you have to add in the cost of that,
1:55:27 and then fixing the ground and everything
1:55:30 in order to put in the new playground.
1:55:32 So playgrounds are very costly.
1:55:37 - Okay, so right now, when we look at our schools
1:55:39 that are below 85% capacity,
1:55:43 because when we’re looking at where could we put a new VPK,
1:55:47 well, you have to have the space in a school.
1:55:49 So currently, these are our schools
1:55:52 that are below 85% capacity with our K through six children.
1:55:57 The only school out there that’s Title I currently
1:55:59 is Apollo Elementary.
1:56:01 So the only place that we could look
1:56:03 at possibly starting a new VPK using Title I funding
1:56:08 would be Apollo at this time.
1:56:10 The other schools, we would have to look at some other way
1:56:12 to do the funding sources.
1:56:17 - And as you look at that list,
1:56:18 that’s where we want to just highlight some areas
1:56:23 that we can explore.
1:56:24 So some districts go to half day,
1:56:26 so that you’re looking at what is the funds generated
1:56:29 off the certificate, and what would be the offset
1:56:32 of Fund 100.
1:56:34 Some do fee-based programs,
1:56:37 where parents are paying for the act-carrying.
1:56:40 You see that a lot in the private sector.
1:56:41 So a private sector may say, okay,
1:56:44 you can come for the three hour,
1:56:45 but then it’s XYZ dollars to pay.
1:56:48 So we could explore some fee-based opportunities.
1:56:51 And then we could also look at generating sessions.
1:56:56 So we would have a morning session and afternoon session.
1:56:59 And so parents would select,
1:57:01 I want my child to go to the afternoon session,
1:57:03 so it’s five days a week.
1:57:04 But the combination of that,
1:57:06 now that does bring some challenges, as you can imagine.
1:57:10 But those are just some of the possible options
1:57:13 that we would be able to explore and get more data,
1:57:17 with Apollo being the only one that we have a funding source
1:57:21 that’s allowable to offset that full day.
1:57:24 - And one other thing is that we always have to consider
1:57:27 is that we have to look at,
1:57:29 what does the enrollment look like in the future enrollment
1:57:32 out of school?
1:57:33 Because if they only have one classroom available,
1:57:36 and we think that in a year,
1:57:38 there’s a new neighborhood going in or something,
1:57:39 and that their enrollment is going to increase
1:57:41 for their K through six children,
1:57:44 we would need those classrooms possibly for K through six.
1:57:47 And then we’d have to relocate the VPK,
1:57:49 because K through six have access to our schools first.
1:57:54 All right, you also in front of you have a funding
1:57:56 and expense in a VPK classroom sheet.
1:58:00 This isn’t on a slide,
1:58:02 but it just shows you for our VPK hours,
1:58:05 a VPK child attends school for, we get now,
1:58:10 like Ms. Harris said, we have half day programs
1:58:12 and whole day programs with VPK and our private providers.
1:58:16 We do a full day program,
1:58:17 but we only get money for 540 hours
1:58:22 of a child attendant in VPK.
1:58:24 And we get $5.42 per hour.
1:58:28 So it’s $2,926 per year for a child
1:58:32 to attend our VPK programs.
1:58:34 And so if you look at the across the top,
1:58:36 it shows you by classroom,
1:58:38 that’s $58,000 for a class of 20 children that we bring in.
1:58:44 So that’s when you’re looking at the teacher salary,
1:58:47 and then we have an IA in the classroom.
1:58:50 That’s why we use the Title I funding.
1:58:53 So we also have some just expenses
1:58:58 that we incur throughout the year.
1:59:01 All of these expenses
1:59:02 are through our Title I grant currently,
1:59:06 because the VPK dollars go to salaries.
1:59:09 So all the other expenses currently for our VPK programs
1:59:14 either come from Title I grant funding or through Head Start.
1:59:20 Our pre-K ESC, that funding comes through,
1:59:22 like I said earlier, FTE dollars.
1:59:32 Okay, and then finally recruitment steps
1:59:35 to maximize enrollment.
1:59:38 Having over 80 openings currently,
1:59:40 what can we do to get the word out better?
1:59:43 We want all seats filled.
1:59:46 We want all seats filled,
1:59:47 especially if we’re thinking about looking at expanding,
1:59:49 we wanna fill the seats we currently have first.
1:59:53 So how can we do that?
1:59:54 Well, we can work through our Early Learning Coalition.
1:59:58 Priscilla DeNino, our VPK coordinator,
2:00:03 an Early Childhood Coordinator,
2:00:04 she is on the board with the Early Learning Coalition.
2:00:07 So she is our direct connect to them,
2:00:09 and she works tirelessly with them
2:00:11 to try and get the word out to the community.
2:00:16 But we wanna do more,
2:00:18 and we have some ideas over here.
2:00:22 We do our school marquees
2:00:23 when we do our kindergarten transition
2:00:25 and kindergarten orientation and our VPK registration,
2:00:28 but we wanna continue that
2:00:29 and get more out on our webpages and Facebook.
2:00:33 We already do have a great partnership
2:00:35 with Government Community Relations.
2:00:38 We wanna do more through our Thrive by Five
2:00:40 to help parents know how to go
2:00:42 to the Early Learning Coalition and get that certificate
2:00:45 so they can get their child involved in our VPK programs,
2:00:48 and use other means of communication through the district
2:00:52 to get parents into our programs.
2:00:57 - I think, too, when we think of the impact
2:01:00 that VPK programs have on school readiness,
2:01:03 like we have a lot of research behind that,
2:01:05 but if you spent time in a school,
2:01:07 you can tell the difference between a child
2:01:08 who has had a schooling experience
2:01:10 and one who has not yet had that by kindergarten.
2:01:13 But when I think of the achievement gap
2:01:16 is very small in kindergarten,
2:01:18 and I know later we’re gonna talk about some data,
2:01:20 but I can’t help but think of the game changer
2:01:23 we could provide for students
2:01:25 that are entering kindergarten,
2:01:26 which is their first formal experience,
2:01:30 that just when they know how to do school,
2:01:33 they understand that there’s gonna be times
2:01:36 where we have to do things we don’t want to do.
2:01:38 It’s the social interactions.
2:01:40 It is the learning through play,
2:01:42 that it’s an environment that just readies them
2:01:46 for there is such a thing as letters and sounds,
2:01:49 and all of those foundational skills.
2:01:51 And when I think of how to get into our communities
2:01:56 so that we’re making sure, especially in those schools
2:01:59 where we have readiness rates
2:02:00 that are not where we collectively want them to be yet,
2:02:04 and I think of the parent that it’s their first child.
2:02:08 I know we’ve talked, and if it’s my first child,
2:02:11 I don’t even know what the school system offers,
2:02:16 and I think this is why we are trying
2:02:18 to get into our faith-based settings.
2:02:20 We’re trying to get to our community stakeholders.
2:02:23 Every time you see a little one,
2:02:26 I remember at Clear Lake at the back-to-school event,
2:02:29 a little boy with a backpack that was falling off his back.
2:02:32 He couldn’t even hold it up,
2:02:33 and I said, “Where are you going to school?”
2:02:34 And he’s like, “I’m not.
2:02:35 “This is my brother’s backpack.”
2:02:37 Right there making a connection with mom.
2:02:40 Guess what, you’re five minutes away
2:02:42 from a pre-K setting that has space.
2:02:45 And so just really making sure that it’s,
2:02:48 yes, we wanna expand, but we also wanna make sure
2:02:51 that we’re spreading this word
2:02:53 so that every Brevard four-year-old knows
2:02:56 that there’s potential spot for them.
2:02:59 - Thank you so much for the presentation.
2:03:01 Board members, I’m gonna give you an opportunity
2:03:02 to ask questions.
2:03:04 - Yeah, thank you guys so much.
2:03:06 I very much appreciate all the information,
2:03:09 and some of it’s review, but some of it is new,
2:03:12 and just having it all collectively in one place,
2:03:15 ‘cause we have so many different ways of doing it.
2:03:18 I will just share with you from our conversation
2:03:21 that we had at our offsite and just all along the way,
2:03:25 as far as expansion of VPK,
2:03:28 to me, my vision of that is not necessarily
2:03:30 that we have a VPK in every school.
2:03:32 Obviously, we couldn’t do that.
2:03:33 We don’t have a space for that,
2:03:34 but that we really focus in on those schools
2:03:36 where we are seeing that kindergarten readiness
2:03:39 is not there.
2:03:41 And so, to me, that is a priority for me,
2:03:44 rather than looking at these schools that don’t have one
2:03:47 and say, “Where can we put one?”
2:03:48 Except for Apollo.
2:03:49 If we’ve got room at Apollo, Apollo is a Title I school,
2:03:51 I’m saying I think we need to look at Apollo,
2:03:54 because that is a high-needs community.
2:03:57 But let’s take the University Park area.
2:04:01 Do we have room to put,
2:04:03 I know we already have Head Start there.
2:04:04 I think we’ve got VE.
2:04:06 Is there a need?
2:04:07 Wherever there’s need, can we do another classroom
2:04:09 in an area,
2:04:11 and I don’t know if University Park is a good example,
2:04:12 ‘cause they do already have several classrooms,
2:04:14 but where is the need?
2:04:17 And let’s put additional resources there,
2:04:21 because that’s where the payoff will be
2:04:23 in the kindergarten readiness and the learning to read.
2:04:25 And in addition to,
2:04:28 I was just thinking about the behaviors,
2:04:30 ‘cause we talked about the vast increase in behaviors
2:04:34 in our youngest learners,
2:04:36 because they don’t know how to do school.
2:04:39 And if we can get ‘em into pre-K
2:04:41 and just kinda get that learning how to do school,
2:04:43 I absolutely support that.
2:04:45 The only other thing that I would say that I would,
2:04:48 if there’s something we can take a look at,
2:04:50 and maybe this is something,
2:04:52 I’ve not got any interest in competing
2:04:54 with other VPK providers.
2:04:56 My kids went to First Baptist Melbourne’s VPK,
2:04:59 which I loved and adored.
2:05:01 I mean, it was an amazing program.
2:05:02 You know, I mean, there are schools going out,
2:05:04 but there’s plenty of kids to go around.
2:05:07 So I absolutely support any efforts
2:05:09 to try to help families navigate the process,
2:05:13 ‘cause it is more complicated
2:05:14 than I feel like it needs to be,
2:05:16 to get that certificate,
2:05:19 and then go take it where you’re supposed to go,
2:05:20 anything we can do to help families.
2:05:22 And then also to explore potentially for families,
2:05:26 if there’s even a desire or need out there,
2:05:29 could we do a half day?
2:05:31 I love the idea of split, I know it could be complicated,
2:05:34 but like a morning, afternoon,
2:05:36 you know, those families are probably gonna
2:05:39 more be in a fluent area,
2:05:41 but if it’s something that we could do,
2:05:43 I like the idea of exploring a half day option
2:05:47 for families who have that desire.
2:05:49 - Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
2:05:50 Ms. Jenkins?
2:05:51 - Yeah, so forgive me, ‘cause I legitimately have notes
2:05:54 like scribbled all over in randomness here, so sorry.
2:05:59 First and foremost, I appreciate you doing this work
2:06:03 and doing it so quickly,
2:06:05 since I feel like I brought this up like three weeks ago.
2:06:10 Obviously, this is a passion of mine,
2:06:11 and I know that you were paying attention to that workshop,
2:06:14 so I appreciate this broad display
2:06:18 of what we’ve got going on, ‘cause that’s step one,
2:06:19 we need to know what we have in the first place
2:06:21 before we can talk about expanding
2:06:22 or potentially adding things in certain areas.
2:06:25 And so what I had proposed was hopefully,
2:06:28 and like Ms. Campbell just said,
2:06:30 is maybe we can pilot in a specific community,
2:06:33 and I know it’s a choice system,
2:06:34 but I’m gonna call it a feeder line,
2:06:36 because traditionally, most of these students
2:06:38 that go to certain elementary schools
2:06:39 are going to a certain middle school,
2:06:40 going to a certain high school.
2:06:42 And the ones I was talking about was University Park,
2:06:46 Riviera, and Palm Bay Elementary
2:06:49 to kind of kill multiple birds with one stone.
2:06:53 So like we already mentioned,
2:06:57 we already can identify with data certain communities
2:07:01 where they are when it comes to their VPK assessments,
2:07:04 even when they’re taking them out in those daycare sites
2:07:06 and those community VPK sites.
2:07:08 So if we can put together,
2:07:10 and this is, of course,
2:07:11 if there’s a majority of support for this,
2:07:13 a presentation that looks at that area
2:07:15 and those specific zip codes
2:07:18 to the facilities that are in there,
2:07:19 what their performance is,
2:07:20 what those VPK assessments are showing
2:07:25 in terms of our kindergarten readiness
2:07:26 for those kids that are coming in.
2:07:29 I feel pretty confident at what it’s gonna say.
2:07:33 I spent a couple years in and out
2:07:34 of every single one of those facilities almost,
2:07:37 and I have opinions on many of them.
2:07:40 So what we would probably see
2:07:42 if we can give better access to VPK services
2:07:46 for those communities
2:07:46 is a decrease in kindergarten behavior,
2:07:48 a decrease in those learning gaps
2:07:50 like we already had talked about.
2:07:52 When there’s significant deficits in kindergarten,
2:07:54 you have a student who may not have even had access to books
2:07:57 or have any idea what a letter is,
2:07:58 sitting next to kids who have sight words,
2:08:00 you’re already creating this negative perception with school
2:08:03 and you’re gonna lose them from there forward.
2:08:05 So hopefully that can increase literacy rates
2:08:08 and improve our K through three reading scores
2:08:10 in those communities.
2:08:12 Ultimately, if a family has entered BPS in VPK,
2:08:18 they already are establishing,
2:08:20 we hope, a positive relationship with our public schools,
2:08:22 but also the likelihood of them staying
2:08:24 in our public schools has been dramatically increased.
2:08:26 And the reason I care about looking at a pilot program
2:08:29 in this area is not just because there’s a need
2:08:32 and because we can target academically and socially
2:08:36 and benefit the community,
2:08:37 but because like I had mentioned in our previous workshop,
2:08:40 when we got our CTE presentation,
2:08:43 Palm Bay High School and Stone Magnet Middle
2:08:46 were on the top of the list when it came to students leaving
2:08:48 and going to charter and private schools.
2:08:51 So if we can stop doing this top down approach,
2:08:54 like we keep doing and trying to attract students
2:08:58 to come back or stay in our schools,
2:09:01 we should be doing a bottom up approach
2:09:03 where we are greeting them at the door
2:09:04 from the very beginning of their educational experience
2:09:06 with positive things, setting them up for success
2:09:09 and making them want to stay in our schools
2:09:11 in the first place.
2:09:12 So I think that would help there.
2:09:19 Other things to consider is,
2:09:22 and it depends on if this was to be something
2:09:25 to dive deeper into,
2:09:26 if this was where we could pilot extra,
2:09:28 I don’t know if there’s space in those schools.
2:09:30 If there’s not space in those schools,
2:09:32 is there something that we can look at
2:09:33 where there’s other programs in that school
2:09:35 that could maybe be moved to a different school?
2:09:40 Is there a VEB program in that school
2:09:42 that potentially could be housed somewhere else
2:09:44 so we could make room for a pre-K program
2:09:46 in that community instead?
2:09:49 Another thing to think about too
2:09:50 is working with the pre-K ESE itinerant services department
2:09:55 to find out where there is a cluster of students
2:10:03 that they’re servicing.
2:10:04 Could we then justify why we might need
2:10:06 one of those classrooms at one of those schools
2:10:09 in that community versus paying an employee
2:10:11 to go all around to service those students?
2:10:14 Maybe we should be having those students
2:10:15 service right there at BPS.
2:10:20 Let me see.
2:10:23 Can you repeat the three schools?
2:10:24 Sorry, you said Palm Bay University Park
2:10:25 and what’s the third one?
2:10:26 Riviera, and I’m just–
2:10:27 Riviera, okay, thank you.
2:10:28 And from an analysis, that might not be the right choice,
2:10:31 but that’s just, from my gut,
2:10:32 that’s what makes the most sense.
2:10:35 And ultimately too, I mean, to do a community survey,
2:10:39 to ask the community and the parents out there,
2:10:43 are you thinking of choosing BPS for BBK?
2:10:45 Or why didn’t you choose BPS for BBK?
2:10:48 And one of the things that we can’t ignore is
2:10:52 often, and this is just from my personal experience,
2:10:55 going to those daycares and BPKs,
2:10:58 I’m just gonna tell it like it is,
2:10:59 a lot of them are really low quality.
2:11:01 I wouldn’t wanna send my own child there, ever.
2:11:04 That’s what’s there.
2:11:05 Sometimes that’s all that’s affordable,
2:11:07 or sometimes that’s all that’s available,
2:11:09 or sometimes it’s the only thing
2:11:10 they can have with aftercare.
2:11:12 And I know that we can’t just have aftercare for pre-K,
2:11:15 like that’s a magical thing we can do here.
2:11:17 But if we’re looking at a pilot program,
2:11:20 can we consider just looking into
2:11:22 what could we do in those schools
2:11:25 to potentially offer aftercare just there?
2:11:28 Because those communities significantly need that
2:11:31 in order to choose our BPK program, to see what that does.
2:11:35 Again, this is going to be an investment.
2:11:38 It’s going to be at a negative cost for BPS,
2:11:41 I’m aware of that.
2:11:42 But in the long run,
2:11:43 I argue that it actually is a cost benefit.
2:11:46 So statistically and data-wise,
2:11:49 when you intervene with early childhood intervention,
2:11:52 you spend less money on remediating those students
2:11:55 throughout their elementary and middle school years,
2:11:57 you identify students sooner if they have ESE service needs,
2:12:02 and then the sooner you get them those needs,
2:12:03 the shorter amount of time they spend with those needs,
2:12:05 and you end up saving money there.
2:12:07 And I argue, if this plan worked
2:12:10 for a small community pilot program,
2:12:12 and we kept those kids in our schools,
2:12:14 and we kept them in the long run
2:12:15 to come to our middle schools and to our high schools,
2:12:18 we’re actually going to be gaining that FTE
2:12:20 for that student who isn’t leaving us in the long run.
2:12:23 Of course, you can’t prove that off the bat,
2:12:25 which is why I’m proposing
2:12:26 we work on a small community pilot program
2:12:28 versus throughout the entire district.
2:12:30 And I’m with Ms. Campbell, too.
2:12:32 I mean, if we have a Title I school
2:12:33 that doesn’t have a BPK, let’s look at,
2:12:35 let’s make that happen.
2:12:37 Okay, thank you.
2:12:38 Thank you for bearing with me, sorry.
2:12:38 I just had a million notes written down.
2:12:41 All right, Mr. Susan.
2:12:42 - Yeah, just one of the things that I’d like to do
2:12:45 is that having as many kids in this age group that I do,
2:12:49 there’s been a couple of times
2:12:50 where I’ve gotten a lot of, you know what I mean?
2:12:52 What I receive is cards to the house saying,
2:12:55 “Hey, we have pre-K available,”
2:12:57 and all these other things, right?
2:12:59 On top of that, they have tours and stuff like that.
2:13:01 So what I did was I just kind of went through my mind
2:13:04 real quick over what we receive,
2:13:06 and then I would just try to share it with you guys.
2:13:08 We always get letters back from the parents.
2:13:10 There’s always tours of their facility available.
2:13:13 I don’t know if we do that currently,
2:13:14 but not just right before the decision-making,
2:13:16 but catching them six months to eight months
2:13:19 prior to them making the decision.
2:13:21 Rather than us competing,
2:13:22 we can already get a seed in their heads.
2:13:25 When I say letters to the parents, I’m getting it,
2:13:27 so somehow they’re pulling and knowing
2:13:29 that my kid is of age for them to get it.
2:13:31 I don’t know where they get that,
2:13:33 but I think Ms. Jenkins had mentioned
2:13:35 that there is a way to get that information.
2:13:38 The other thing is is that there is a pushback
2:13:42 in the community of people that provide
2:13:44 go to the private schools that the curriculum
2:13:46 is too over the top and it doesn’t allow kids
2:13:49 to allow themselves to become a part of the school
2:13:51 and feel comfortable and stuff like that.
2:13:53 That is not the reality,
2:13:56 but that is what is out there, right?
2:13:58 So through a communication campaign
2:14:01 with maybe videos and stuff like that,
2:14:04 focusing on, hey, we have certified teachers.
2:14:07 We have, you know what I mean, achievement levels
2:14:09 that we have that show from our children
2:14:11 that are coming out of our schools show a better return
2:14:14 in some way, the social preparedness, right?
2:14:17 The students are socially prepared more.
2:14:19 They’re achieving better in setting them
2:14:23 so that their first year is easier.
2:14:25 So those are some of the things that I think
2:14:27 would help target a parent who’s trying
2:14:29 to make that decision.
2:14:31 The other thing is I was gonna ask,
2:14:33 is there a committee that meets or a group that meets
2:14:36 kind of like the private schools meet with Ms. Campbell,
2:14:38 but is there a pre-K committee that meets
2:14:41 with all the pre-K providers in the county?
2:14:43 Like, do we pull them all together and say,
2:14:44 hey guys, let’s talk?
2:14:45 Do we do that at all?
2:14:46 - Yeah, I attend a monthly meeting
2:14:49 with all directors of providers
2:14:51 for the Early Learning Coalition.
2:14:52 - Okay, so it’s through the Early Learning Coalition
2:14:54 that does that, great.
2:14:56 Okay, ‘cause the next thing that I was gonna say
2:14:58 is one of the things that I thought would be a great idea
2:15:01 that I was talking to my wife about last year
2:15:03 was that we work with some of them
2:15:05 to provide tours of the families
2:15:09 while they’re in the private schools.
2:15:10 Let me explain, so I may have a kid that’s in pre-K
2:15:13 or in kindergarten still that’s part of a private school,
2:15:16 but we go and we offer up for those schools
2:15:19 that have that cap at kindergarten for their children
2:15:23 to take tours of our schools that are local for them,
2:15:26 meaning that we catch them six to eight months out ahead
2:15:29 so that we’re targeting them
2:15:30 so that they’re comfortable with the move.
2:15:32 A lot of times people don’t, they like drive by,
2:15:35 they see the marquee,
2:15:36 but they don’t see the internal workings.
2:15:37 I think that that would be a good way
2:15:39 to attract some of that first year,
2:15:41 like kids that make decisions into the charter schools.
2:15:44 And we may be able to capture them for the K through eight.
2:15:47 And that’s pretty much all I had, thank you.
2:15:51 - Mr. Trent.
2:15:52 - That’s good.
2:15:53 Don’t quite possibly know if there could be a question
2:15:55 left out there.
2:15:56 (laughing)
2:15:57 - Open the vice chair.
2:15:58 (laughing)
2:15:59 - It is–
2:16:00 (indistinct)
2:16:04 If there is a Title I school, it doesn’t have one.
2:16:06 - Absolutely, I think you got it.
2:16:08 We’ve got to get that done ASAP.
2:16:10 And with all the marketing that’s between Matt
2:16:14 and the rest of the board here as mentioned,
2:16:17 I’m sure you have your heads probably spinning,
2:16:19 but it is a great presentation.
2:16:22 It shows that we have a number of opportunities out there
2:16:26 for our students and our families.
2:16:27 And you’re always gonna get thumbs up from us
2:16:31 to do whatever you absolutely think of
2:16:34 that may help attract more students and families.
2:16:38 You have our support.
2:16:39 Again, thank you.
2:16:41 - Thank you.
2:16:42 I do actually have a couple of questions.
2:16:43 And so I’m gonna go with this.
2:16:45 The VPK enrollment, and because I don’t know the answers,
2:16:47 I’m gonna ask the questions.
2:16:48 No such thing as stupid question.
2:16:49 I can gather on some of these that it looks as though
2:16:52 maybe a VPK class has collapsed into another one.
2:16:55 I’m looking at like Fairglenn’s numbers.
2:16:57 And some of these numbers vary.
2:17:00 Now during the summer months, as far as enrollment,
2:17:02 I can, that makes sense, obviously it’s summertime.
2:17:04 So children typically travel with families,
2:17:06 but why such a drastic difference?
2:17:08 When we look at Cape View, for instance,
2:17:10 I mean, I guess they’ve always had a big variation there,
2:17:14 but it seems like it just.
2:17:17 - The June and July is on here,
2:17:20 but that is just during that registration.
2:17:22 So that is the, for that month,
2:17:23 here’s how many students are registered.
2:17:25 So the June and July would be two before,
2:17:28 but you are correct when the school is starting.
2:17:32 What happens sometimes is people realize
2:17:35 school has started when they start seeing the buses.
2:17:37 So in some settings you will see a delayed entry.
2:17:40 And I know that sounds significant,
2:17:42 but I can tell you we have schools that gain 100 students
2:17:45 four weeks into the school year.
2:17:47 - Right, and so that’s good.
2:17:48 That’s what I kind of wanted to hear
2:17:50 on what’s happening there,
2:17:51 because I think that that just goes back
2:17:53 to effective marketing, right?
2:17:54 So if we get ahead of them and we’re making them aware
2:17:57 that this is something that’s available in the community,
2:17:58 and I shared with you guys earlier my story
2:18:00 on my own personal children, I’m like, I’m very involved
2:18:02 and I’m having to figure out and navigate
2:18:04 through this early learning coalition.
2:18:05 How do I sign my child up for this?
2:18:07 And I’m sure there are many other parents
2:18:08 that feel that same frustration.
2:18:10 So if we could figure out a way to market more effectively
2:18:13 to these potential students, I think that that’s huge.
2:18:16 I think obviously if we have a Title I school
2:18:18 that doesn’t have a VPK program,
2:18:20 we need to make sure we get that established.
2:18:23 One question I have though,
2:18:24 as far as the Title I eligibility goes,
2:18:28 what happens if a school loses Title I eligibility
2:18:30 and they have a VPK program?
2:18:32 What do we do there?
2:18:33 Usually we can grandfather the program in
2:18:35 for the following year, but then after that
2:18:38 we will have to move the program
2:18:39 unless we find a different funding source.
2:18:41 Okay.
2:18:43 We used to have a program at Roy Allen
2:18:46 and Roy Allen lost our Title I.
2:18:47 We were able to keep it there for one additional year
2:18:50 and then we had to move the program.
2:18:51 Okay.
2:18:52 Which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of schools,
2:18:54 there’s a lot of schools that are on the edge of Title I
2:18:56 that don’t receive it that still should be Title I.
2:18:59 So that’s the information I would like to see
2:19:01 is what schools do we have that are really close
2:19:03 within a very close percentage
2:19:04 of maybe losing it one way or the other
2:19:06 because I think that needs to be on our radar.
2:19:08 So we’re aware if we have a school
2:19:09 that’s gonna potentially look at losing a VPK unit coming up.
2:19:14 But yeah, honestly, I think the expansion
2:19:16 of the VPK is tremendous.
2:19:17 I think it’ll pay dividends that we can’t even really,
2:19:20 we won’t really even be able to fully comprehend them
2:19:22 until probably 10 years down the road, unfortunately,
2:19:24 but that’s just the way it goes.
2:19:25 It’s planting a seed, we’ll see what it cultivates.
2:19:27 I think it would be good for Brevard County overall,
2:19:29 but I’m excited.
2:19:30 Thank you for this data, it’s very, very informative.
2:19:32 I’m excited about how we’re gonna move forward
2:19:34 and do big things in this arena.
2:19:36 So I appreciate you, ladies.
2:19:38 - Thank you. - That’s right.
2:19:39 - May I follow up real quick?
2:19:40 - Yes, go right ahead.
2:19:41 - So also too, when you were talking about
2:19:44 why is that number change,
2:19:45 not only the buses like that’s legitimate,
2:19:48 but also because it’s the first time
2:19:50 they’re really dealing with school, some of these families,
2:19:52 they’re very confused about the birthday cutoffs too.
2:19:54 So that always kind of,
2:19:55 there’s always like this weird beginning stage section too.
2:20:00 So I guess I just wanted to get a consensus from the board
2:20:03 ‘cause when I brought this up in the workshop,
2:20:05 I mean, I was really adamant
2:20:06 about what my long-term hopes were.
2:20:09 Again, like it’s not, like my passion,
2:20:12 sure, I would love every single school to have a BK, totally,
2:20:16 but I don’t think that’s where the biggest bang for buck is.
2:20:18 You know, when we’re looking at this list of the schools
2:20:20 that don’t have them, you know, quite frankly,
2:20:23 most of those were in my district
2:20:25 and I feel very comfortable saying
2:20:26 that most of those don’t need them.
2:20:27 And they have plenty of community daycare sites
2:20:30 that are fantastic and adequately affordable for that area.
2:20:36 And so I don’t think us investing our money
2:20:38 in those places really makes the most sense.
2:20:40 And so I guess what is the appetite of the board
2:20:44 to continue to even just explore the option
2:20:47 of a pilot program in the South Melbourne
2:20:49 and Palm Bay area to that feeder chain concept
2:20:53 just to see what that would look like
2:20:54 and what they could even possibly pull off over there.
2:20:57 What are you guys thinking?
2:20:59 - And the one thing too, Mr. Susan brought up,
2:21:01 I think would be interesting
2:21:02 if there is a majority to explore.
2:21:06 When you look at those VPK assessments from those sites,
2:21:09 the community sites, it would be interesting
2:21:11 to compare them to what the scores are at the local schools.
2:21:16 - Just there’s no testing till it’s different.
2:21:19 - Yeah.
2:21:22 - I’ll jump in there.
2:21:23 I’m 100% okay with exploring it.
2:21:25 What I would wanna see though is those specific sites
2:21:27 that you’ve identified, a couple of them on here,
2:21:30 I’m gonna use Palm Bay for instance,
2:21:31 ‘cause that one’s showing a vacancy of four spots.
2:21:33 And then I don’t know if this is on the blended unit.
2:21:36 There’s a couple of them that have vacancies currently,
2:21:38 but I would also like to see that in conjunction
2:21:41 with the maybe looking at the overall,
2:21:46 I don’t know how to say this the wrong way.
2:21:47 The behaviors, if we have a huge amount of behaviors
2:21:52 in the kindergarten area, let’s look at that, right?
2:21:54 And then maybe that’d be an area that we focus on.
2:21:57 We need to get ahead of it and start a VPK program there
2:22:00 so these students are ready for school.
2:22:02 And I don’t know if it’s, it may very well be the ones
2:22:05 that you named, but I just don’t, I’m not aware of that.
2:22:06 So I’m sure they will be able to give us that information.
2:22:08 - Yeah, I just, so the vacancies, they’re really minimal.
2:22:14 Like when you have one, two, three,
2:22:16 sometimes that’s also ‘cause kids like move out.
2:22:20 But the vacancy of four is in the blended program
2:22:23 for Palm Bay Elementary.
2:22:25 And I would argue that’s a different kind of program.
2:22:29 It’s a little bit harder to market to families.
2:22:34 And so that’s something I would have them consider
2:22:36 as well too, like maybe we can move that program
2:22:39 and put in a different kind of VPK program
2:22:42 that might be more palatable to more families.
2:22:44 I don’t know, just something for them to think about.
2:22:47 - Dr. Bias and I work closely together on each year
2:22:51 looking at where our blended programs are
2:22:53 and what the needs of our students are
2:22:55 and moving them accordingly for the upcoming school year.
2:22:58 So we do work on that.
2:23:02 - Whether it’s, this is a high needs area,
2:23:06 this three schools you mentioned
2:23:07 definitely surrounding a high needs area.
2:23:09 To me, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna come down to,
2:23:12 I’d like us to, if we’re gonna pilot something,
2:23:15 we’re not, I don’t know if I can truly call it a pilot
2:23:17 ‘cause we’re already doing all these things.
2:23:18 But if we’re gonna change something,
2:23:19 it seems like the things that we can do the quickest
2:23:24 let’s take that easy buy at the apple.
2:23:25 And some of these schools that already have programs
2:23:28 already have the playgrounds established.
2:23:31 We won’t have to do that.
2:23:31 We will have the setup, right, to add another classroom to.
2:23:36 But also these particular schools, in addition to Apollo,
2:23:39 I really like to see some Apollo.
2:23:41 I think we’re all in favor of that.
2:23:43 - You got that down, that’s a good one.
2:23:44 - You got that right now.
2:23:46 You know, they already have the infrastructure set up.
2:23:49 We know there’s high needs in the community.
2:23:53 I think we’re gonna see the behavior needs also in the same.
2:23:57 And I appreciate that you’re bringing that up.
2:24:00 And also I think we’re gonna have capacity
2:24:03 except for not Riviera.
2:24:05 - Well, and that’s kind of what I meant by
2:24:07 ‘cause I’m not gonna pretend I know every school like that.
2:24:09 - Wherever we can get it done, ‘cause realistically,
2:24:11 I think that makes the most sense.
2:24:14 ‘Cause the need is there and the area is there.
2:24:16 But if we have the capacity space-wise to do it too.
2:24:21 I appreciate I had a meeting with Ms. Stampier
2:24:24 earlier last week and she was talking about aligning
2:24:26 where our VE classrooms are with where they would be
2:24:30 once they get out of VPK so that we’re not moving kids
2:24:34 after VPK, so once we kind of have that shift around,
2:24:37 we may actually have some space
2:24:39 where we didn’t have space before.
2:24:41 So if we can do that in conjunction with those decisions,
2:24:44 that seems to make sense to me.
2:24:46 - If we expand programs that are already existing schools
2:24:48 like Sherwood, Creole, and all that stuff,
2:24:49 we can just add classrooms and stuff like that.
2:24:52 I think in some cases, just so you guys know,
2:24:54 there already exists a pipeline
2:24:56 and a feeder provider network.
2:24:58 So I don’t have any problem expanding it.
2:24:59 That’s what our goal was.
2:25:01 But I’m gonna work with you guys in my areas
2:25:03 to expand those and drive more participation
2:25:06 by some of the individuals that I think we could add to.
2:25:09 - Yeah, ‘cause that’s central Melbourne area.
2:25:12 So our takeaways that we’re going to go off
2:25:15 and do some work and come back shortly
2:25:18 and address is the Apollo issue.
2:25:20 So we’ll be looking at do they have the capacity
2:25:23 to meet those requirements that Mrs. Chappie,
2:25:25 but we agree with you.
2:25:26 All of our Title I schools in Apollo
2:25:28 is not one of those schools that’s on the cusp of Title I.
2:25:31 And then we’ll look at the pilot,
2:25:33 looking at K behavioral data,
2:25:35 and also what programs just at a glance,
2:25:38 the Palm Bay, right now we have the blended
2:25:40 and we have the Head Start.
2:25:41 So Head Start, you know the child has to qualify.
2:25:44 They don’t have to live in the zoned area
2:25:46 and then blended as Mrs. Chappie shared,
2:25:48 that’s going to have seats in it for students
2:25:50 with exceptional exceptionalities and Gen Ed.
2:25:53 But what we don’t have is we want to see
2:25:56 is there an appetite that we could have
2:25:57 a traditional step forward.
2:25:59 So then I live in that zone,
2:26:02 but maybe my family does not meet the poverty rate
2:26:06 for Head Start, and there’s not a seat in the blended.
2:26:09 And so we want to have an avenue for families
2:26:11 in that community that just may not meet those poverty
2:26:14 or the exceptionality criteria.
2:26:16 - Or maybe they do, but the program’s full.
2:26:19 - Correct, correct.
2:26:20 - And then I think what we’ll do
2:26:22 is we’ll get a couple different feeder chains,
2:26:26 just to see what makes sense.
2:26:28 That might be one, there might be another.
2:26:30 - I think it would also be smart of us
2:26:31 to look at the surrounding BPK options that are out there.
2:26:34 So if you look at a community and there’s 25 right there,
2:26:37 I mean, we don’t obviously want to maybe start one there
2:26:40 that didn’t make the most sense.
2:26:41 - Wherever there’s a BPK desert.
2:26:42 - Right, yeah, where’s the BPK desert at?
2:26:44 - So I would like us to consider,
2:26:46 ‘cause there’s a lot of them,
2:26:48 I would like us to consider the BPK assessment data, too,
2:26:51 in terms of quality, just because,
2:26:54 I’ll talk to you about that off the camera.
2:26:58 The other thing, too, is our BPK programs
2:27:01 for the CTE high schools, those are super difficult to staff
2:27:05 because their schedules are super wonky and weird,
2:27:08 and sometimes parents are really uncomfortable
2:27:10 sending their kids, four-year-olds, onto a high school campus
2:27:12 but I think if there was this more natural push
2:27:16 in a smaller area, easier to market, things of that nature,
2:27:19 you might get someone who comes in that might wanna go there
2:27:22 and just didn’t understand it or know about it.
2:27:24 So hearing more about it being in the community
2:27:26 in the first place might fill up those seats
2:27:27 at that CTE program, too.
2:27:29 - And I think, too, that point is,
2:27:32 just ‘cause we know from our previous work,
2:27:35 those CTE settings, there wasn’t as always
2:27:38 as much collaboration across,
2:27:40 and now we have a director of early childhood,
2:27:42 and so bringing those, whether you’re a CTE program,
2:27:45 Step Forward, or blended, that we are all collaborating
2:27:49 as a Brevard BPK program,
2:27:51 and so there aren’t so many pockets.
2:27:53 So what we’re marketing one,
2:27:55 that we’re marketing across the board.
2:27:57 - We also could put district charter schools
2:27:59 inside of a lot of our faith-based schools
2:28:02 to compete with and draw some of the people
2:28:05 who go to those churches already
2:28:06 and feel comfortable in those areas.
2:28:08 You can put in a BPK program there
2:28:10 that would then feed to one of our schools
2:28:11 or does transfer while it’s there.
2:28:14 So there’s all kinds of good options.
2:28:15 Thank you.
2:28:16 - Okay, we’ll be back soon. - Thank you so much.
2:28:18 Appreciate you guys.
2:28:19 All right, we are on to our next topic,
2:28:22 which is the student achievement update.
2:28:25 - And Ms. Wright, I know I’m usually the one
2:28:28 that makes sure we have time to eat,
2:28:30 but this is a really important presentation,
2:28:32 so I would recommend that we make sure
2:28:34 we give Ms. Francis the time that she needs
2:28:37 to get this information out to us.
2:28:39 And we wanna discuss it more tonight,
2:28:41 but this is really important.
2:28:42 - I know, I know.
2:28:43 And usually we set a time start and stop
2:28:44 so that we have an hour in between.
2:28:47 Mr. Susan, the two topics that you,
2:28:50 okay, all right, what’s your?
2:28:52 All right.
2:28:53 - And while Ms. Francis is passing out
2:28:56 some handouts for you,
2:28:58 we just wanna keep reiterating this for all stakeholders
2:29:01 that we were so excited to get PM2 data,
2:29:04 because remember last year was the first year of the test,
2:29:08 did not have comparative data.
2:29:10 Well, in full honesty, PM2 is not able
2:29:14 to be compared to PM2 like we had hoped.
2:29:17 And let me explain that to you.
2:29:19 So last year was our first year doing PM1, PM2, PM3.
2:29:23 Then we got informational grades back in November, December.
2:29:28 Well, then the new cut scores were created.
2:29:31 So what the state did is they went back and retrofitted,
2:29:35 and Ms. Francis, you pipe up if I’m misspeaking,
2:29:38 but our PM3, based on those new cut scores,
2:29:42 they went into the FAST portal and changed the scoring
2:29:47 so that it matched the new cutoffs.
2:29:50 So if I’m a parent, I can log in and see
2:29:54 with the new cutoff scores of last year,
2:29:57 I can see where my child performed.
2:29:59 So we’re very thankful that that happened for PM3
2:30:01 ‘cause as a parent, I wanna see at the end of the year
2:30:04 with this new cutoff score.
2:30:07 But they did not go back and do that for PM2.
2:30:10 And so I can’t take a 492 from last year and a 501
2:30:16 and really say that there’s an incremental growth
2:30:19 because now that is apples to oranges.
2:30:22 So before we start off, I just want everyone to be clear.
2:30:26 What we are going to dive into today is what we do know
2:30:31 is finite and static, is how much growth our children made
2:30:35 between PM1 and PM2 last school year,
2:30:38 and how much growth they made
2:30:40 between PM1 and PM2 this year.
2:30:43 What we are doing and working with schools,
2:30:46 and Ms. Francis is working with schools on learning gains,
2:30:49 looking at last year’s PM3 data to where we are now
2:30:53 to say how close are we to where we ended the year,
2:30:57 because if we want higher than we received last year,
2:31:01 we know that as a target.
2:31:02 But I just need to, when we go into PM2 to PM2,
2:31:06 it’s not apples to apples.
2:31:07 - Okay, thank you for the clarification.
2:31:13 - Sorry, my glasses.
2:31:18 So today’s comparison, like Ms. Harris said,
2:31:20 we’re going to look at the comparison of PM2, PM1 to PM2,
2:31:26 and PM1 to PM2 for ‘22 and then ‘23 and subsequently.
2:31:32 And one of the things that I get asked a lot,
2:31:35 and that’s the reason that it’s on there,
2:31:37 is what are the expectations?
2:31:39 And the expectations from the state of Florida,
2:31:41 and it’s in statutory language that the students
2:31:43 take progress monitoring three times a year.
2:31:47 So that’s why the test is not only called
2:31:49 the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking,
2:31:51 they also call it coordinated screening
2:31:54 and progress monitoring system.
2:31:56 ‘Cause you know, they wanna, we wanna make it really long.
2:31:59 It’s for ELA and for mathematics.
2:32:02 So we’re gonna start with looking at the VP, the K2 datum.
2:32:06 And when I spoke with Ms. Harris here,
2:32:10 Renaissance provides a lot of different reports.
2:32:13 And not all of them can be comparable.
2:32:16 And the reason that we say that is because
2:32:19 when they change the scales,
2:32:21 although they have a unified scale,
2:32:24 and they also have the regular scale
2:32:25 that has been linked to the FSA,
2:32:28 or I’m sorry, to the FAST,
2:32:30 in their wisdom, they did not do that in the site.
2:32:34 So they’re still comparing,
2:32:36 they’re using the unified scale.
2:32:37 So we decided to go with the student growth,
2:32:39 percentile growth.
2:32:42 And what that does is it looks at the relative growth
2:32:46 for students in the same grade level.
2:32:48 So it compares the students themselves,
2:32:50 and it’s saying, based on you,
2:32:52 and you’re comparing to other students,
2:32:55 are you scoring above the 35th percentile?
2:32:57 If you’re scoring above the 33th percentile,
2:33:00 then you’re expected to make that the growth,
2:33:03 the typical growth that is expected for one year.
2:33:06 - And that’s where,
2:33:07 and luckily we’ve worked together long enough,
2:33:10 so we’re gonna kind of tag team for this.
2:33:12 But that’s where it’s important is what we are looking for,
2:33:15 are you on track to be proficient?
2:33:17 And so sometimes when you’re comparing yourself
2:33:19 to your peers’ growth,
2:33:21 well, it’s all based on that subset of students.
2:33:24 And so what we are looking at is what we have learned
2:33:27 from looking at this data,
2:33:28 if you are in the 35th percentile
2:33:31 and continue to stay there,
2:33:33 that you should be proficient.
2:33:35 And that’s where this scale number of 852,
2:33:38 that is the number that we have said,
2:33:40 if you’re scoring at an 852 for first grade,
2:33:45 the likelihood of you being ready to go
2:33:47 and proficient is good.
2:33:51 We can’t say exact because we don’t know
2:33:53 how you’ll be at the end of the year,
2:33:54 but that is the number and that percentile ranking
2:33:57 that we’re looking at.
2:33:58 - The other thing that the 852 is utilized for
2:34:01 is to determine,
2:34:03 and the reason I wanted to give you these brief reminders
2:34:06 is because when we look at the total number of students
2:34:09 tested in mathematics, it looks like it’s a lot higher,
2:34:12 and you’ll see it in the next slide,
2:34:13 than it is for those in, let’s say, early literacy
2:34:18 versus the reading, the star reading.
2:34:21 And that is because the 852,
2:34:23 if a student scores an 852 in PM1 in kindergarten,
2:34:28 then they’re moved to star reading.
2:34:30 If they score an 852 in first grade,
2:34:33 they’re moved to star reading.
2:34:35 But if they’re not, they continue on
2:34:37 until the first graders must attempt a PM3 to star reading.
2:34:42 Second graders must take the star reading
2:34:46 for both all three PM1, two, and three.
2:34:48 However, if they don’t meet the 852
2:34:51 or they can’t get through the test,
2:34:53 then those second graders will then attempt
2:34:56 to take the assessment at the start early literacy.
2:34:59 So it’s not, we can’t say that all first graders
2:35:02 took one assessment and not the other.
2:35:05 So that’s why I wanted to give you that brief explanation.
2:35:07 - That is so complicated.
2:35:08 - I was just gonna say, it’s as clear as mud,
2:35:10 and here is why our stakeholders are confused.
2:35:13 - Yes.
2:35:13 - Never, what I have loved about FAST
2:35:17 and this progress monitoring is that we finally,
2:35:20 when I think of grades three and up,
2:35:22 I can say who is on grade level, who is not,
2:35:25 at three times, ‘cause they’re getting
2:35:26 grade level assessment right in front of them
2:35:28 and we have that data.
2:35:30 When we’re looking at this first grade,
2:35:32 I will tell you, ‘cause that is the critical year,
2:35:34 if you’ve spent time with me,
2:35:36 that is the game changer for third grade.
2:35:39 First grade, you could have students taking,
2:35:41 she’s taking one test, I’m taking another.
2:35:44 And so parents, it’s very confusing
2:35:46 ‘cause you’re looking at the score
2:35:48 based on the assessment you’re taking,
2:35:50 if you’re in literacy or reading.
2:35:51 By PM3, every first grader gets PM3.
2:35:55 So there’s a lot of conversation, as you can imagine,
2:35:58 because if I’ve spent time in PM1 and PM2 with literacy,
2:36:03 I’m getting forced into PM3, ready or not.
2:36:06 But at least–
2:36:07 - Are the tests anywhere close to similar?
2:36:09 Because what I’m hearing sometimes is the test,
2:36:11 and maybe it’s more of the second grade test
2:36:12 going to third grade test,
2:36:14 just the format is so different, so many students
2:36:16 have to overcome the differences.
2:36:18 So among these two, are they formatted differently
2:36:21 so that students step into a new test
2:36:23 and then they’re at a disadvantage
2:36:25 because they haven’t taken that kind of test before?
2:36:28 - So these are very similar, and I’m speaking only
2:36:32 according to what the research that Renaissance
2:36:36 has provided us, and we’ve invited them
2:36:38 to meet with the directors a couple of times,
2:36:40 and we’re hoping to bring them back again
2:36:42 to do a little more training.
2:36:46 What they have said is that the student growth percentile,
2:36:49 that is the closest that you can use to compare
2:36:52 when a student was a PM1 first grader
2:36:56 and took the early literacy, but then they met that 852,
2:37:00 and then took PM2, they took the star reading.
2:37:04 So according to them, according to what they have said to us
2:37:07 is that growth model, when they’re comparing,
2:37:10 they’re comparing those like students
2:37:11 to determine that growth model, specifically for a student.
2:37:15 - And Mrs. Campbell, to your point,
2:37:17 it’s very significant changes between
2:37:19 what they’re seeing in second grade,
2:37:20 total different vendors, so they’re seeing
2:37:22 one assessment type as a second grader,
2:37:25 and then when they move into third grade,
2:37:26 it’s very, very different, and you will see that
2:37:29 even in our data.
2:37:32 I remember last year celebrating and feeling great
2:37:35 about some of that second grade data,
2:37:36 and then we did PM1 third grade, same students,
2:37:40 and it’s very significant changes in their experience.
2:37:46 - So they’re both supposed to be computer adaptive.
2:37:49 This is a different, the adaptivity for this one
2:37:53 is a little bit different, and I’m not as familiar with it
2:37:56 as I am with the way that it is adapted for three through 10.
2:38:00 - ‘Cause this adaptation goes down into foundational skills
2:38:03 where once you hit third grade, it adapts,
2:38:05 but only within your grade level band,
2:38:07 so it never dips below grade level.
2:38:10 As she moves to these slides, I’m gonna say
2:38:12 that’s when the handout will come in handy,
2:38:14 ‘cause we’re gonna go over 22, 23 data,
2:38:17 then the next slide’s gonna be the 23, 24,
2:38:20 and you’re gonna wanna, again, we’re looking at growth
2:38:22 between PM1 and PM2, not the number proficient two to three.
2:38:28 - We just didn’t wanna muddy the waters any more
2:38:30 than we needed to by putting them side by side,
2:38:33 because then people would tend to assume
2:38:36 that you can compare them.
2:38:37 So what this one is showing is the comparison
2:38:40 of the fall to winter, 22, 23, and then fall to spring.
2:38:47 And as you can see, when you compare,
2:38:50 and then when you’re looking at the fall to winter 23, 24,
2:38:54 you’ll notice that we are up four percentage points.
2:38:58 And it also gave, I gave you the total number
2:39:00 of students that were included.
2:39:04 So you’ll notice that there was a little bit of a dip.
2:39:06 Again, that’s the reason for that explanation
2:39:08 at the beginning, because could that be attributed
2:39:10 to the number of students that move from star reading
2:39:15 to star early literacy?
2:39:17 So that’s why I gave you all of the precursor information.
2:39:21 I’m hoping that by next year, when we get the PM3 data,
2:39:25 we’ll be able to look more at either the unified scale
2:39:28 compared to what is the scale that is tied to fast.
2:39:37 For the mathematics, you’ll notice the same thing.
2:39:39 We’ll notice that we’re 11 percentage points up
2:39:42 from when compared to last year.
2:39:45 And from last year to the, from the fall to the spring,
2:39:49 they increased four percentage points.
2:39:55 And this is the star early literacy,
2:39:57 and these are your youngest students.
2:40:00 And it’s, again, Brevard is up four percentage points
2:40:04 from last year compared to this year,
2:40:06 and between winter and spring,
2:40:09 there was a five percentage point increase.
2:40:18 So this is, this is where the fun begins.
2:40:24 Okay, so it looks like it’s overwhelming,
2:40:29 but the first thing I want you to notice,
2:40:31 this is the 22-23 data.
2:40:34 First column is PM1, second column is PM2,
2:40:37 and third column is PM3.
2:40:38 You’ll note that in every single case,
2:40:41 our students improved from PM1 to PM3.
2:40:45 The most significant increase was for third graders
2:40:48 between PM2 and PM3,
2:40:50 which was a 27 percentage point increase.
2:40:53 - Do you wanna flip to that slide too?
2:40:55 So this is like the glance at last year,
2:40:57 and then if you flip to the next year’s.
2:40:59 - I’m only covering what happened last year,
2:41:01 so I’ll move into that.
2:41:04 And then, so when you’re looking at,
2:41:08 at all the grade levels last year,
2:41:10 they all increased by double digits.
2:41:12 So that’s great news for last year.
2:41:14 So now what’s important to keep in mind is,
2:41:17 what was the growth between PM1 and PM2 last year?
2:41:21 So that was a seven percentage point growth.
2:41:24 So when we look at the next slide,
2:41:28 and we note the same thing,
2:41:29 we note that all of our students have improved
2:41:32 from PM1 to PM2.
2:41:35 We also note that third grade
2:41:37 has a 19 percentage point increase,
2:41:39 which is the highest for them for all.
2:41:43 But the thing to keep in mind is the average growth
2:41:46 from PM1 to PM2 was nine percentage points.
2:41:49 So if you recall what I said here,
2:41:52 it was a seven percentage point increase overall,
2:41:55 where now we’re seeing a nine percentage point increase.
2:41:59 - Can I just have to highlight specifically third grade,
2:42:02 ‘cause this is the first year
2:42:03 that that is part of school grade.
2:42:05 And so our schools have really stepped up.
2:42:07 Our third grade teachers,
2:42:09 last Saturday we had almost 70 here.
2:42:12 They are really showing up for their students
2:42:15 and their students in intern are showing up for them.
2:42:17 So that kind of growth in third grade is remarkable.
2:42:20 Other highlights would be just, again,
2:42:23 looking at the amount of growth is,
2:42:25 sixth grade, seventh grade.
2:42:28 We do have, when we look at our ninth and 10th,
2:42:31 a little bit of flat or a reduction in growth.
2:42:35 And so we just, we know we have still work to do.
2:42:38 But I feel like with third grade being such a pivotal grade,
2:42:42 this year being part of our new school grade equation,
2:42:45 this shows promise.
2:42:48 - Another significant point to note is that all grade levels
2:42:51 were above where they were for PM2 in ‘22, ‘23.
2:42:55 So that’s significant.
2:43:00 We’re doing better.
2:43:01 - That’s good, we’re doing a lot better.
2:43:04 - We still have good, we still have work,
2:43:06 we have work to do on some other pages.
2:43:08 So ELA.
2:43:10 - Don’t get too excited.
2:43:12 - Just being fully transparent,
2:43:14 but we do have a lot to celebrate.
2:43:16 - So the official demographic data is not available.
2:43:21 So what I did was I used the big file
2:43:25 that is released by the state and we put it
2:43:27 into a big giant data mining thing so that we can give you
2:43:32 some, yeah, yeah, technical terms.
2:43:37 So that we can provide you with how are our subgroups doing?
2:43:41 And we also included the multiracial.
2:43:43 The last time I spoke with you,
2:43:45 I said that I would start including the multiracial group
2:43:47 ‘cause it continues to grow faster.
2:43:50 So when we look at our subgroup data in ‘22, ‘23,
2:43:53 we note that every single subgroup made an increase.
2:43:56 Our African-American students from PM1 to two increased
2:44:00 by 5.6 percentage points, our Hispanics by 6.8,
2:44:04 our multiracial by 7.1, our white students by 7.3
2:44:09 and overall a 7.0 increase.
2:44:12 So when we’re looking at comparing again, ‘22 to ‘23,
2:44:16 ‘22, ‘23 to ‘23, ‘24, it’s critical to remember
2:44:20 that seven point percentage point increase
2:44:24 because when we look at the next slide,
2:44:26 these are the same subgroups.
2:44:29 Now we’re looking at a 7.3 percentage increase
2:44:33 for our African-American students.
2:44:35 So that means our African-American students
2:44:36 are performing better.
2:44:38 So our Hispanic students at a 7.5,
2:44:42 our multiracial at a 9.5,
2:44:44 which is equal to where we were last time,
2:44:47 10 percentage point for the white students
2:44:49 and a 9.1 for the total.
2:44:53 So an average of 8.6 percentage points increase
2:44:58 where we had a seven percentage point increase in two,
2:45:01 in 2022, ‘23.
2:45:03 So this is absolutely great news.
2:45:05 - And I just wanna highlight,
2:45:06 ‘cause I know we’ve talked to you about school improvement
2:45:09 that a lot of our schools have that ATSI and TSI
2:45:12 and we won’t go into what all those letters stand for today.
2:45:15 But our black subgroups, our students with disabilities
2:45:19 and our multiracial, those are some of the subgroups
2:45:21 that our schools have been strategic of creating systems.
2:45:25 And so I think this shows, again,
2:45:27 a lot of promise when we’re moving the needle
2:45:29 of greater growth than we demonstrated last year.
2:45:32 And I think that’s our schools having a targeted approach
2:45:34 to those subgroups.
2:45:37 - So the next slide provides you the same information,
2:45:41 but for ESC and ELL, the only thing that was not available
2:45:45 was the free and reduced lunch status on those files.
2:45:48 So you’ll notice that for ‘22, ‘23, all of the subgroups
2:45:52 increased, remember that the ELL population
2:45:56 is very different from the Hispanic.
2:45:58 Those are your students that sometimes are NES,
2:46:00 non-English speakers, or LES, limited English speakers.
2:46:05 But even still, you have a 1.1 percentage point increase
2:46:09 when you’re looking at ‘22, ‘23.
2:46:12 Now when we flip to ‘23, ‘24, ESC has a 7.1 percentage
2:46:18 point increase, and our ELL babies
2:46:21 have a 4.3 percentage point increase.
2:46:23 And if you look at where we were, where we started,
2:46:27 in PM1 we started higher in both ESC and ELL,
2:46:32 and we are higher in both PM2 for ESC and for ELL.
2:46:36 - And that I think speaks to true retention.
2:46:40 So the fact in some of our other data,
2:46:42 we’ve shown greater growth than we’ve ended in a higher
2:46:45 knowing that it’s not apples to apples,
2:46:47 but in this case we’re saying that what our students
2:46:50 left with at the end of last year,
2:46:53 they started with that same level.
2:46:55 So when we’re thinking of summer slide
2:46:56 for our most fragile students, students with disabilities,
2:46:59 and students where English is not their native language,
2:47:03 they’re retaining those skills.
2:47:05 We demonstrated that in PM1, and now we’re seeing
2:47:07 that significant growth.
2:47:11 - So we’re gonna look at the same pattern
2:47:13 for the mathematics.
2:47:15 This is 22, 23, from PM1 to PM2,
2:47:18 we had an average growth of 20 percentage points.
2:47:22 Third grade being one of the best 26 percentage points
2:47:26 between PM1 and two, and then you also have fourth grade
2:47:30 with 25 percentage points between two and three,
2:47:35 and sixth grade, 22 percentage points between one and two.
2:47:42 Again, all the grade levels last year
2:47:44 increased by double digits.
2:47:48 When we look at the growth for 23, 24,
2:47:53 we note that it was a 16 percentage point increase
2:47:59 from PM1 to PM2, whereas we were
2:48:03 a 20 percentage point increase.
2:48:05 The other thing is, and when we look at where we started
2:48:08 last year, conversely to where we are this year,
2:48:11 we’re starting just a little bit lower,
2:48:13 and we are still a little bit lower for PM2
2:48:17 in most of the grade levels.
2:48:20 With the exception of grade seven and eight,
2:48:22 those are the only ones that we’re not starting lower.
2:48:25 However, the good news is that the growth
2:48:26 that we saw last year between PM2 and PM3
2:48:30 was about 17 percentage points,
2:48:33 so if we are expecting the same type of growth,
2:48:36 we should be at or above where we were last year.
2:48:40 And here’s where we’re gonna always be
2:48:44 extremely transparent, and this is why we show up every day.
2:48:46 There is still a lot of work to do in the area of math.
2:48:48 So the third grade, I can absolutely,
2:48:51 being a former third grade teacher, understand
2:48:54 those teachers know what’s gonna be on the school grade,
2:48:56 and it’s just when you put all your eggs in this basket,
2:49:00 sometimes the potential to drop in one case.
2:49:03 But something else we’re really looking at
2:49:05 is when we look at our seventh grade data,
2:49:07 we want to really be focused on who is taking algebra
2:49:12 in seventh grade to make sure,
2:49:14 because if they’re doing that EOC, they’re not in here,
2:49:17 and those are sometimes, our sixth grade data
2:49:20 has been very strong in math, but that doesn’t mean
2:49:23 that you have all the skills ready for pre-algebra,
2:49:26 and so sometimes they’re in that algebra
2:49:28 as a seventh grader, and we’re really addressing that,
2:49:30 because we wanna make sure the course
2:49:32 is meeting the trajectory to meet with success,
2:49:35 but we also think that’s a data point
2:49:38 that we can improve upon just by making sure
2:49:41 we’re better meeting the needs of our students
2:49:43 in their math trajectory of making sure
2:49:45 we’re building foundational skills
2:49:47 as they move up the ladder.
2:49:52 - When we look at the next slide,
2:49:54 that’s the comparison of the ethnicities,
2:49:56 and then you’ll see that this is 22, 23,
2:50:00 that for black African American students,
2:50:03 11.4 percentage point increase between one and two,
2:50:07 17 point percentage increase for Hispanic,
2:50:10 20% increase for your multiracial,
2:50:15 and so every single one of the subgroups
2:50:17 made gains between PM one and PM two,
2:50:21 and then PM two and PM three.
2:50:23 Conversely, when we look at the 23, 24 comparison,
2:50:28 we’ll notice that for PM one,
2:50:33 most of grades three, four, and five
2:50:36 were above where we started last year.
2:50:40 I’m sorry, grades, I’m sorry.
2:50:42 Black African American students, Hispanics,
2:50:44 and multiracial were above where we started last year,
2:50:47 whereas the whites were just slightly below
2:50:50 two tenths of a point, and then as a total,
2:50:54 we started three tenths of a point below where we started.
2:50:58 Now when we look at PM two data
2:51:01 in comparison to PM two data from last year,
2:51:04 the black African American students
2:51:06 are lower than they were in 22, 23,
2:51:10 the Hispanics were lower than they were in 22, 23,
2:51:16 suppose so was multiracial and so was black
2:51:18 and so was overall the districts.
2:51:21 - So we’re sharing the demographic data
2:51:24 and the subgroup data ‘cause we know
2:51:25 that that is an area of focus,
2:51:27 but I can tell you just from knowing instruction,
2:51:30 if you’re having the levels of proficiency
2:51:33 across the board and grade levels,
2:51:34 before we even go to the subgroup data,
2:51:37 when you have proficiency where it is
2:51:39 that’s a tier one instruction issue.
2:51:41 And so if we had significantly higher proficiency,
2:51:47 and then we were finding subgroups of students
2:51:49 that were having gaps, then we would say,
2:51:53 okay, we need to do interventions.
2:51:54 But in this case, when we’re looking across the board,
2:51:57 this tells me that it’s a tier one instruction.
2:51:59 So this is what do all students get in a math experience.
2:52:02 And so that is our area of focus.
2:52:04 When you have huge gaps between or certain grade levels
2:52:09 that are not showing the significant growth,
2:52:12 then you can say, okay, we may need to have intervention
2:52:14 to build foundational skills when it is flat like this,
2:52:18 flat being growth or deficits in that growth,
2:52:22 that is a tier one instruction.
2:52:23 We need to change what all students
2:52:25 are experiencing in math, and then everyone
2:52:27 naturally levels up.
2:52:29 So then all of your students level up
2:52:31 when you increase the quality of that math block.
2:52:38 And when we look at the ESC students and the ELL students,
2:52:43 we know then 22, 23, they demonstrated growth,
2:52:46 10.8 percentage point for the ESC students,
2:52:50 6.3 percentage points for the ELL students.
2:52:55 When we compare them to the 23, 24,
2:53:00 we note that the ESC students are performing,
2:53:04 for PM1 performed better than they did in 22, 23,
2:53:08 and performed for PM2, performed better
2:53:10 than they did in 22, 23, as well as the ELL and the,
2:53:16 as well as the ELL students for both PM1 and PM2.
2:53:25 Are there any questions?
2:53:27 - Board members, any questions or comments
2:53:29 you would like to add?
2:53:32 This data I’m ecstatic about, honestly.
2:53:34 Let me just say, this is very, very encouraging, so.
2:53:38 - I think we have the data.
2:53:40 - We are moving the right direction.
2:53:42 - Okay, I’m gonna, I’m very excited about the reading data,
2:53:45 the math data shows we got some work to do, so.
2:53:48 - I just, I have just a couple of things.
2:53:51 I, thanks for the way that you walk through
2:53:53 the explanation part, except for the beginning,
2:53:55 that was really confusing.
2:53:57 (laughing)
2:53:59 - 852, we’re trying to get to 852.
2:54:01 - No, that’s not your fault, that’s not your fault.
2:54:03 I think it’s important to, I think it’s important
2:54:07 when people look at numbers, just I have to just add
2:54:10 this disclaimer, I’ve decided that I’m always gonna add
2:54:12 this disclaimer when we start talking about data,
2:54:14 because the public sees data like, you know,
2:54:18 that you broke down for, let’s say third graders,
2:54:21 and let’s say we’ve got, you know, 34% or whatever,
2:54:26 something, you know, 55% of students scored a three
2:54:29 or higher, so that means that 45% of our students
2:54:32 can’t read, and when I hear that, it frustrates me,
2:54:37 because I have seen students very close to me
2:54:41 who can read proficiently, but what’s getting tested
2:54:44 is comprehension vocabulary, shading, you know,
2:54:49 if you have a disability or something
2:54:51 that makes those complicated, you may be able to read
2:54:55 fluently, no, but so it’s, so for the public,
2:54:58 let’s just be careful with our wording,
2:55:00 because if you have a student who scored a one,
2:55:02 and they can read just fine, but they can’t,
2:55:05 they have deficiencies in things like vocabulary
2:55:08 and finding the themes and character motivation,
2:55:11 especially as kids get older, I think we need to be careful
2:55:14 with throwing that word around that students can’t read,
2:55:16 because I think we’re gonna find across our district
2:55:18 that we have a lot of students who are scoring poorly
2:55:20 that we have gaps, and we wanna meet those gaps,
2:55:23 but to say that they can’t read is highly inaccurate.
2:55:26 - And I’m so glad that you brought that up,
2:55:27 because I failed to mention it, although I had it
2:55:29 on the first slide about progress monitoring
2:55:32 and what does that really mean, we’re not,
2:55:34 the expectation is not that we’re gonna have 100%
2:55:37 of our students on grade level for progress monitoring one,
2:55:40 this is a progress monitoring for the first time
2:55:43 in the history of Florida, we have a way of gauging
2:55:47 where are the students starting now that we can compare them
2:55:49 back to where they ended at PM3 based on their own scores,
2:55:53 and then we can see where are they in PM2,
2:55:57 and then where are they going to end up,
2:55:58 so that temperature gauge that we are able to do now,
2:56:02 the growth between PM1 and PM2 for individual students,
2:56:05 that’s critical for a school to be able to then say,
2:56:09 okay, what do I need to take little Nada and move her
2:56:12 to be a proficient student by PM3?
2:56:16 - Yeah, thank you, I appreciate all this data,
2:56:18 it’s very important, this is why we’re here,
2:56:19 this is why we cut the grass, to bring it full circle.
2:56:24 - And I think just before we close,
2:56:27 I just know that the numbers are the first page
2:56:31 of the story, but what you really want to know
2:56:33 is what comes next, and I think when we speak to the math,
2:56:37 we know that legislation this year, 7069, came out
2:56:41 with requiring the math interventions
2:56:43 that have been previously required for ELA,
2:56:46 and so while I know our classroom teachers
2:56:49 felt that burden of one more thing,
2:56:51 I think that this shows the need that as a state,
2:56:54 we know that we have to reprioritize math,
2:56:56 and so we’re going to be raising the bar on expectations,
2:56:59 but I know our students can do it,
2:57:01 and I know that collectively we can do it,
2:57:04 but we’re moving to be number one in Florida,
2:57:08 and I think that we can do it, and we will not,
2:57:12 I wait for the day where we’re presenting PM3 data,
2:57:16 where every child, we’re showing all of this promise,
2:57:20 but I think that we have plans to improve this data,
2:57:25 and that’s what’s most important.
2:57:27 We’re not satisfied with even the ELA celebrations.
2:57:31 - Yeah, but there is a lot to be proud of there,
2:57:34 so I’ll say that, so thank you so much.
2:57:36 I ask that she’s in if he’s okay
2:57:38 with moving his discussion topics ‘til this evening,
2:57:40 so we have time to break the room down,
2:57:42 since we’re kind of up against a clock at this point,
2:57:44 so we’re gonna go ahead and adjourn the workshop,
2:57:48 and guys, guess what?
2:57:49 We won’t have workshops anymore on the same day
2:57:51 as we have board meetings,
2:57:52 so we shouldn’t potentially run into this, right,
2:57:54 ‘cause now moving forward our calendars.
2:57:56 - Correct. - We will have more time,
2:57:58 so we won’t be bumping into each other,
2:57:59 so yeah, and you can say more, Mr. Trent.
2:58:03 There you go, all right, so thank you guys again.
2:58:05 Appreciate you.
2:58:09 (upbeat music)
2:58:39 (silence)