Fiscal Accountability and Government Relations Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning and welcome to the Fiscal Accountability and Government Relations Committee for Wednesday, April 15th, 2026. I'm going to now call to order the meeting. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Vice Chair Monica Colucci. to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain silent for a moment of silence. Before we get started, and I state the names of those members of this committee, I think our board chair wanted to share that a member had shared that they would not be here today, so.

Yes, thank you very much, sir. No, I just wanted to announce that board member Blanco has advised me that she will be here, but she is going to be here a little bit later. The rest of the board members I have not heard from. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So as I stated, our committee membership is me, Roberto Alonso as the chair, Mr. Danny Espino as vice chair, Ms. Lisa Santos as member, Mr. Joseph Geller as member, Dr. Dorothy Benjos-Mendigo as an alternate member, and Ms. Mary Blanco as an alternate member. Our first order of business is to approve the minutes of the Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 Fiscal and Accountability and Government Relations Committee meeting. Are there any questions from the board members on this?

No, move it, please.

All right, so I'll second. All in favor? Aye. This might be a record-breaking meeting. We're now moved to our next order of business, which is our D items. Can I get a motion to move to the floor?

Yes, move it, please.

All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

All right, our first one is D71, Mr. Lewis.

Through the Chair, Mr. Alonzo. So D71 is reauthorization of the school bus infraction program. Okay, do we have any questions or comments?

Yes, you're recognized.

Thank you very much, sir. No, I'm very happy to see that we have finally reached a point where everyone has come together so that we can move forward. dotting our I's and crossing our T's so the only statement that I want to make and question I want to ask is as everyone I would like to see before this gets started for everyone to come to the table all the parties that are engaged to be together so that there's no misunderstanding of any kind as we move forward and that we have all parties in agreement as we move forward. That is the only thing that I want to make sure does occur because that's what got us into difficulty last time. So through the chair, if I could have someone respond to that, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Through the chair, Ms. Rojas, yes. So part of the interlocal agreement that was submitted for review to the board yesterday afternoon It does reference within there that a meet and confer provision must take place with all the parties in order for this to be solidified.

That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Thank you so very much for that because that means everyone is in agreement and we're going to move forward on a positive note. So thank you. I'm happy to see that we have finally reached this point and hopefully we will have much success as we move forward and I do fully support the item. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you so much, and I see now we have Board Member Espino here too. Board Member Espino, I know this was one of your items. You worked very hard on this, so if you wanted to comment on it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, I just want to thank the administration for the effort. I know it's multi-party, multi-faceted, corralling governments to do something in coordination is not easy, especially when you have to align interests, we'll say. But I think everyone's interest is the same. Fortunately, on this one, we made it a little bit easier, which is ultimately the safety of our kids. Hopefully, we're still on time to adjudicate as many of the outstanding violations as possible. Was that discussed already, or...? Okay, well, I mean, just, I know that that was an outstanding issue, but I think ultimately now it's going to, the program's going to run smoother, people's ability to have due process is going to be resolved, and ultimately I think that with an educational, a re-up of the educational campaign will remind everybody that you don't drive like a maniac around our school buses. And after enough people have gotten dinged, we'll see a continued improvement. Because I was flabbergasted when when the first couple months of the program resulted in thousands and thousands, and I saw a couple videos, and the reason is because, you know, yeah, we might stop buying buses, but 15 cars at one time, every time it stops, it really multiplies really quickly, which means it's indicative the system works, and it's indicative that we have a problem. So thank you, everybody, for your efforts.

Thank you, Board Member Spino, and thank you. Okay, I'll come right back to it, just to... I wanna thank you for your leadership on this because as you've always stated, this is about the safety and the protection of our students. And as I've shared in previous board meetings, I sat in a bus while cars were driving by and the stop sign was out. And that is extremely concerning. And being a member of the TPO that the board chair has put me on there, one of the things we talk about is about pedestrian safety, right? And our students being able to walk safely to and from school. So I really appreciate your leadership on that. And I appreciate all the work that staff has put onto this. I know putting all the groups together is not easy. And our auditors who really helped us kind of detail what was the best way to do this and try to find some of those little holes in there that we could fix so that the program can run better and be more efficient. One of the questions to the board chair's earlier comments, and I think board member Espinoza said it too, one of our biggest mistakes I think that we had initially was communication, right? And it's not just on us, it was all the parties involved. What are we going to do different this time around to communicate with the community, with the drivers, And what type of campaigns are we going to put together so that they understand that? Because, yes, we hope that they get the tickets, but we also hope that they don't get the tickets, right? So we want to get to a point where everybody is aware of this and that we also have a communication campaign associated with this. And I know that in speaking with the vendor. They had shared with me that they want to be part of this communication as well and that they were willing to invest into it. So could you comment on that, Mr. Diaz, on what it is that the plan is on that and how we're going to restart this program from a district's perspective?

Yeah, through the chair. So, Mr. Alonzo, 100 percent. And you referenced the vendor. Most definitely. They will be a very, very key ingredient component of this campaign, right? They have experience in doing this in other districts. They did it with us. However, there's been lessons learned. So number one, their communications department along with our communications department will utilize all different avenues from written communication to TV ads to newspaper to social media, everything and anything that's basically a best practice to communicate across our community in totality to ensure that everyone's aware of the campaign, everyone's aware of what's coming forth, and nothing will take place until we feel that everything has been solidified in an awareness campaign. And then obviously, upon signature, nothing will take place until all parties have agreed, as Board Chair Rojas referenced, until all parties have sat down and agreed that this is what is expected of you and your role, we move forward. So we're pretty confident. We've gone through this rodeo. Now we have lessons learned. And I believe, based on the experiences and the people that we have on our team, on their team, as well as the Sheriff's Department, they have a very large voice in this community as well. I believe that the awareness campaign will be something that's successful this time around.

Thank you so much. I think our board chair had further comments that you wanted to share.

Just very quickly, and we talked about it earlier, but you reemphasized it now again, that if we're going to have success in anything, we have to have that open communication with all of the members in the community that are affected by this, and that the safety and security and the well-being of our children is our number one priority on this board. I think for every single board member sitting here, And the other part that was important to get clarity on, of course, the sheriff's office and their involvement, critically important to all of us. And we're very honored and grateful for the outstanding relationship that this the board the superintendent the staff everybody has uh with our sheriff and we thank her and her team uh for their uh participation and their support of this endeavor uh but the the other pending area that i had been concerned about at the beginning was um Having been the assistant superintendent in the Office of Professional Standards for many years, I know that DOA had to deal with a lot of cases that were totally unrelated to anything dealing with bus patrol. And my concern was, were they going to be able to handle all the regular cases that they have to deal with and the cases that come from this? And it is my understanding, based on all the documentation that I have read, that I have in front of me, that yes, DOA will now be able to handle the cases. Is that accurate through the Chair?

Yes, through the Chair. I did, we did, I'm sorry, just through the Office of General Counsel, we actually met with DOA a couple of months ago. We went through the caseload, the potential caseload that was anticipated. and we met with the chief judge, the deputy chief judge, and another judge, and they all agreed that they could work with us to accommodate the additional loads.

Great. Thank you very much. That's all I needed, sir. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any further question comments? Yes, Dr. Gallin, you're recognized.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the board and the administration, the superintendent, for bringing some information anticipate a resolution to this particular issue that has been really a source of consternation for the community and quite frankly something that has just lingered for a while. So I want to thank everybody who was involved in this process as well as our auditors for their diligence in this work. As we prepare to transition into the reimplementation or reauthorization of this program, The program actually was touted as a turnkey through the chair. It's always been presented as a turnkey. I'm consistent. On the record, in the media, wherever my remarks are made, I don't want any significant component of this reauthorization to then take away from what staff's primary function is. So let me just summarize what I'm saying. That this should not be something that causes an additional thing for staff to have to do. I think this needs to be as seamless as possible, as turnkey, as advertised. And as we start to prepare for the amendment to the contract, those are some of the things that I want to get strong clarity on. I think we have the partner issues resolved from DOA, from the sheriff, and other partners that are critical to this particular process. And I'm glad, because for me, if we had to dispose of these citations, for me, that was a non-starter.

Mm-hmm.

I thought that it would have been contrary to our role and quite frankly represent somewhat of a conflict of interest because we did have an interest from a financial standpoint. That being said, I'm glad that that has been resolved. But I do want to make sure that we have some clarity around the turnkey representation of this program, that it does not require an onerous imposition on staff to have to now dedicate consistent time to its implementation, monitoring, et cetera. Because we all know our situation, fiscally and otherwise. And if this requires Mr. Diaz to dedicate somebody who, in my own personal interest, has to be taken away from middle school athletics to deal with this, middle school athletics obviously focuses on our children, our students, our families. to deal with something that really is not really in the full space of our primary mission. Yes, we're all for safety. We all believe in that. But we want the representation of a turnkey program to be fully honored and to be fully represented and confirmed in this implementation reauthorization through the chair. Do you want to speak to that? Don't feel obligated to if you don't through the chair. We can go off and we can talk about it later, but I'm just saying as we continue down this road in terms of contract and things of that nature, those are some of the things I'm going to be concerned about. And the reason I raised the issue through the chair is because we talked about, for example, The community needs to know X, Y, and Z. Whose role and responsibility is for community notification and engagement? Is that a function that's going to come from our Office of Communications? Is that going to be another iteration of their work? Or is this something that the partnership is going to commit to informing the community through resources, strategies, and other mechanisms? Those are just questions we need to contemplate. through the chair. And that's not a question, I respectfully not ask it as a question, I'm just giving you advanced contemplation for some things that I would like to follow up on. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Allen. You make a great point. It's one that I had brought up earlier on communication and how we're going to communicate it out, and not just the restart of the program as a whole, but even just the follow-through now on these current citations that are sitting out there. How is the company going to notify all these individuals that they're going to have an option now to go to court or to DUA, and how are we going to make sure that all the ones that have expired maybe have also been notified of the expiration. So a communication plan I think would be beneficial for the board to receive. And who's gonna be leading this would be important as well because as Dr. Gallant said, it's supposed to be a turnkey system. But we understand that we always have our fingerprint on it though, right? So we have to be involved because it does have our reputation on it. I think it's important that we're a part of the conversation. To your point, it's not a question we have to answer right now, but I think would be a great one for Mr. Diaz to follow back up with the board on and provide some clarity. Okay, with no further questions, can we now take a motion to recommend the D items? Second. All right, all in favor?

Aye.

Okay, the next order of business is to move our E items to the floor. Move it. All in favor?

Aye.

Our first one is E1. Mr. Steiger, this is your item.

E1 is the monthly financials for the period ending February 2026.

Any questions or comments? Okay, we'll now move to E86 through E90. And that is for you, Mr. Goodman.

Good morning. Through the chair, E86 through E90 were discussed extensively at last week's APAC meeting. E86 is the combined federal and financial statement audit from the state auditor general.

Any questions or comments? Yes, you're recognized, Board Chair Rojas.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Goodman, to you, to the members of ABAC who went thoroughly through this just this past week, and to our board representative, Dr. Gowan, who does a great job representing us on that board as well. Thank you to all. BUT I WANTED TO JUST VERY BRIEFLY ASK A QUESTION. MR. GOODMAN, IN AGENDA ITEMS E86, E87, E88, E89, AND E90, THE RECOMMENDED ACTION IN ALL OF THESE STATE THE FOLLOWING. THE SCHOOL BOARD OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA, RECEIVE AND FILE. AND THEN EACH ITEM GOES ON TO SPECIFY THE DOCUMENT WHICH IS BEING SUBMITTED TO THE BOARD. So I just want to make sure that the only action that the board is taking on these items is to receive and file the document presented. No other action other than that is being taken, correct?

Correct.

So this is typical to receive and file.

Correct.

Okay, thank you very much. That's all I needed to put on the record. Thank you.

Thank you. Is that, does that conclude our hearing, Adam?

I'm good, if you have any questions.

Are there any questions on E86 through E90, other than Board Chair Rojas' comments?

Okay, we'll now move to E141, Mr. Steiger. E141 is the award of an ITB for commercial leasing of four different parking facilities. Any questions or comments? Okay, E142. E142 is award of an ITB for the electrical installation of the Learn to Swim program. Any questions or comments, board members? Seeing none, E143. E143 is award of an ITB for the telecommunications tower on Miami Killian Senior High. Any questions or comments?

Yes, you're recognized, Ms. Ross.

Yes, thank you very much, sir. It's continuous. I bring this up every time we talk about these towers because I have numerous schools that have them. I just want to make sure that the safety and the well-being of all those in those schools is truly protected when we put this, because I've had a lot of concerns from parents and personnel at school sites as to... the fact that they feel that it could affect their physical health with having these towers right there where the schools are at. So once again, I want to bring that point up and I would like a response as to an assurance of some sort for those that work in schools that have these towers. I have numerous of them, as I said. that they're not going to affect their health adversely. Through the chair, someone could respond to that. I would appreciate it.

Who will be speaking for administration? Through the chair, Mrs. Rojas. Mr. Perez, who these documents come through, FCC has assured us that there is no danger to the students and or the Wi-Fi that's being transmitted. We do have that documentation.

So through the chair, thank you. If maybe we could share that with the schools that are affected with that documentation that states that it's not going to be affected adversely, their health, because of having these towers at those sites. I think it would be helpful, very beneficial for the workforce who are there every single day and for any families that may be wondering if their children will be affected by having something like that. So I'm glad to hear we do have it in writing

Through the chair, Madam Chair, just keep in mind that these towers, the one tower that you're talking about in particular is on top of our property, if I'm not mistaken. The other towers are away from the facilities, far from the facilities in the PE fields. But yes, I will get with Mr. Perez to provide you with those notices.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, sir.

Any further questions or comments? E201. E201 is this month's acceptance of grants and donations. Any questions or comments? Yes, your recognition, Ms. Ross.

Thank you very much, sir. And I usually love this item because it's going to enhance our programs here at the district for our children. in so many positive ways. However, I'm very sad to see that the first one, which is so important, and that's the safety and the security of our school buildings. And we have so many buildings that are very, very old. And so we have to invest on a continuous basis to ensure the safety and the well-being of all those that are in those buildings on a daily basis. Um, and also that the improvement of the physical security of those buildings is based upon the recommendations from the state and the security risk assessment to them. And I was sad to see that there was a decrease of 57.58%. in this arena from when we started to 27. And so does anyone have a response as to why, of course, we have a financial situation that we're all apprised of statewide, but does anyone have any further, I guess, Mr. Steiger, I'm looking at you because you would be the appropriate person to respond to that, as to why such a drastic, because it's pretty drastic. It's 57%.

reduction in that arena so through the chair sure yeah um mr chair miss rajas it's because the state cut the allocation by that much we just get our share per kid

I understand that through the chair, but has there been any follow-up, any question? Why so drastically for safety and security and well-being of all those that we represent? That's just not cutting on purchasing books or whatever. No, no, no. You're talking about something extremely important here.

Yeah, so Mr. Chair, Ms. Rojas. This allocation has existed ever since right after Marjory Stoneman Douglas. I feel the amount's gone up and down over the years. Sometimes it's been heavy more. I think some of it is, you're right, budget issues and budget priorities. But also, listening to the debate on the floor and talking to legislators about it, they also feel that a lot of the investments that they felt they needed to have made in the aftermath has been done. Right. So a lot of the fencing issues, a lot of the doors, some of the highest priority needs were done. And I think if you speak to the legislators off, they somewhat believe they thought this was going to be a temporary allocation and not a permanent allocation. And they've tried to bring it down. There's been political pressure. They bring it back up. They've tried to bring it down in the 2025 legislative session. They brought it down by 50 percent. I don't. In this legislative session, I don't know where this ended up, but I believe there was no reduction from prior year, but we can follow up on that. So it's really just at the mercy of the legislative process.

All right, thank you. I'll ask other questions when Mr. Ogivary comes on board later. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir.

Any further questions or comments? I did have a question, Mr. Steyer, and you might not have the details now, but maybe you can share it with us after. Since Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and the state started providing this funding, how much funding have they provided the district in total?

I can get back to you with a specific answer, but it'll be about somewhere around $75 million is my guess, but I will get back to you with a specific number. Okay.

Yeah, because to your point, I have heard in the past, you know, and even from our own staff, you know, we've put a tremendous amount of safety features throughout our schools from fencing to new gate doors. I know I've seen all of my schools and even schools that I've identified my own vulnerabilities when I walk around. Staff has always had that funding available to them to be able to secure it. And I think most of my schools have already kind of gotten to that point. We can always enhance and improve, which is part of why I was asking during my briefing to you, Mr. Bueno, on where these dollars were going. Because one of the things that I think we should be advocating for is to now think beyond just the fencing, right, and the doors. And how do we modernize the camera system that we have in our schools? How do we modernize the security systems that are put in there, because you can put a fence around whatever you want, but somebody can always jump over it, right? And I think we need to be able to provide our staff and our police department with all the resources and technology available out there, and maybe that could be part of our conversation, and as you said, Mr. Levi, we're coming back, on how do we rethink the safety funding that's provided to our school districts so that we can continue to invest in these areas, because we always need to continue investing and safety and security maybe just needs to be rewarded and the legislature needs to be updated on, okay, yes, we did complete these projects that were initial projects, but now we need to work on these additional ones. Did you have a question?

Yes. Yes, Mr. Chair, no, in complete agreement. And the next phase of this is how do we integrate more and more technology? Because at the end of the day, it's about vigilance, right? Monitoring, looking, and even the world of drones now, supporting and assisting monitoring schools has to be, like you're saying, a shift in conversation. So appreciate your comments, and I think that's what we're looking at at our end as well. All right, thank you so much.

Yes, Ms. Blanco, you're recognized.

Thank you remember Alonzo and apologize I walked in in the middle of your comments, so I don't know if i'm going to be a little off, but. I think it's a great idea what you're saying and making sure that we communicate to Tallahassee where the needs are. One of the things that that i've been. advocating for, and I know we've been piloting is. the alert system, right? And it's like you said, we can put up as many fences as we want and we can do a lot of things, but sadly, if somebody truly wants to get on the campus, what can we do to improve the response time as well, right? And so I think having good, having great ideas, making sure to communicate that to Tallahassee, maybe providing more flexibility in some of the funds that we get, the importance of the funding, increasing funding that we can get to go directly to security, I'd be all on board for it.

All right, thank you so much. Okay, with no further questions, I now move to get a recommendation to move the E items to the board meeting. Mr.

Chair? Yes. Yes, I'll move that, but I'll be abstaining from E89. Although there exists no conflict of interest to avoid the appearance of impropriety based on previous relationships, I will be abstaining from E89. Okay. Thank you.

To our council, do we need to vote with that? Because we're not really voting. We're just moving them to the board meeting, right? Or should we separate it?

You could separate it just to take the vote on E89 and then separately.

So let's move E89 first.

Second.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

Okay. Now we move the remainder of E items other than E89. All in favor?

Aye.

All right. Our next order of business is to move the G items to the floor. Can I get a motion? All in favor?

Aye.

All right. Our first item is G1. Mr. Harvey, this is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Final reading is G1, proposed amendments to school board policy 6424, purchasing cards and travel cards, and also 6550, travel per diem, and 6610, internal accounts. This item is being introduced. Again, this is for final reading due to an item H2 brought by Chair Rojas in January 2024, which directed the superintendent to upon receipt of the final report from the Office of Inspector General and the Chief Auditor to make policy revisions and recommendations as appropriate for purchasing cards and travel cards. If there are any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. Thank you.

Ms. Rawls, you're recognized.

Thank you very much, sir. Not a question, just a statement. I just wanted to thank you once again, Mr. General Counsel, sir, and your team. Very comprehensive report. very pleased when I read all of the changes that have been made and I think that this is going to be very, very helpful to all of us in the workforce with the implementation of these changes. So thank you and please make sure that you let the members of your team know that we're very grateful for all the hard work that you all do when we submit items and we proffer items and you're the ones that have to follow up accordingly. and you do an exceptional job, so thank you. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you. Any further questions or comments? All right, G2.

Yes, G2 also is for final reading. These are amendments to Board Policy 6320, Purchasing. These proposed amendments follow two agenda items from the November 2025 meeting. That's Agenda Item H3, the Review and Amendment of Board Policy to Ensure Proper Procurement and Oversight of Income-Generating Contracts. That was introduced by you, Mr. Chair, and item H6 is to strengthen the accountability and transparency in the use of district funds that was introduced by Dr. Gallin at the same meeting. Again, this clarifies agreements and policies related to these two items. If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you.

Any questions or comments? I'll just echo your sentiments, Board Member Rojas, and thanking our legal department for all the great work that you guys do There's a lot of changes going on in this district. I was talking to the superintendent. We're constantly having to re-look at a lot of our policies, and you guys have done an incredible job in assisting us through that process, so thank you so much. Our next one is G3.

G3, thank you, Mr. Chair. G3 is for initial reading. These are amendments to bylaw 0124, standards of ethical conduct, and policy 4210, standards of ethical conduct, as well as the other applicable standards of ethical conduct policies and code of ethics policies, also employment standards and fingerprinting policies, as well as the payment of invoices policy and public records. These are amendments that are to bring conformance to current state law as well as to follow up on an item that was introduced by Chair Rojas regarding a follow up for the state auditor general audit findings. The item directed us to review and revise applicable board policies in response to these audit findings. from the 2024 to 2025 operational audit, largely covering the procedures governing public records and the response and how that's handled, as well as the fingerprinting requirements. If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Okay, G5. G5 presents for initial reading amendments to Board Policy 7460, Conservation and Natural and Material Resources. These amendments are being introduced to follow up on an item that was brought at the December 2025 meeting, which was H11, Waste Cost Realignment and Efficiency Review, Board Member Santos. This directed a rulemaking, if deemed necessary and appropriate, to require that resource efficiency cost savings be reinvested back into a fund. that can be utilized for clearly defined additional resource efforts and to annually review waste management efficiency processes. If there are any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Ms. Blanco, you're recognized. Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to say, like, I think obviously this is really good. It came from an item, and we voted on it. to reinvest the savings that we materialize from these cost-effective measures for inefficiency. My question in the briefing with Mr. Madrigal, and I thank him for that, is in a situation like this year, where every dollar that we save could help in balancing and getting to a better place. Is it possible to have some language that would allow some flexibility where it's not, doesn't have to be reinvested, but if considered, or maybe it has to come to board for discussion or approval, the opportunity to perhaps in that unusual circumstance to not reinvest and perhaps be able to use in another area that seems fitting.

Yes, through the Chair, there are no objections. I know the language here says reinvest cost savings in a designated fund that must be utilized for clearly defined additional resource efficiency efforts. We could change the word must to can, or you just want to say as deemed appropriate, subject to Board approval.

The way I think about it is we should definitely reinvest it, right? We're saving it because we're being cost efficient, and let's try to improve our efficiency so that we can continue to save more money. And I wouldn't want it to be that every year we find a reason, but in an extreme situation, like I think the one we find ourselves in this year, I think I'm open to whatever wording is consensus for the board, whether it comes back to us or something, but just allow some flexibility if that indeed could help us again in an unusual circumstance, such as the one we find ourselves in this year.

Okay, I'll try to make that modification if there are no objections.

Yep. No, I agree, and great point, Board Member Blanco. You know, giving that flexibility, I think it's important, and the word must takes that away. So if we can reward that to obviously reinvest it in where we feel deemed necessary at that moment, I think would be important. Because we know that once we put policy in place, then it makes it a lot harder to make those changes and for staff to be able to use it appropriately. So thank you.

Okay, this is initial reading, so we can make the changes. Yes, you're recognized.

And I know as part of this initial reading, it came from a board item that's from another board member, and I know she feels very strongly about this, and I wish she was here so we could talk about it, because I do see the value in what we're doing, right, with the G item. Again, it's that word must, right, to allow that flexibility. I'm open... like I said, however the board would like to see fit, but just that word must if there's a way to fix it to allow us some flexibility.

Mr. Harvey, do you need us to vote on that then or you're okay with working with maybe the board member and adjusting that for the board meeting? Yes, I can do that.

No special vote is required.

Okay, thank you. Okay, with no further comments, all the G items have now been discussed. We'll now take a motion to recommend the G items to our board meeting. All in favor?

Aye.

All right, our next order of business is contract extensions. Ms. Mumford, I believe she shared those. Are there any questions or comments for her on any of these contract extensions? No. None? All right, thank you. Next is legislative update. I know we're still pending budgets out of Tallahassee. Mr. Ulivari, any updates that you'd like to share with the board?

Good morning through the chair. Legislative update that was provided via separate covers is really what we have right now. We are expecting legislators to come back next week for a special redistricting session, but there has been no assignment yet for the budget. No assigned date.

Do we have any questions or comments from the board? Ms. Ross?

Yes, thank you. Through the chair, this would be the appropriate time. I know you were back there listening to our comments, so if you could follow up on that. I would really appreciate it.

Through the Chair. So, yes, absolutely. Obviously, they have to agree on the budget. There has been a proposal made. The House and the Senate are differing now in what they are proposing regarding safety and security for the upcoming budget. But at the end, it's going to be determined as to, they have to determine as to what they will be agreeing upon and what will ultimately be passed regarding the allocation that will be done statewide.

Through the chair. So in addition to that, the follow-up portion to have conversations with members at the state level so that we could maybe look at technology more so than the fencing and that type of scenario. Another area that I bring up a lot, and I've even proffered an item, had to deal with drones. We only have drones. one drone and it's not even really ours. And so that's something that is costly and we need to look at that because that's something that is very beneficial in certain situations and I would like to see the enhancement of that possibility here in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. So the direct conversations related to a paradigm shift as to where we go with this.

I think the superintendent wanted to comment as well.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Rojas, great question. So I was in FADS. and I met with one of the primary vendors of the introduction of drones. And so what happened was there's a grant. A grant was applied for, and the state designated like three districts to really engage. Unfortunately, we were not selected. What I'm hoping is with the next round of grant funding that we can hopefully be selected, and we're going to try to do some advocacy for it. He really, you know, is not only a vendor. It's like a conglomerate. right, of folks that are really trying to enhance security with technology. At the end of the day, what we're going to be is really vigilant to this grant once it comes out, and try to make sure that we're knocking on the right doors to be selected for this second batch of investments in drones and technology. So, I mean, it just responds directly to your point, and I really engage in a lot of conversation in FADS regarding this piece.

Great, thank you very much, Mr. Superintendent. I appreciate it. That's all, sir.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? All right, great. So we've now gone over all our updates. We'll now move to any new business from any of our board members. Do we have any new business from any board members? Okay, we had a... Okay, go ahead. You're recognized.

Thank you so much. Sorry, I had a slight medical emergency, but all good now, so happy to be here. And Board Member Alonso, I believe the staff follow-up to the road.

We're going to get there.

Perfect. Thank you so much. And I did hear the discussion Board Member Blanco on my way in about G5, so I appreciated those comments. I just wanted to say that I think we should definitely have some flexibility built in, but stay true to the intent. So I'm happy to work with Mr. Harvey to make sure we have some good language there. Thank you so much.

Thank you. No, we definitely asked Mr. Harvey, and I'm sure you heard, to work together with you as the maker of the item to make sure that it was appropriately awarded. All right, so now we move to staff follow-up, and our first staff follow-up is for the December 17th agenda item H8 on road. I believe that the staff has shared that report with us, and now we'll open up to any questions unless staff wanted to give a brief discussion on it beforehand.

uh through the chair yes as you having your um was uploaded for you the presentation of the outcome and an analysis of department transportation through the road project um what we hope to do today is give you uh two sides of the coin of where we are currently as a district operations and what we do and what our practices are and point out some of the uh opportunities that we have uh the back portion of it will be an introspective look into what we can do in the future and what is coming, and how some of the things in this analysis will impact us going forward. So with that, through the chair, if I may, I'd like to ask Mr. Hicks to begin with the presentation of where we are from the operational standpoint, and then Mr. Benford-Sloan will follow him with the analysis results.

Thank you.

Through the chair, good morning, and thank you. We have prepared a presentation consisting of several sites, and I'll be focusing on the most relevant ones for my portion of it, which is the current overview. So the first one I really wanna focus on is the funding, the state portion. of what the district receives. As you can see, the district receives 25% of the annual cost for the transportation, and that's $27,128.81, $27 million, and represents 25%. So where's the funding come from, from the state? It comes from the Florida Education Finance Program, the FEFP. Here you see a five-year trend. You see the number of students that are eligible, the number of non-weighted and weighted students that have been transported over that time period, and the percentage of eligible students that we have transported. And then the line below the percentage is also the non-eligible students. While we might not receive funding, these are still students that we're transporting. They're within the two mile, but we're still transporting them. On this bottom line, the grand total, the focus that I want to bring is that if you notice, starting from 2021, going to 24, 25 is a steady increase in ridership growth. Mr. Cohn, did you want to address this slide?

Yes, through the chair. I wanted to point out something that's very unique to Miami-Dade County, some of the challenges that we have. As you can see on the slide for elementary students, we have roughly 78,000 students at the elementary level, and there are 79 at the high school level. But the drastic difference is we transport 1,800 students and five of the elementary, but you can see at the high school level, we transport 18,662. And so what the point is is that's unique to Miami-Dade County outside of the fact of the traffic walls that we encounter on a daily basis is the density that our schools are located in. If you look at that very same focus there, you can see we have 162 of those elementary schools and they're closely related together. So what that does is that minimizes some of the opportunities we have to transport elementary kids versus with the high school kids, it's spread out, which is more indicative of most of the counties are in the northern part of the state of Florida. It's spread out, and you can transport more kids. Just another thing just to bring to the point, we have 162 elementary schools. Of that, 30 of them are not even eligible for transportation at all. So those are missed opportunities where when we look at other counties, The other counties, their schools are spread out, so they're transporting just about all of their students. So we thought that was important to highlight that today just to show how we are uniquely different from schools that we're being compared to. Also, just to give a snapshot, we have 162 elementary. Broward has 128. Orange has 131. We have 45 senior high schools. Broward has 36. Orange has 23. We have 50 K-8s, which is the real factor in this because we have the largest proportion of K-8s. So we have 50, Broward has 13, Orange has 10. So just wanted to point out those are the factors that on a day-to-day basis that we cannot capture students to transport. However, in many cases, we still transport students in areas that were previously designated as a hazardous walking. The state took those away, but we as a district, because of a safety, we continue to transport those students. So I just wanted to pause and inject that in the presentation. And if I can, I'll turn it back to Mr. Hicks.

Thank you, Mr. Cohn. Through the chair. I saw this slide and I saw an opportunity. If you haven't noticed on our buses, we have advertisement on it for mechanics and drivers. And I want to bring it to attention. This is the first time our school district has been allowed to promote on our school buses. This was a collaboration between our superintendent and the Florida Department of Education. And this has been helping with recruitment opportunities. of mechanics and drivers. And this is actually, this is on the front bumper and the rear. And then on each side, it's much bigger. But I just saw this picture and just wanted to take the opportunity just to show what we're doing as far as recruitment. And I will discuss that later in the PowerPoint. So we were asked on the operational cost what it would look like if we went from the two miles transporting down to 1.5. So currently at the two miles, updated eligible students is 47,763. If we were to go to 1.5, that number would go to 63,038. Students impacted would be 15,275. And the number of routes, new routes, would be 305. And the cost for the new routes would be $22,875,000. If we went down to one mile, that number of updated eligible students would then increase to 86,000. 250. Students impacted 38,487. Number of new routes would be 769 and the cost for the routes would be 57,675,000. Now, when we go right now, currently, when we go below two miles, we might not be, transportation might not be eligible for FEFP funding. But whenever we transport below two miles, we could be helping the schools with their recruitment and their FTE funding. I just want to stop on this slide here and just briefly go over the driver training. This is a snapshot of how long and how in-depth the training is. You just cannot jump in and drive a bus. There's quite a bit that goes on. It's just not a matter of training to get the CDL, but also the CDL with the P and the S endorsement, which is passenger and school bus endorsement, along with CPR training, behavioral management, and ongoing professional development, along with training for handling of SPED students and whatever equipment may be needed. The training is on average four to six weeks. And when the drivers come out of that training, the training's not over. They're still, they continue. Bus drivers and aides must complete a state-mandated annual eight-hour in-service training course and are assigned retraining throughout the year as needed. This next slide talks about our recruitment and retention. I'm gonna focus, it gives you a couple years of information here. I'm gonna focus on the bottom, the totals. So if you see on the bottom for bus drivers, we've hired 170 drivers. Active today is 115. The retention rate is 68%. Going over, you have the resignations, the retirements, the terminations. And the separation total was 225. Right now we're at a deficit of 55 drivers. And the next line below is the information for the mechanics. And right now it shows a one, but there's currently additional 22 open positions for the mechanics. So who are we competing with? We start our bus drivers at $17.13 with a $1,000 sign-on bonus. Miami-Dade Transit starts their bus drivers at $21.21 with a $5,000 sign-on bonus. And Broward County Public Schools starts their drivers at 21. For the mechanics, we start our mechanics at $19.04 with a $1,000 sign-on bonus. Miami-Dade Transit starts theirs at $28.92, and Broward County Public Schools starts their mechanics at $32.21. Additionally, we're also competing with Here I'd like to talk about briefly on the municipal collaboration. Recently, we've partnership with the Greater Miami Expressway Agency, the GMX, to allow the shared use of the bus lane on State Road 836, that's east and west, and everybody probably recognizes that as the red lane. So when traffic's backed up in the morning or in the afternoon, we have access to that. So we're in the process of training our drivers because there is restrictions. And so now if you see, if you're sitting in the traffic, you see a bus go by, it's because we have access to it. Also, We'll continue addressing students within the two miles. A continuous sharing of data to create local transit routes. We'll be working with them, the ones that have trolleys, different kinds of form of transportation to see we can help transport the students to our schools that are less than two miles. This, again, will help with school recruitment and their FTE funding. This slide here covers the current school bus fleet. The majority of the fleet was purchased in 2007. That represents 60% of the fleet. They're 19 years old. The next purchase after that was in 2012. That represents 25%. That's 14 years. We had another purchase in 2021. That represents 6%. And then our purchases in 23, 24, 25, and 26 are nothing but electric buses, and currently we have 93 electric buses in our fleet. Thank you. Some of the slides I'm not talking on because they're gonna be covered more in depth shortly in the follow-up presentation to mine. And just to quickly go over the comprehensive wish list, our focus will be staffing expansion, hiring a minimum of 100 bus drivers, hiring additional bus aides and mechanics to support expanded routes and service reliability, fleet modernization, and also advanced financial analysis and routing software.

Thank you.

Through the chair, if I may, at this time, we'd like to bring forward the results of the analysis that was done of where we are as a school district. There's two things that we want to point out in here. There's two case studies that I think will give you a very clear insight as to things that we can do going forward fiscally. But not only fiscally, you're going to see something that we asked for that will result in increased magnet student transportation, and there's an illustration that points out one of our lowest enrolled schools in this district, what it could look like. So at this time, I'd like to ask Mr. Benford Sloan. I'm sorry.

Just before we switch over to presenters, I wanted to open up to the board. And first of all, thank you for that great presentation, for all the data you gave us, and ask if there was any questions on the current slides before you shift to the next presenter from the board members.

I certainly have questions on these slides, but since I reviewed the other slides too, I think I would like to wait for all of it to be done. You want to wait to the end?

Yeah. Ms. Blanco, you're recognized.

Thank you. I just have a question or something if I could point out through the chair. The slide that talks about how we're competing with other entities, and it's comparing what we pay our bus drivers with the Miami-Dade County Transit, public schools, that slide. I'm just thinking one of the things that isn't captured there, I believe, and so I'd Correct me, please, if I'm wrong. In comparing to the Miami-Dade County Transit, some of the things I've been hearing about the bus drivers is the number of hours that they are able to work with us is much more limited than what they can work with other, with a municipality, let's say, right? So if you could give us a sense of how many hours our typical bus drivers spend between the morning and afternoon, I think some of them, that lost time in the middle of the day where they can work is a factor in retention. So if you could just give a little bit of context to that.

Through the chair, all of our bus drivers are guaranteed seven and a half hours. So that block time in the middle, there's also opportunities for them to gain additional wages because during the middle of the day, we have community-based instruction. We have dual enrollment. We have field trips and things of that nature. So the seven and a half hours is every day. Every driver is automatically going to get that. And then the opportunities during the midday, is to do the things that we said. Then also on the weekends, we've made a concerted effort to address athletics to make sure that we're at the forefront. We're getting that opportunity before other companies are. So there's opportunities to expand what they earn on a daily basis.

Any other further questions or comments? I wanted to just comment on a couple things. I wanted to congratulate you on the advertising. I have seen the buses and been parked next to some of them at a traffic light and seen the advertising looking for mechanics. My question was going to be, though, we're also looking for students to come to our schools. What type of opportunities, and maybe the superintendent can speak to it, being that he's already advocated for the ability to market on buses, do we have an opportunity to market our schools or even our district website on these buses to be able to make sure families know where they can go to learn about our different programs in the schools in their community?

I'm sorry. Through the chair, with the advertisement through the state, it was limited to the size of document that we could use. As we stated, we were one of the first in the state to do this in the State allowed us to pilot this and up to 50% of the buses. Once we share and show some results, then we will be looking to broaden this out as we go. But for the pilot, it was restricted to those lines that you see on that. I'm sorry, it's right there in front of me. The lines that you see here, it was limited to that. But every effort will be made to expand once we are able to go through the entire fleet.

Okay. through the chair, no, thank you, Mr. Alonso, and Mr. Cohn answered it correctly. So, but we have an entire strategy on brand loyalty, that we are working on, which has to do with our websites, the consistency of all of this. So that's part of the conversation as well. We've been looking at the banners that we're placing in schools, for example, that's a little bit disjointed at this point. And so we're looking at all those pieces, and this was the first attempt to be able to place something on the buses. We want to continue. and then be consistent because the look is going to be important. It's just not putting just anything under, but have a consistent look that we can also do not only on our buses, but our schools. We're trying to be more strategic with how things look when we place them on the fence and so forth.

Okay, thank you. And then my second to last question was around when we're talking about the operational cost analysis and the current two mile. We know that a lot of families, most of the time when they're having that issue of under the two miles, right, they're going to private buses and paying for their children to be transported. Do we as a district have the opportunity to do a transportation service that families would pay for to be able to be transporting and using our buses?

Through the chair, currently we do not, but I do, and that's a great question and a point that I would like to bring up, is that what we've done is not waiting for that. So starting last month, what we started doing is we're meeting with municipalities and we're sharing our information of where our students are located within two miles. I believe we started, we met with two municipalities up the last week. they can see they're using our layout and they're going to be creating routes, free routes through the municipalities that will get students to school. I hope that answers your question.

Thank you. I think Mr. Steiger was commenting from a financial aspect.

Yeah, I mean, Mr. Chair, I think it's important to note here that the margins on this business are tiny. And so those private bus companies... They're in business because they keep their costs incredibly low. A 20-year-old bus is new for the private companies. Their drivers are on 1099s with non-employee compensation. There's no health insurance. Given our cost structure, it would be extremely difficult to make a profit even with parents paying unless we were such an attractive option that we could charge substantially more than the going rate.

but we also want to attract students to come to our schools, so there's a cost benefit to that as well, where we have buses that might be driving through a block that is half empty, and if we can now pick up a few students on the way there. Just throwing it out there for something for us to explore, and I just wanted to kind of lay it out there, see if it was first of all legally possible for us to use our buses that way, and for something to, think through in our enterprise team on can we use this as an opportunity. My last question, speaking of our fleet, I'm happy to see that we have so many EV buses, and I know that we've done this a lot through our federal grant programs. How efficient have these buses been? Are they running the same way that a diesel bus is running out there? Are they breaking down more often? What are we learning from having these? Because I know that that's all that we're bringing in since 2023. has only been EV. How does that compare to our fleet of diesel units that were out there?

Through the chair, the drivers are learning the electric buses. It was a transition, of course, going from the diesel and going to electric and how you drive it. They're learning how to operate it properly. And they're also learning through it is that as they're operating that bus, they're monitoring the charge, of course, but as they drive it, it's about also how you drive it and when you return it back to the compound as far as the charge remaining because you have to charge that bus back up. And in the beginning, we see the buses coming back in maybe at 25%, but now the drivers are aware of how to drive the bus. They coast a little bit more. I know some of you had an opportunity to ride in the buses, and you can actually see when you coast, it almost feels like the brake is on, but it's not. That's it regening. putting charge back to the battery. So they're learning. So as we saw that, as they learn how to operate those bus and make them more efficient, we saw that 25 turn into 40%, some cases 50% coming back in. So the buses are performing very well against the diesel, and they're also coming back. It doesn't require as much of a charge to go back out for the afternoon.

Thank you so much. That concludes my questions. I think that Board Chair Rojas had a question now. You're recognized.

Yes. Thank you very much. And actually, to your point, Mr. Chair, in reference to the buses having the advertisement, we do that for the youth fair. We have to pay a pretty good penny for it. But we get that all over the county. so that a lot of people tell us they found out about the fair through the buses because they're driving all over the place advertising these are the dates that the youth fair is going to take place with the whole picture and everything else so we could do a lot of that to your point in reference to our school district it would be I think it's going to be very very beneficial also through the chair I'd like to add that with school buses there is a minimum of

Because when we first started speaking with the state about this, one of the reasons that they shy away from that is because they want the school buses to be seen. They don't want anyone to focus in on trying to read, not to be coy. But one of the responses when I first started exploring this, they said the buses are yellow for a reason. And then they went on to explain. that that yellow bus is to make sure that people are paying attention to the bus and what the bus is doing and not reading it. So I wanted to add that as well.

Thank you, through the chair. And yes, it can still be yellow and we can still make it a lot smaller, but we can still advertise. Well, before I go on, Superintendent, I think might want to say something and then I'll go to my next question.

No, definitely. And to that point, what year did the first yellow bus come out when they identified that buses need to be yellow? We can't even remember, just saying. Sometimes we need to revisit things, right? So, Mr. Superintendent.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Rojas. That is exactly the point. We're so used to saying the state doesn't allow this, the state doesn't allow this. And it's exactly what you're saying. So we've been trying to open doors that before were not. And this is a prime example, right? So we're hoping that as a result of the pilot, we can do more. We have to rethink. We're in a different world. and buses that are our assets can become incredible sources of advertising and education. So we're trying to get there with an understanding, but you're right on point, and we've been trying to do that more and more with a lot of issues thanks to the initiative and the elements that you as a board have brought to bear that we have to do more of.

Thank you, and so through the chair, my other question, and I know nobody's gonna probably be able to answer it today, but I would like to have an idea after the meeting. With the situation with the gas prices that have gone significantly up, and the district being in the financial scenario that we are in right now, I'd just like to know how much in comparison to what we have been used to in previous year, how much more have we had to take dollars from elsewhere so that we could keep up with the high cost of gasoline at this point in time? I don't think you're going to have the answer. If you do, great. So through the chair, and if not, you can give it to me at another time, but I'd like to know that.

Through the chair, we'll be happy to follow up with you. When the gas spikes came about, what we immediately did three weeks ago was on a weekly basis, we've been tracking our expenses versus the same amount of miles and same amount of time from the last year. So we can get that to you in a report. We've been doing it on a weekly basis for the last three weeks.

Excellent. Thank you very much. That's what I would like to see. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you. All right, with no further questions, we'll now move to your second part of your presentation. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Benford Sloan, and I'm the Director of Customer Success with Bus Planner, and it's a pleasure to be here. Just a piece of trivia, the school buses, the National Congress on School Transportation in 1939 adopted National School Bus Yellow. So it's a countrywide thing that's been around. And so How do I know that? Because I've been in the industry a long time. I was a director of transportation for almost 25 years in four districts in North Carolina and Virginia. And since then, I've been working with Bus Planner in what I do now, working with school districts like yourselves. Mr. Matt Hayes is also here with me today from our team. He also has experience in school districts and logistics. Most recently, his last district was in Clay County, which is in northern Florida. And our whole team is comprised of K-12 transportation professionals. So we are here with you now. We've started working on several of the seven directives that you put out in the the road project that you adopted back in December. We have started work on this. We have not completed it. So I'm gonna go through with you today where we are at this point and answer any questions and then where we're gonna be going next. So with phase one, we've been going through a lot of different pieces of transportation analytics, looking at things from within your operation. from a routing perspective, an operations perspective. We've also been looking at different systems within the state as well as other large school district fleets in North America that are relative in size. So I'll be talking through some of that today. And then what ultimately is gonna be the goal that we wanna achieve here. I'm not going to get too much into this. You already heard some of this from Mr. Hicks earlier, and we are working on the workforce crisis, the compensation and things like that with the crisis you're dealing with with staffing. That's coming up in phase two. We actually, this week while we have been here on site, we have been starting preliminary interviews with different groups of employees to go through that. But the key here is, and I'm gonna talk about some of this later on, is that they brought out a very valid point earlier in that you have a lot of drivers that you've hired, but you are losing more than what you're able to bring in. And I also wanna point out that this is not something that is indicative of your school district. This is a nationwide issue, okay? So you are in the same situation that everyone else is in. And so it's not about what you can do. It's about how you can better utilize your resources. Okay, you're doing a phenomenal job right now. And that's what I do want to point out as we get into this. So today, I'm going to go over several things. We've heard some about the FEFP. I want to talk a little bit about that with some of the the discrepancies that you have now, again, because of how your community is set up, you're disenfranchised from what some of the others in the state are. I also want to talk to you a little bit about, you know, route inefficiency, and then two case studies that we have done that we see merit in being able to be explored moving down the road. We also want to go through GPS integrations, okay? This is technology to take your planned transportation model and align it so it is a complete interwoven model, realistically, and that's gonna bring a lot in. And then I also wanna go through some bell time opportunities that we see that, again, could further enhance some of your operations. So one thing I do wanna bring out, you've had a 27% increase in eligible student ridership since the 21-22 school year. That is a very good, that's a healthy increase. These are dollars that are translating, coming back into the district. You have also, and I wanna emphasize this, something that I do not see anymore, your cost per mile has actually decreased. during that same period. And this again, I've gone through and utilized the official numbers that were reported to the state. Okay, so you have 11.1% reduction. And it's something that we just don't see anymore. So that is again a strong attribute. You do, however, you have a lot of ability for growth. So you're utilizing with the fleet you have now. You have reduced the volume of buses, but you still have a lot of open capacity that you could do things with that we want to, again, we're going to bring out with you today. Community engagement. The team here has done a phenomenal job with that. They've done a lot. I'm very impressed with what I've seen. and how they are reaching out, working with schools, with families, doing a lot with online forms and things of that nature to bring in. And we continue to want to work through some of that. You have a good technology platform. You have just recently moved into increasing that platform with a new generation technology that is going to be able to do a lot more for you in the months to come. And so we'll talk a little bit about that as well too. Your FEFP match rate, I did see some discrepancies there, not much. You have some schools where when they go out and they do the counts, I looked at the most recent sampling from February. You have some schools that have a 100% match as compared to the assigned in the routing system. So when I say assigned routers, I want to be very clear on what that term means. These are ones who have signed up for service. Now this could have been at the beginning of school. It could have been yesterday at some point. But if they're not physically matching to when the biweekly account occurred, then that's what we're going to term as a mismatch. So these are fixed points in time that don't always align up. There are some schools where the match rates were much lower. So again, that's how you got the 87.9%. And again, we see opportunities where you could increase that by altering some of the processes and protocols moving forward. So for the two case studies that we did, the first one was looking at One particular school. We chose to do Alonzo and Tracy Mourning Senior High School. We took the existing students that are assigned for bus transportation at that school for the regular ed students. There were no special needs students in this study. I want to point that out. We then looked at the existing bus stops that were either they get on in the morning or they are transported to in the afternoon to go home. We kept those same stop sets. We did not alter them at all, nor did we alter the riders. What we did was we simply put everything into an algorithm in the system to let it tell us what it could see as potential opportunities. In doing that, you currently have 16 bus runs that serve this group in the morning. After we did the optimization, we were able to reduce one bus out. Does this mean that you will physically be able to park a bus and not have to run it at all during the day? The answer to that is no. What it means is it's one less bus that has to transport students to this high school in the morning. So that's a reduction of 6.3%. The mileage also reduced by 8.2% in this same case study. The afternoon, and I apologize, this was a typo ahead. You had the Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and then the Wednesday. So you're reducing two runs in the afternoon versus what you currently run now. So between the morning and between the afternoon, that is a net reduction in three runs. So for the afternoon, the mileage difference there is gonna be a reduction of 5.8%. The riders has decreased by one rider. Again, going off the current system that you have now, off when people sign up for service, they may or may not, decide they want to ride both a.m. and p.m. And sometimes you will have students who ride one way. So that's where that discrepancy can come in there. The average travel time, and this is the time that we look at for all of the students in this scenario that have to ride the bus. So essentially, it's currently about 19.3 minutes. Afterwards, it was 19.2. So we left that as basically, it's essentially a no change. So with the daily mileage reduction of 16.83 miles a day that you are saving, okay, using your most recent cost per mile that we calculated, that is an approximate savings of $17,619 for a 180-day school term for this one school, okay? For the next case study, this was one that was from Miami-Killingham Senior High with your magnet program there. And so, as we heard that you all are wanting to be able to do more with these, so what we did here was we took the existing student population that attends this particular school And you have students that go way up to the northern end of the county and then way down to the southern end. And then around the school itself, you have a designated transportation zone that is currently 694 students in that zone. Again, using the existing population that you have going there, we assumed that bus transportation would be available for this whole boundary. that then increased that up to 937 students, or an increase of 35%. Looking at that, in order to do that, the question first becomes how are you able to do that with the buses currently? The answer is very simple. We do what we call a transfer model, a depot essentially. And so we built four of them. and the North Quad is one in the north, one in the south, the E in the southwest. So one, depending on the, some of the population density was greater in some of the areas than others, but essentially you'd have one bus or two that would pick up in, say, the north area, and it would bring them into a depot. They would then transfer from that bus to another one that's already serving the 694 students. So essentially what we did was we picked depots that were on the perimeter of the existing transportation platform. So we could then increase the ridership on those buses, fill up some more seats without having to just keep adding buses. So that's how we were able to do this. The increase in this is gonna be an increase. So right now it's costing $419,000 approximately to transport your existing population. When you increase that, then it's gonna go to $892,000 with all of these students. So that's an increase of $473,000. How are you gonna be able to take that cost? few ways number one you would gain the fefp funding which is at 527 right for these additional riders that's going to bring in over 128 000 right there you then would um if you were to go out and market to get other students to come to this magnet program here whether they're from charter schools, private schools, or other locations, utilizing the approximate FTE allocation of $9,100, you would have to essentially bring in 52 new students to break even. 52 students. So again, this is one scenario that we did for the magnets to show the opportunity that you could have here and utilizing with this model. As we looked into technology, there were a lot of things there that were brought out through your directives. The fleet here has had GPS for quite a while. They are now going into a new, a next generation GPS platforms called GPS Plus. This one is much more robust. The old platform essentially had fixed points where the unit would transmit, okay? And these would be set at 30, 45 seconds, depending on the time. They did decrease them a few years ago. The new system is going to be able to, has the ability to transmit pretty much continuously whenever the vehicle is making changes in its path, whether it's accelerating, decelerating, turning left, turning right, any type of movement, it will continuously ping. The reason I'm telling you all of this, okay, is because it's going to go into the next issue where you've had issues with communication where people don't know what's going on. It's also gonna have the ability to draw on time performance with geofences and things like that around schools. The dispatch module is an ability, your team here right now every day has to manually go in and make schedules. When people call out or they're late or buses break down, they have to move stops between buses, runs between buses, and all this is done manually, okay? So now with the new system, they will do it on a computer system, and once they do that, it will immediately send those changes to several vessels. Vessel number one will be the driver tablet, the navigation, which is called turns up here. Vessel number two, and we'll talk about on the next slide, is the parent app. Vessel number three will be the schools, where they can also get these notifications. The system does this autonomously so that no staff member has to, once they've made the changes, it will then send the update. So instead of if my child was on bus 500, they're now on bus 625. If I was picked up at 7 o'clock, I'm now picked up at 718. I'm going to automatically see that on my notification on my parent app. The driver is going to see it on their tablet to make changes where they need to go. the schools are gonna get this. And there's also gonna be a dashboard where it can come through on the main website. So again, it's constant communication in real time, which is gonna make your service delivery much more beneficial. On the parent app itself, so again, going through what it's gonna be able to do with all the robustness, it can do all of this and then more. There's also the ability in it to, if you were to, one of the things I mentioned earlier was the mismatch in the FEFP reporting. That is a better way to, out there, there's new technologies. One of those is with student scanning. The technology is there where students can scan on, scan off buses. As a district, you would now know every day of the week, morning to afternoon, who is actually riding your buses every time they roll. This is gonna make your funding match, but more importantly, it's going to fill the void for student safety. You will know at all times where your students are on your vehicles when they leave the school campuses. Families will know where their students are at all times through the Chipmunk app because it has the ability in it to notify the time and location where their student scans off and on. So it's very powerful in what it can do. Also with this system, you will have a reduction in calls of roughly 40 to 60% on average, what we have seen in other districts where it's been deployed, which again is gonna allow the team here to be able to do other things that they need to put their energy into. So there's a lot of pluses all the way around for this to be able to work with it. Lastly, I will point out there is also a AI chat bot that goes with this app, so parents can actually type in things into that, and it will give them instant information, which is another advantage. They can even send feedback. So when that feedback comes in, it will come here to the team internally so that they have to, like, say, get a student routed or make changes. They can be able to do it. So there's a lot of capabilities around that. So we have seven recommendations so far that we are bringing to you. One is to work on the FEFP funding recovery through some of the strategies. Two is the student ridership scanning to be able to get a better handle on that. Three, to do the route optimization. And I do want to point out, I didn't mention this earlier, but I do want you to know that this is not something that you can just dive into and it's gonna be done with a magic wand in a few weeks. You have over 300 schools here. This is a very intense process The team that we had doing just these two scenarios just to do the one transfer model, it took us over seven and a half hours, just that one, to build it all out. So it takes time to do these. I recommend to districts that whenever you go into this, you have a methodical approach. What are your short-term goals that you want to achieve? What are your mid-term? Case study number one, when you reduce the buses, at the individual schools, those extra buses you can then use for case study number two. All right, so you have to look at it in different ways. How do you wanna do it? By attendance boundary depot. The third one is consolidate bail times. You have a lot of bail times here. Most of the schools are on three, but you have others that are outliers. Those are also draining down the resources at transportation. So trying to better align some of the bail times would be something that we would recommend. Number five, coverage expansion, as we've already talked about with other magnet programs similar to that that we have in Miami-Killian. Looking at the GPS schedule, okay, making sure that that is aligned. One of the things that we've also mentioned is to them about is getting the map calibrated, which again, they will now have the ability to do with the new system that is being deployed at this time. It will be able to do that. And lastly, you need to have a transportation financial analytics software that is built into the system that will tell you your actual real-time cost for every component that you're doing with the vehicles. For districts the size of yours, that is something that we definitely see is you have to have at this point. And that will take your actual cost today for every component, whether it's insurance, diesel fuel, if you have propane, anything, and be able to put it in so you'll know what your actual cost per students are. And again, we're working on, this is the timeline of what we've done up until this point, and we're gonna continue working over the next few months with the staff here on all of that. Anyway, and this is just basically what I've already said to you already, what you've been able to do so far. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that presentation and for the effort that's been put on by your organization as well as our staff. I'll now open it up to board members for any questions or comments, and I think I see that Board Member Santos had some comments. We'll go with you first.

Thank you so much, and thank you to the team who I know has been working really, really hard because I proffered the item I have been checking in regularly and have had a chance to understand some of this data from your walkthrough. So I appreciate that time spent a lot. It's clear and it was clear from the item we presented that we have come a long way and we've got a really long way to go and there are real opportunities presented here in the recommendations. There was an analysis requested in the item to analyze mile radius reduction, let's say from two miles to 1.5 to one. That was one analysis. The other analysis is what do you do to increase ridership? And the underlying sort of tension is that because we get $21 million, I think, from the state, let's say, on average per year, but we, in order to transport the 27 million, in order to transport the students that qualify with that 27 million, we have to spend 100 million. we incur a cost basically for every student that we transport. It's not as simple as, you know, new student qualifies for transportation, great, we get the funding, we can transport them. And so that's a big challenge for us because the second scenario that was driving so much of this item was how do we increase ridership? Because to the points that were made earlier, that's also how you increase access, choice, and enrollment at the end of the day. Especially in our programs that are outperforming and have some empty seats, I hear the through line is transportation. So I get the tension, I wanna name that because it's not as easy as just increased ridership and you get more money and it's great. there's also tons of efficiencies to try to bring that ratio down that we could find. And I know that Mr. Binford, you correctly mentioned and pointed out that we are decreasing cost per mile, which is fantastic. We had no other way to go because we were the highest cost per mile in the whole state. So yes, we are starting to do the right things. The good news is that there's a lot of opportunity to continue to capture some of those efficiencies. So it's extremely concerning, of course, that over 80% of our fleet is 14 to 19 years old when the state's useful life is, I think, 10 years recommended. Is that correct through the chair? For Florida, do they recommend 10-year cycles?

Through the chair, that is correct, 10 to 12.

10 to 12, correct. Okay. And so I'm losing my place in the slides, but I know it's over 80%. So clearly we have to do something about that. I know in the last few years, we've basically replaced 10% of our fleet with outside grants, which has been really helpful. It was all the federal dollars that were available at some point, some Florida Volkswagen settlement funds that we were able to utilize for that. That's still only 10% of our fleet. So there's a real question about how do we... And do we still need a fleet this large, right, as we... create efficiencies and is it accurate to say that we run about a little under 800 routes thank you so 773 through the chair with a thousand buses right so there is there's an interesting opportunity there too that I don't know I didn't hear fully mentioned to to maybe shrink our footprint as far as getting rid of some of that very, very old weight, let's say, that we carry. If that's possible, I'd love to see that explored in your next steps. The... I can talk about workforce a little bit. I've asked a question before, and I'm curious if this has already been discussed by the team, and I've asked it for other departments as well. When we have many open positions in a department, I know this year's different. This year, they're just not being filled, they're not being used, but in, let's say, other years, are you able to close, let's say, 50 positions, rebudget, to the rest of the positions that are remaining to be able to pay a more competitive rate through the chair.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, Ms. Santos, I'll take that one. To me, it's two different issues. So because we – and it's not – it's been very predictable that we've had a lot of bus driver open positions, right? That's been the norm now for a while. We – it is part of our lapse assumption, the assumption on budget – on open bus driver positions. So I look at them as disconnected, right? One is – We, yes, the vacancies have been part of our budget balancing process. However, there's a separate conversation of do we need to invest more in drivers, right? And is that something we want to do? It's not necessarily tied to can I close these open positions to fund that because the open positions are budgeted for, but... Sometimes there are cost increases. Now, there's a possibility, given another item that was discussed at this committee meeting, that there might be a revenue source open for transportation salaries. We've invested that particular pot. Obviously, it stopped for a while, but we invested that pot in transportation salaries, right? And if it looks like it might be recurring now... right, then potentially we can do it that way. So I think there is an admission that we do, you know, I know Labor's had this conversation, we've had this conversation with transportation, we've tried to move salaries up, we have, but does it need to go further? Yeah, absolutely, probably. But I don't necessarily tie it to the open positions because that has been budgeted. And if the open positions go down, then we have to account for that in a decrease of our lapse budget.

Okay, thank you. Through the chair. what are the options left in front of us other than this source of revenue, which, granted, in an ideal world, should eventually go down to very low or zero. I know that's, in Miami especially, gonna take some time. But what, so what are the options before us to be able to accomplish that more competitive pay? Because, I mean, the difference is stark when you put it side by side to our neighbors and our county, the pay difference is high. What is our next step possible there?

Um, yeah, I think that we've, we've tried to, to solve that issue with, you know, we, we, we used Esser funds for a while, right? We've had non-recurring supplements. We've done different things to entice drivers to come to us. So yes, it's true that the starting salary is that dollars per hour, and that's lower than, than our peers, but we have tried to increase salaries and that, that effort will continue. Obviously it's, you know, there's labor issues involved and We'll go through the collective bargaining process, but I can assure you that both transportation and labor view enticing bus drivers to come to MDCPS as a priority.

Thank you. That's not an answer on a possible next step, but I know it's a priority. It's just a hard year to give concrete next steps. I just, having walked multiple depots now, it became very clear to me that on the mechanic side, especially, we're hitting, I think, an untenable sort of retention number. And on the driver's side, even after some efficiencies, routing, reconfiguration, there's probably a necessity at some point to actually change that reality. Thank you for that. I have a lot more questions here, but maybe I'll just go toward the end where you walked us through, the bus planner team walked us through the recommendations, and I did have some questions because it was my understanding that MDCPS has implemented Chipmunk for years, the parent notification app. So can you explain why the parent notification app potential benefits that you shared would be different moving forward than they have been in the past if we've already implemented this?

Yes, through the chair. Number one, the old GPS system had the very fixed intervals. The data was not transmitted as frequently, so you had gaps in that coverage at that point. Secondly, with the Chipmunk app, it was It was more, it wasn't connected with all of the other vessels that will be there now. So whenever changes were made, which have been going on for quite some time daily, the app was still working off of what we call a planned routing matrix. So every time you make a change where you take stops out, you move them, none of that was being updated in it. So when you have constants that you're not able to manipulate, then it's not going to function the way that it's intended to. But that will not be the case moving forward.

Thank you. Through the chair, is that because we got GPS Plus? Is that how these systems communicate?

GPS Plus is a big part of that, yes. The other part is the dispatch, where you can manipulate all of the scheduling, and then it pushes out the changes simultaneously.

Through the chair, that's what you mentioned we currently do manually. Yes. And now, is dispatch part of GPS Plus? Are we actively implementing dispatch right now?

Dispatch is also being implemented. So stage one is to get the GPS plus units, the new technology mounted on the whole fleet. And then phase two is to then stand up the dispatch to integrate it and to start the training with the various depots. Because the staff will have to be trained.

Of course, through the chair. How long is that timeline? When is the expected completion?

So the team is doing very well, honestly, getting the units installed. So we're going to probably start training here in the next couple weeks.

Thank you. So through the chair, when will it be live and fully rolled out?

It will be fully rolled out from our perspective in no less than 45 days. Now when the team is ready to start doing it in the real world here, that again is something that we recommend to them to start in staggered schedules because it is a change in business processes, not only internally but externally.

So through the chair, Mr. Cohn, when do you expect this to be rolled out?

Through the chair, it is our objective at the start of the school year to be able to implement this. One of the things that bears reasoning is the fact that we have to use the train-the-trainer module where we're going to have to get experts in the field. We don't have it. Previously, prior to this, every time that we made a change to a bus route, it was manually being done, phone calls being made, your bus is going to be late. Now we have to have experts make our our staff experts in the field keeping in mind they're starting at baseline these are our employees that have been working on the old system and they're going to have to be it's just like going back to school really and so our intent is to uh this summer everyone going through the training put creating a checks and balances to show uh hypothetically if you if you did this this is what would happen that that's what happened and then actually monitoring them to make sure that they are operating the system properly a lot of the system does have automation in it where it is a dragon simple as a dragon drop where if you're taking two bus routes and you got a bus route 52 and a bus route 72 you drag 52 into 72 and the new technology automatically uploads it for you and it'll come through the app and it'll say you're a new time It's blank notification to the school, notification to the parent. Currently, when we do those type of things, it is notification to the school, hey, somebody make sure that the school is there, and the inputting To make sure it was done that didn't always happen because transportation as you and thank you for the time that you spent with us. You see, it's a very fast moving type of operation on a day to day basis. Once the day get the morning get started. Hey, this driver didn't come. Hey, change this, change that. So that is what the objective is, is to start the year. ready to go and ensuring that it happens and then freeing up time for our supervisors to be in the room with them making sure that it happens so that we are monitoring and making sure that it's being implemented with fidelity.

Thank you. I've set a reminder on my calendar for August to go on a ride along and watch it in action. So that's very exciting. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Maybe let me close with you mentioned the importance of ridership verification, both for reporting and for the user experience and for... I mean, everything. My predecessor, Dr. Feldman, who was elected in 2008, talked about that during his whole term. And we still chat about it. As you know, that's going to soon be almost 10 years ago. So what is maybe different this time? How are we implementing ridership verification? What's the timeline for that? And do we already have all the components necessary to roll that out through the chair?

Through the chair? No, the student ridership components you currently do not have. This is a recommendation that we're bringing forth to you to consider.

Thank you, through the chair. Is that simply adopting like a module within the existing tablets that are gonna be on the bus where students tap in with their school IDs through the chair?

Through the chair, it's a variety. There's three different models that are available. One is RFID, another is QR codes, and the last is barcodes. So the only physical piece of hardware that you would have to install in the vehicles would be the scanner itself for them to use, whichever one of those three. And then something like if you were to use the RFID, for example, then you would have to have the cards to go with that. and I don't know if they're already in your school for ingress and egress access to buildings, but I know some districts will combine those where they can utilize it for that.

Through the chair, universal IDs, something I have been very adamant that we should get and integrate with our library system, with our ridership, with public transit as well, et cetera. So just to be clear, what's the range of the cost of the student verification?

For a district this size, I would say approximately about 350 to 400,000. Implementation through the chair or annual? Of that, probably $50,000, $60,000 for implementation, and then $350,000, $370,000 for annual.

Okay. a little less than a dollar per student that's writing today. Okay, thank you. I will continue to follow this very closely. Thank you colleagues for going on this very detailed ride, no pun intended. And I see this as a fundamental, like foundational block of our ability to educate our county. we have to be able to get students there. And today, in the reality of being a full-choice district, it becomes even more important because it's no longer that you can access your neighborhood school, you wanna access your school of choice, and we wanna make that accessible to every student. So I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into this, and really, I'm looking for more clarity on the timelines and appropriate sort of next milestones in delivering the outcome of increased ridership through efficiencies. Thank you.

Thank you so much and thank you for bringing this item up. I personally rode on a bus and saw everything that happens inside of our bus depots and the amount of work that goes on and the dedication that our bus drivers have. It's incredible the work that they do and We're not an easy town to drive in, and they're out there driving through traffic with a bus full of kids, making sure that they all get safe through the school. And we're also making sure that these buses are up and running. One final question that I had, and it kind of goes around the enterprise mindset, right? Mechanics, I'm seeing here that you hired 23, and there's 13 active today at a retention rate of 57. What's our overall numbers on mechanics?

Through the chair, as of today, we're 22 mechanics short. We have 22 open positions. Out of how many? Out of 73. Out of 73? Yes, sir.

So you have about 30% vacancy on it? Through the chair, yes, sir. Okay. Have we looked at possible subbing this service out and looking at fleet management companies that could maybe come in and support some of these maintenance issues, whether it be... general oil changes, brake services, and so on, when we have a shortage of mechanics to kind of help us out to get through this? Is that something we do? Through the chair, we have not explored that, but it's something that we certainly can. Okay. All right, thank you. Any further questions or comments? Yes, Mr. Geller, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Is there any ability or opportunity for us to try to connect those open mechanics positions with any of our vocational or technical programs? Or can we open that up maybe to students that are trying to study in that field? And if we don't have a specific field of study for that position, can we create one? Because I know we've got a lot of eager young people out there that are trying to learn some kind of a useful trade to support themselves, to support the families that they're going to have. And if we have the need, is there some way we could look to use in-house or promote or create in-house resources so we can train the people we need, give these kids jobs and careers and futures, and find a way to fill our need? I think I'd rather see that than outsourcing it to, you know, I mean, it's Fine if we need to do that, but this would seem to me to be preferable if we could find a way to do that.

Through the chair, great question. And it's something we've already started. We have a farm system that we put in place through collaboration with our human capital and also with our adult education where we have driver, driver, driver, I'm sorry, mechanic training where they do real-time hands-on and they can graduate from that program over to being hired by us directly. And that is working, and forgive me, I want to, should I give you the right school? Robert Morganville is where we have that started and already in process, sir.

Follow up, Mr. Chair? Thank you. Assuming that we haven't yet had graduates that can fill those positions, I mean, if have, that would be good to know, too. But assuming we've not, do we have a timeline for graduating? And by the way, I was talking about student students, but the adult ed piece is also really, that's a great idea. But do we have a timeline for when we can look to have people graduating? Because I assume it's time sensitive for us to get these mechanic positions filled. Do we know when we'll have candidates who've completed the program?

Through the chair, actually, we've already had two successes, and I hate to be redundant, but a lot of it goes back to once they finish, you have competing entities that are offering, just like coming out of college, and sometimes we have not been the chosen operation to work for because of the competitive salaries, and I said not to be redundant to the point that was illustrated earlier.

Okay. Well, thank you. I think that concludes all of our questions now. We also had a staff follow-up from February 11th on agenda item H11, which I believe was distributed to our board members. Does anybody have any questions on that? Yes. Mr.

Chair, I just want to say thank you. The items incorporated into that district-wide affiliate agreement is exactly the start that we had hoped to see with an organization that essentially can bridge the gap between bringing our children to the boardrooms and to the companies and to the internships. So the more we get them in places, the better. So thank you to everybody involved.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for that board item and thank you to staff for working on that. This now exhausts today's agenda. If there's no further discussion, I move to adjourn today's meeting. All in favor? Aye. All right. Thank you. Our next.