School Board Audit and Budget Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

If we can come to order.

I think it's on.

Good afternoon, my name is Steven Hunter Johnson, and I want to wish everyone a happy Black History Month. Calling the school board audit and budget committee meeting to order, beginning with agenda item number one, welcome and introductions. The welcome part was happy back history month. The introduction part is my name is Stephen Hunter Johnson. I am an appointee by Dr. Steve Gallen, and I serve as the chair of the Audit and Budget Committee. If we can begin introductions starting on my left with Mr. Goodman.

Good afternoon, John Goodman, Chief Auditor. Good to see everybody today.

And then moving out to the gallery.

Do you want to...

and either with Madam photographer or anyone.

Okay, young lady in the front.

Yes, just introduce yourself, I'm sorry. Mr. Harvey, because you walked in on time.

Ron Steiger, CFO.

Jose Dutra, Superintendent.

Jose Bueno, Chief of Staff.

Madam Chair. And moving all the way over to our friends on the right. Mr. Norwood.

I'm the RSA committee member.

I'm Beverly Heller and I represent Joe Gala.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez, CPA representing Roberto Alonso.

Steve Gallen, board appointee. Julio Miranda, representing Maritere Rojas.

Sharon Watson, representing Miami-Dade County Council Parent Teacher Association.

Anthony Atala, ABAC Vice Chair.

And I'd like to take a moment to recognize and welcome Ms. Ursula Arner as the newest member of the Audit and Budget Committee. Welcome. Moving on to agenda item number two, approval of the minutes. I'll entertain a motion.

So moved. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded. Any unreadiness? All those in favor respond by the sound of aye. Moving now to agenda item number three, State of Florida Auditor General Operational Audit, Miami-Dade County District School Board, report number 26070. Mr. Goodman.

This is the State Auditor General's Operational Audit of Miami-Dade schools. They conducted every three years It contains six findings and recommendations, a reduction from the nine findings cited in the 2023 audit. The six findings involved, one, public records requests, two, severe weather and natural disaster emergency drills, three, training of threat management teams, four, background rescreenings, five, ethics training, and six, controls over health provider services and payments could be enhanced. For your information, the school board chair has also proffered an agenda item for the February 11th school board meeting addressing this audit and corrective actions. Through the chair, the district's management and I are prepared to address any comments or questions the committee members may have.

I'll open it up to the board. Dr. Gallant?

Yes, through the chair, I want to thank the auditor's department for their facility of this particular issue. As note, the chair is bringing an item that will be reviewed by the board at its committee meeting tomorrow for the upcoming school board meeting. Always excited to receive feedback from external stakeholders to provide an opportunity for us to review our practices, policies, and also make adjustments for improvement. needed through the chair can you speak to finding one we often Relative to transparency and openness With regards to how we do business. This has been a long-standing issue as it relates to public records request Mr. Goodman, can you kind of just walk through that particular finding and I noted that it was the first Finding can you pretty much give us some highlights as it relates to I read it but I think this was something that we will call in an organization of bureaucracy, especially a public one, this is low-hanging fruit. Chapter 119 is very, very clear as it relates to stipulations. We are in the sunshine state, no pun intended. This, I want to say for the record, has been something that predated even this administration. There's always been questions and concerns regarding our facility of open records and our response to that. I will say for the record, we have seen some improvements under the leadership of Dr. Doltris and his administration. But again, for this to be cited as a finding draws some concern. So can you eliminate some of the concerns here in the related recommendations? Thank you. Through the chair.

Through the chair, the district did not always comply with state law in regard to public records requests. And, you know, there was a change in the system. And that's so... There were some gaps that were found in the public records request process. I'd like to ask the administration to weigh in on that and talk more about it. Through the chair.

Dr. Gallin, one of the concerns that we had with this issue was the fact that we were transitioning to a new PRR system, so some things did fall through the cracks. However, we have gotten with communications. Ms. Diaz is here also to share with you the things that we have done with this audit to make sure that the things that were out of compliance do not come back as a compliance issue. One of the things that we are doing is communicating with the individual after 30 days, if we have not given the information to the individual, we then share with that individual within the 30 days as to why we have not given them that information. Sometimes it's a matter of when emails are asked for and we do a research, the keywords that they're looking for will be very, very voluminous, and at that point in time, we give the person an opportunity to say, you know what, you may want to, eliminate some of the keywords that you're asking for because the turnaround that we're giving you may be in excess of so many dollars that you will have to pay. So we work with the individual. So what we have placed into motion is that we are gonna be communicating with the individual within 30 days. And after the 30 days, we will communicate again. So there could be a communication established as to why we have not delivered.

Thank you. Follow-up, Mr. Chair? Thank you, Mr. Bueno. I'm glad that we are paying some attention to it. And the reason I describe this as somewhat low-hanging fruit, because, and I say this respectfully, it's not rocket science. I think the requirements for Chapter 119 are pretty simple, and I've summarized them in three frames. Receive of acknowledgement. We acknowledge that we receive your requests. Respond to that. and subsequent provision. Now, where it gets dicey, and I would like Mr. Harvey to kind of speak to this, Chapter 119 and the provisions thereto are somewhat silent on specific dates for the provision of information. They utilize the terminology reasonable, and that's been tested across the state from people who actually file frivolous lawsuits against public entities for not responding in what they deem as a reasonable timeline. So, Mr. Harvey, can you kind of speak to that? I know the law is actually silent. The language that's used speaks to reasonableness. But I know that districts, municipalities, charter schools, different entities have actually been subject to some frivolity with respect to requests. And when they don't respond, they're sued for violation. So I just want to kind of speak to that. I don't know if we've had any litigation brought against us for non-responsiveness, but I think that's important for the record to note as the administration starts to contemplate its practices for response through the chair.

Yes, through the chairs. With regard to reasonableness, yes, that's the standard. That's the statutory language that's used. It's reasonableness with regard to the response. So typically, reasonableness would be different if it's a document that's readily available or available electronically. That could be produced fairly quickly versus, let's say, a voluminous request HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOCUMENTS WHICH WOULD REQUIRE TIME AND EFFORT ON THE PART OF STAFF IN ORDER TO COLLECT AND RESPOND. TYPICALLY ONE THING THAT THE COURTS ARE VERY ADAMANT ABOUT IS THAT ONCE A REQUEST IS RECEIVED, THERE SHOULD BE AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT IMMEDIATELY. And then at that point, once there's an acknowledgement, then, you know, there should be some sort of follow-up that's indicated. Like, for example, we're going to respond with a cost estimate to allow you, you know, so that you will understand that you should expect within a certain period of time there would be a cost estimate based on maybe the hourly rate of the employees involved, the number of copies that might be requested, et cetera. BUT YES, THAT'S TYPICALLY ONE THING THAT'S ALWAYS CERTAINLY SOMETHING THAT WE'RE REQUIRED TO DO. AND YES, WE HAVE BEEN SUED. In this regard, we've had lawsuits where various entities would file a lawsuit based on requesting some documents. Sometimes it appears to be documents that they don't really need or require, but it is the law and we do have an obligation to comply. So we handle those accordingly. I hope that answers your question. Thank you, Dr. Gall.

Yes, through the chair, one additional follow-up. um through the chair i know dr lewis is is already always prepared i know there's been a lot of discussion around student safety and i think it's important for us to address the finding too as relates to emergency drills i don't know if that's dr lewis or dr doltris but i think it's important for us to kind of address that and and here's the irony i have my student advisory committee for district one believe it or not out of the mouths of babes they actually mentioned that they had not had a fire drill and things of that nature so just could you speak to that particular issue and what steps we're taking as a district to make sure that we're not only in compliance but that we're taking steps to implement the best practices to keep our children faculty and in stakeholders safe in our schools through the chair through the chair dr. gallon yes so

Related to this finding, this is based off state statutes for emergency drills. I believe the finding was related to, it specifies exactly what type of drills, active assailant, et cetera. Then within that, there's a category of other, which is basically weather-related drills that must be mandated. What took place last year, and school police does the coordination of this, one of the two weather drills was not mandated. did not take place. They utilized another type drill, which they shouldn't have. So this year, it's already cataloged. We have a rally calendar. All the drills are in place. They've already done one of the two. So those drills are in place. The way that it takes place, Dr. Gown, and for the team that's here, we send out through school police a briefing that basically designates the date and time and the week in which these drills must take place. follow-up monitoring takes place where every school through the region has to check off that this drill is taking place. It's created onto a form in which that is monitored so that the drill, we actually can see that the drill took place, how long the drill, how much time that the drill took in order for the drill to take place, as well as if there was any issues or concerns in which school police would go in and more or less work with that school administration to make sure that if there's any issues or considerations, they work with them. On the other end, as Dr. Gallin was referenced, are fire drills. Fire drills are separate to the statute. However, they're mandated by law as well. So in the past, there used to be have to have one drill every month. Statute has changed depending on grade level configuration. There's a certain amount of fire drills that must take place every year. We utilize a system within the school district, which is called FASI, where basically after the drill takes place, schools input the time, the date in which that drill took place, and actually the time in which, how long it took in order for all the students in that building to actually evacuate. Because part of the fire drill is all students evacuate, then eventually they return. As a district, In a sense, as it comes to best practices, we live and learn, right? We see that some schools take a lot longer than others, and we try to figure out why. Maybe the population of students is larger than others, but we try to do comparison data. Schools that have very similar buildings, if you know Miami-Dade County Public Schools, a lot of our buildings, depending on when they were built, have same building configurations. So if we see two schools that have more or less the same building configuration, more or less the same population of students, but there's a time difference in evacuation, we actually reach out to those schools. We work with school operations, district operations in the regions to try to figure out what are some of the reasons why there's such a delay and utilize best practices of their colleagues, schools that might be down the street or on the other side of town to make sure that those best practices are utilized. Those type of systems that are put into place when it comes to students and faculty, we start at the beginning of the school year. and make sure that the faculty and students are aware of what they need to do when these drills take place and how the announcements are made, and we continue to progress as we move forward throughout the school year. That's why those drills take place year round, certain count per year, and we work on it each time that we go through that process.

Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly, anyone else?

Mr. Atala?

Through the Chair. I got on two points. Mr. Goodman on the public records request, finding one that we were talking about. I know that when we had a prior audit, I can't remember which one I think it had to do with with the P cards, there was an issue with public records. Is this is this part of what your audit team is scheduled to do coming here?

Through the Chair, it's a somewhat different issue. We're scheduled to do an audit of records retention and records management. So that's a little bit different than the public records request process.

Through the Chair, I guess is the finding consistent with what we discussed at the last one? there's a records issue, we have to kind of tweak it moving forward. Is that fair?

I think there are really two separate issues, and one of them has to do with, you know, the process of responding to records that are requested, and then the other one is just our overall efficiency and effectiveness of managing the district records.

And lastly, through the chair, this is on finding number four, the background screenings. I echo Dr. Gallin with regards to findings two, three, and four with regard to safety and security. With respect to finding number four, can someone elaborate on that? The background screenings for employees of the district, now it's a level two background screening. Is that something that... wasn't done or something that has been changed since this. Can somebody elaborate on finding number four, please?

Mr. Chair? Okay. I'm sorry. Yes, superintendent. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this has to do with re-screening. The way it's written, in fact, I spoke to the chief auditor yesterday, for no one to please make the impression that these are like first-time employees. These are re-screenings that have to be done. I know the word re is not there, but Mr. Goodman mentioned that, so to us that was important. And so I'm gonna hand it over to Don Baglos to elaborate. One thing that I wanna say, all of these findings are important for us and we take them seriously. But I do wanna mention that in 2023, We had audit findings and we had nine at that point. So here we are in 2026 and we've been able to decrease the number of findings to six last time I believe we had a financial impact finding and in this one this time around we do not that does not take away the fact that these are important and we'll be attending to them. I just want to make a point of progress for us in terms of the number of findings versus before. Dr. Baglos?

Thank you, sir. And through the chair, I wanna thank the member for the opportunity to provide clarification regarding this finding. So prior to this year, actually prior to 2025, fingerprinting, re-fingerprinting was a completely manual process. That was just how the system was orchestrated, right? It's not our system, it was a state system. Subsequently, when important to note that this finding, while important, almost resolves itself because in 2025, the state of Florida transitioned into what's called the clearinghouse. And as part of the clearinghouse, we are currently re-fingerprinting every single employee within our school district, according to the designated timeline. But the benefit of the clearinghouse is the clearinghouse removes the manual process in terms of reminding the fingerprinting team when re-fingerprinting must occur on the five-year anniversary date. And that wasn't happening previously in the prior system. So now, 60 days prior to when an employee's re-fingerprint submission is due, Our team is now notified that it's time and therefore we resubmit electronically the fingerprints that we have on file. So this almost resolves itself as a result of us transitioning into the clearinghouse because now the automatic notifications will occur. I am also happy to report that in our process of re-fingerprinting we are actually ahead of the required schedule. It's due for completion by state timeline by June 2027. We are already completed phases one and two. We are currently in phase three, which technically isn't scheduled to begin until fall of this school year.

Thank you. I just wanted to make a comment. Thank you, Dr. Dotris. Thank you, Dr. Bagelos, for that explanation. I just wanted to make sure that the interpretation that you gave was, or the opportunity to discuss it was important. I'm glad that it was clarified. Thank you very much to both of you.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Hearing none, this is an action item. Been properly moved to second it. All those in favor respond by a sound aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Thank you all very much. Moving on. Agenda item number four, presentation of the audited financial statements and independent auditor's report of the Foundation for New Education Initiatives Incorporated, DBA Miami-Dade County Public Schools Foundation for the year ended June 30th, 2025. Mr. Goodman.

Through the chair, could we please have one of the partners, Mr. Verdeja, Mr. Alvarez from the accounting firm present the audit initially.

Chair and committee members, good morning or good afternoon. Good to see you all again. My name's Octavia Verdeja, and we are with Manny Alvarez here, which is the engagement partner. The name of the firm is Verdeja Alvarez. I'll let Manny give you the highlights for the year. And I'll just start by saying that it's a clean opinion, unmodified, which is the most important part of this process. So thank you.

Hi, thank you for having us. As Octavia mentioned, it is a clean opinion, and that is the best opinion you can get on a financial statement audit, so congratulations to everyone. If we can go through a couple of the highlights. Revenues for the year were $5.1 million, and expenses were approximately $4.7 million, leaving a net profit or changing net asset of $300,000. Very similar to last year. I believe last year's was $150,000. So both years pretty much break even years. On the balance sheet, it's a fairly simple balance sheet. The assets mostly consist of cash, a small amount of receivables, and on the liability side, it would really be mostly deferred revenue related to the summer youth internship program. With that, that concludes our presentation. If there's any questions. Question?

Through the Chair, thank you.

I have a question regarding footnote number nine, prior period adjustment, taxes assessment payable. And it mentions that it relates to the issuance of form 1099s. and that resulted in a liability of 159,000. Can you speak a little bit as to whether the, what the tax liability, is it that the withholding was not made, was it that the forms were not filed at all, or can you provide a little more detail on that? Sure. Thank you.

So as part of the audit, it was brought to our attention by management that they hadn't received a letter that they were being assessed some type of penalties and fines. Upon reviewing it, it appeared to be that some 1099s were not issued, and some were issued with incorrect information, things didn't match, so the IRS assessed some penalties. To date, a lot of it has been abated, but there's still 159,000 that has not been abated. So they're in the process of getting it corrected so that this can go away.

Thank you.

No problem. Anyone else? This is an action item. You moved it? Okay, that's fine. Don't forget to turn your mic on so that we can hear you. It's been properly moved and seconded. Any unreadiness? All those in favor respond by a sound of aye. Motion carries. Moving on to number five. Presentation of the audited financial statements of the Magnet Educational Choice Association, Inc. for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025 and independent auditor's report. Mr. Goodman.

Through the chair, I would ask the partner from the Gravier accounting firm to make the presentation of the audit.

Good afternoon to all. Again, my name is Julianna Delmas, audit partner at HLB Gravier. And on behalf of Magnet Educational Choice Association, I'll be presenting their audited financial statement for the year ended June 30th, 2025. MECA is a direct support organization that administers and holds the funds for various Miami-Dade County public magnet schools. The audit opinion on page one through three shows an unmodified or clean opinion. The financial statements are deemed to be fairly stated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and they are presented in accordance with nonprofit organizational standards. Moving on to page four, you'll see that the assets of the organization consist primarily of cash and short-term investments. The net assets at year-end are comparable to the prior year net assets. The association had revenues and contributions for the year of approximately $369,000, and their change in net assets for the year was approximately a deficit of $774, which is The association has a with donor restriction of $305,000, which is attributable to all of the magnet fund balances, and it has available for general administrative services approximately $15,000 for the next academic year. There were no new accounting policies or pronouncements during the year, no deficiencies in internal control identified, and no disagreements with management throughout the audit process. Any?

Sorry, any questions? Seeing none, this is an action item. So moved. Second. So properly moved to second it. All those in favor respond by a sound aye. Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number six, internal audit report of selected schools and centers. Mr. Goodman.

Through the chair, Ms. Tamara Wayne, CPA, assistant chief auditor will make their presentation. Good afternoon, Mrs. Wayne.

Good afternoon, through the chair. Our office is presenting the February school audit report, which includes the audit results of 40 schools and centers. In this report, two of the schools reported the audit scope was two fiscal years ending June 30, 2025, and for the remaining 38, the audit scope was one fiscal year ending June 30, 2025. At one school, there was a change of principle since the prior audit. The financial statements were fairly stated for all the 40 schools in this report. However, at two schools, we cited noncompliance and inadequate internal controls in the areas of student activities and payroll. Our office and district administration are available to answer any questions related to this report.

Thank you. Are there any questions? Dr. Gamma?

Yes, through the chair, I wanna thank the auditor's work on these particular schools. Just a quick question. I know this has been an ongoing conversation relative to personnel responsible for carrying out these functions. You indicated the status of the principal at one school, but can you speak to the continuity of principal leadership and the continuity of the treasurer at both schools that are in question through the chair? If it's not the treasurer, I know one is payroll, so that may not be the treasurer, that may be the secretary. So the person who's responsible for those functions, can you speak to whether or not there's been some continuity in leadership of the principal and stability of the person responsible for those functions through the chair? So can someone respond to that through the chair?

Mr. Chair, may I? Please. Thank you, Dr. Allen, for that question. As it relates to the audit regarding payroll, which was the one that concerned me the most, there has been consistency and the approver was the vice principal. And there has been consistency in leadership in that regard.

Through the chair, follow up. So the vice principal, not to get into the mechanics of the schools, but the vice principal was the person to oversee it. But through the chair, I'm asking from a high school standpoint, even though the vice principal would approve it or be designated by the principal to do it, there's somebody that goes through the collection process to monitor it. So at my school, for example, when I was principal, Munoz used to be my designee to approve payroll, but ultimately it came down to me doing it and Miss Singleton was the one that actually processed did the counts we went over it and everything else so I'm asking specifically not about the administration in that regard I'm asked about the principal continuity but also the continuity of the person that's actually responsible for it because I know over the years the chair has indicated and we all have indicated that we've had a dearth of individuals to perform these duties. So that's what I'm kind of curious about.

Through the chair, understood, Dr. Gallin. I just answered at the approval stage, I believe you want the prior level and the consistency of employee there. Let me hand that over to Dr. Lewis.

Through the chair, I'll keep it simple. Is it the same principal and is it the same person that is actually responsible for performing those particular data collection functions for payroll? Not approving only, ultimately it comes to the principal. Ultimately it comes to the principal. But the person who's responsible for the minutia of data collection is usually a secretary or a treasurer or administrative staff through the chair.

Through the Chair, Dr. Gallin, first of all, great question, and pretty much you answered it. It's actually the payroll specialist, also known as the principal secretary, that's responsible for that.

Through the Chair, has this been the same person for an extended period of time, or is this new?

As it relate to the payroll discrepancy, this is a new person that's in place now. The previous person is no longer there.

Okay, so through the chair, so the person whose findings these reflect is no longer there?

Through the chair, that is correct, sir.

that's what I wanted to get behind thank you so just for the record as the superintendent indicated I didn't he and I didn't talk he said out of all of those that was the most concerning and that's for me as well and it's good to know that the administration has taken decisive quick action to to address that particular issue with a new person and now we're going to make some efforts to support the person that's on board with increased monitoring not by the vice principal with increased monitoring by the principal through the chair

through the chair, Dr. Gallin. That's exactly what's taking place. As a result of this audit finding, basically what you have taken place is more daily monitoring of the attendance payroll. Pretty much, as we know, payroll has shifted to a mobile you know, via on-site, I mean, a mobile procedure. We do have a mobile app, and for those that don't utilize the mobile app, when they get to the school site, they actually have to sign on, log in, and actually sign in. On every day, on a daily basis, attendance is being monitored. For example, if Michael Lewis didn't show up or showed up to work today but didn't sign in, automatically Michael is identified. He's made aware of the fact that he hasn't signed in for today. And as a result of that, from a document standpoint, it is required that Michael send an email to the principal secretary, copying the principal and the vice principal, allowing them or letting them know that he is actually present for that particular day. So that's a documentation when it comes down to approving payroll.

Thank you, Dr. Lewis. Just, you know, you're all on top of it. I would just make a note, this was like four pay periods, different until it was an ongoing situation, and finding 2.1 so it wasn't isolated. And I've always found out the best way to do it is if people don't comply with the process, then they don't get paid. You'll get their attention that way.

That is definitely the ultimate, Dr. Gallin.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Tala.

Through the chair, I'll piggyback on Dr. Gallin's last comments and then I have on the other school, but on the payroll issue, from my review of the report, at this point, the overpayments and everything that was made at the payroll level have all been satisfied, meaning nobody owes the district money and the district doesn't owe anybody payroll funds. Is that fair?

Through the chair, that is correct.

Okay, thank you. One follow-up through the chair. Absolutely. With the other school, with the bookkeeping over student activities that require improvement, I just wanted to make sure that for the sake of the children that were there, the children still got to participate. I know it was a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but... I just want to make sure the students there didn't miss out on any of the activities that were done, right? We complied and is there still something owed to some third party because of this lack of compliance with the procedures?

Through the chair, there was no impact to the students as far as them being able to participate in any activities. They were able to fully participate.

Thank you. Anyone else? This is an action item. So moved. Second. All those in favor respond by the sound of aye. Aye. Opposed? Moving on to agenda item seven, I am going to announce that I will be recusing myself for agenda item seven, and I will pass the gavel to Vice Chair Atala.

Thank you. Item number seven, internal audit report, audit of the school bus safety program report number two. Mr. Goodman.

Through the chair, this is the second of two reports for the bus infraction detection enforcement system, which was proffered at the school board meeting of May 14th, 2025 by board member, Mr. Roberto J. Alonso. and was co-sponsored and approved unanimously. The item in part directed the chief auditor to amend the audit plan to include conducting an audit of the procurement implementation and oversight of the program. The item directed three objectives slash scope elements as follows. One, an evaluation of the district's process to establish the program, including procurement practices and contract structure. Two, a review of the use of funds or revenues associated with the program, including how funds are allocated and reported. And three, an evaluation of the program's operational effectiveness, including consistency with its stated goals and public safety objectives. Report 1, which addressed Objectives 1 and 2, was issued and presented to the ABAC on September 16, 2025. Report 2, which addresses Objective 3, required more time to complete due to the extensive information requests needed from various external entities and the data analysis required Report two resulted in seven findings and 13 corresponding recommendations. The findings in report two do reflect significant deficiencies in the bus patrol operation during its 11-month duration in Miami-Dade County. including inconsistent and disparate treatment of motorists who were issued notices of violations in the county. We requested and received written responses from bus patrol, the sheriff's office, and district management, and those are included in their entirety in the report's appendices. We thank the management of the school district and the various external organizations involved for their time and cooperation. Ms. Elvira Sanchez, CPA, CFE, District Audit Director, served as the auditor in charge, and I'm going to ask her to present the findings and recommendations. Good afternoon, Ms. Sanchez.

Through the chair, good afternoon, everyone. Before I explain the findings, I did want to first explain the population of notices of violation that we will be discussing in those findings. And I also want to explain notice of violation throughout the report is also referred to as an NOV, that's the acronym, and a uniform traffic citation, its acronym is UTC. So we use those interchangeably throughout. And again, before I proceed, I want to explain one more thing. An NOV is converted to a UTC if the person does not take action within 30 days. And that UTC does carry additional penalties of $119 and possibly points on the license or license suspension. So I just want to explain that very generally overall. Now, for those of you who have the report in front of you, I just want to explain a few numbers. It's a total of six numbers, and that's Exhibit 2 on page 17. And for those of you who don't have the report, again, it's just six numbers I'm going to mention that will add clarity to when I explain the findings. All these infractions, the notices of violation, have to be approved by law enforcement. And on that first approval, for the duration of the program of 11 months, they approved 203,050 notices of violation for those 11 months. And that, again, is showed in Exhibit 2. And then for the audit, we took that 203,050 and we broke it down into how those NOVs were ultimately where they ended up, the status or bucket where they ended up. 144,927 of those NOVs were paid in full by the drivers that received that NOV. 8,172 of those NOVs remain unpaid and uncontested. Then there's another bucket, which is 5,452 NOVs that were converted to UTCs and were later dismissed by the court for reasons that'll be discussed shortly. There's another 1,123 where the drivers transferred liability, meaning when they received the NOV, they were not the driver and they filled out a certain form and they transferred liability or that NOV violation to someone else. driving the vehicle. And then there's another population of 43,376, which are NOVs unpaid and uncontested. In other words, those NOVs were mailed out and nothing has occurred with those as of today, or as of the end of the audit. So together those other sub-components make up the 203,050 NOVs that were approved by law enforcement to be issued. So again, I thought that would help everyone understand as we go through the findings of the numbers we're referring to. Finding number one states that 43,376 notices of violation remain unpaid and uncontested, and their legal status is uncertain. Now the 43,376, as I explained a moment ago, represent a portion of that 203,050 NOEs that were issued. And that's about 21% of the total. And that would be amounts of $9.7 million in total if those revenues had been collected. And the district would have had potential revenue of 2.9 million that they could have used to further bus safety initiatives in accordance with Florida statute. But again, these are unpaid at the moment. And for those of you, again, who have the report, on page 18 there's an exhibit and it shows you the aging of those 43,376 unpaid violations that have been occurring since the inception of the program. When speaking with a vendor, they mentioned that they allowed these to remain unpaid to promote voluntary compliance and reduce point bearing citations, meaning they did not convert them to UTCs, trying to allow this voluntary compliance. But the Florida statute does not allow for this. And they did state that that was an understanding with some of their government partners. And we do mention MDCPS was not included in such an understanding. We also mentioned in the report that bus patrol did not have the capability to convert NOVs to UTCs until February 2025 because they were completing their system testing process to attain this ability to issue UTCs. So we explain that just so that there's a further understanding that they were not able to do that any time earlier. One thing we point out as well in the report, there's a Florida statute of limitations on crimes And we state that stop-arm infractions are considered non-criminal violations under the statute of limitations. And we further state that the statute provides that for non-criminal violations, prosecution must be commenced within one year after the violation is committed. Again, the violation being when the driver went past the stop-arm on the school bus. So since these UTCs were never issued within that one year period from the date of the infraction, our office wanted to raise the concern in the report that the legal status of these NOVs is uncertain. And the majority of these 43,376 have already passed the one year from the date that the infraction was committed. Now going on to finding number two, It states that NOV payment collection processes were partially non-compliant with Florida Statute 316.173, and we segregated that into two different sub-components, one being that NOV payments from violators were accepted at any time past the 30-day statutory deadline, and only a limited number of UTCs were issued. And the second component is that overdue notices for NOVs were being mailed to violators by bus patrol. And just to elaborate a little bit further, the statute is very clear that payment for an NOV must be received within 30 days. And if not received within 30 days, a UTC will be issued. For these, we put in the report that 36,501 of those that made payment made payment well beyond the 30 days. And UTCs were never issued. And that's contrary to what the statute states. We also explained that bus patrol was sending overdue notices when a person did not pay within those 30 days. So when in effect that UTC should have converted to a UTC or that would have been its ultimate disposition, they were sending out overdue notices at day 32 and 60 days. And we stated in the report that especially with the language being utilized that these overdue notices should not be sent. Okay, finding number three. This is something that many individuals are already aware of. 8,172 NOVs were contested and hearing processes were not available to motorists. We wanna make it clear here that there have been no hearings whatsoever at all for any of the motorists who have contested the NOV issued to them. The finding does describe detail where the bus patrol did commence conversations with the courts, the clerk of the court and the 11th judicial court in November, 2023. And it goes on to explain that in June, 2024, the court responded that the court believes it lacks the authority to accept and hear the NOVs under the law. And despite further conversations, no action occurred with this process regarding hearings. The report then conveys that there was an administrative order by the former chief judge where it finally allowed a place where these NOV contestations could be filed with the court. But at the time the program is suspended, only 1,612 of these were able to be entered into the system. So again, though the report describes all these events and timelines to provide an understanding, essentially we found that the lack of mechanisms or procedures for court and or administrative hearings in advance of the launch of the school bus safety program or even during the program itself, this resulted in violators motorists not being afforded hearings for contested NOVs as required by law. And again, these 8,172 contested NOV cases are still pending to be heard. And again, we do point out that 1,612 of those, the court has stated through a recent administrative order that they will hear at least 1,612 of those. We also pointed out that Bus Patrol does not appear to have a consistent system for recording the dates for the contestations from individuals. And we recommended that they implement a consistent system because those dates may be very relevant to the judicial process to know when a person in fact has contested their NOV. Going on to finding number four. It states law enforcement's instructions following their secondary review of NOVs and prior to issuance of UTCs were not properly executed by bus patrol. And again, we split this into two sub-components. 4.1, NOVs voided by law enforcement upon their secondary review were not always voided by bus patrol, which resulted in the improper issuance of UTCs, drivers making payments on NOVs that should have been voided, or NOVs still reflected as outstanding. And finding 4.2, NOVs approved for conversion to UTCs by law enforcement upon their secondary review were not always converted to UTCs by bus patrol. And just to explain before I go on, law enforcement provides an initial review when these video images are taken, but Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office decided that they would have a secondary review before issuing UTCs. And in this secondary review process that they implemented, they were basically instructing bus patrol very specifically what to issue and what to void. And we explained that those were not carried out. And for those of you who have the report available to you, If you turn over to page 28, we have some bullets where we point out the different things that we found, which explains the seriousness of this issue. We explain that 437 UTCs were improperly issued by bus patrol, despite having been voided. 1,797 UTCs were improperly issued by bus patrol between dates of March 25th and April 11th, and they had no secondary approval from the sheriff's office. We say the 26 NOV payments were made by violators, where in fact their NOVs had been voided. We also state that 535 NOVs voided by Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office have not been voided or removed as of the end of field work from the bus patrol system. They remain on their system as outstanding. And we noted another large amount of 4,575 NOVs that were approved by MDSO after their secondary review that were not converted to UTCs upon that review. And we realized that the program was suspended, but there was two to four weeks in which those actions could have been carried out. And we do mention in that finding as well about their alert bus system. At the time of the audit and during the time of the program, it did not allow for the police officers to go into that system and provide a secondary review. And the end result was that it was a very manual process done with emails and NOV lists that were attached to those emails. And then bus patrol ultimately had to basically carry that out into their system. So that manual process also was an issue. Now finding number five, 5,450 UTCs issued were dismissed by the court due to errors by bus patrol. Audit work revealed that these UTCs began being issued in February and through April 2025. And during that time, the clerk of the court noticed that there was errors, and they brought it to the attention of the court system. And in communications with the court system, bus patrol confirmed that all UTCs issued had incorrect fine amounts of 225 versus what should have been 344 and contain NOV numbers rather than the proper UTC numbers that are issued by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Additionally, the officer's name and badge number were missing from the UTCs. So due to those multiple errors on all the UTCs, the court dismissed all the 5,450 UTCs issued through an omnibus order. Finding number six, dismissal notices were not sent for UTCs dismissed by the court, nor were notifications sent for NOVs voided by law enforcement. Regarding the 5,450 UTCs that were dismissed by the, omnibus order by the former chief judge of the 11th Judicial Circuit. We inquired with the clerk of the court's office, with the 11th Judicial Circuit, and with bus patrol, and basically they all stated that they had not sent out such notifications. And we do not opine on the report as to who was to send those out. We only recommend that the parties come to a conclusion and that these notifications are in fact sent out by the party that's designated. regarding the NOVs voided by law enforcement, bus patrol stated that they had not sent those notifications to the drivers, and they were awaiting clear direction from the sheriff's office. So again, the NOVs voided by law enforcement need those notifications to be sent out as well, and in this case, it is clear that bus patrol would be the one to send those particular notifications. And lastly, there are The safety or the objectives of this particular audit also included a public safety objective component. And our office was asked to evaluate the effectiveness of those public safety objectives. But our findings states that due to the limited duration of the program, the effectiveness of public safety objectives could not be determined. The program only ran for 11 months. And every month is very different in terms of school days and days that the buses are on the road. So that makes it very difficult to compare month to month. Additionally, we have very varying traffic patterns with travel in our city. And again, month to month would not be a good comparison. We evaluated, as well as bus patrol, that the only way those comparisons would be useful if you did them year over year, comparing January from this year to maybe January of next year. But again, the program did not run long enough to do that. We did recognize some trends where they issue metric reports, bus patrol, and our district used those metric reports to determine bus stops that had high traffic citations being issued. And in order to make those bus stops safer for students, our district ended up moving three bus stops. So we recognize that in the report, but we also recognize that we have a very large amount of bus stops as well. And lastly, we also recognize the fact that the metric reports that Bus Patrol puts out provide the district with information when the bus drivers have some type of non-compliant behavior or performance with regard to the stop arms on the school buses. So therefore the district can retrain those individuals and that is required when they notice that individuals are being non-compliant. So that particular retraining is also something that we stated may also somehow add to the safety objectives overall. And again, maybe in the future, if this were to continue, maybe with a year over year comparison, we would be able to better analyze public safety objectives and trends. If there are any questions, I did not go into the recommendations so that I could explain the report content somewhat. But if there are any questions.

Thank you.

Through the chair. Thank you, Elvira. Very, very good work on this audit. It's a very complex audit. Very thorough. Through the chair. We're prepared to answer any questions or address any comments that you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Goodman. Thank you, Ms. Sanchez. Any questions? Dr. Gallin?

Yes, yes, through the chair. I want to, first and foremost, I want to commend Mr. Goodman, but every leader is only as effective as the people around him. Ms. Elvira Sanchez, your work on this particular audit has been extremely impressive, comprehensive, and as one who values individuals who engage in the work and own the work and can articulate and defend the work, As our chair often say, you knocked it out of the park on this one. Thank you.

I will add that we have a great team that worked right alongside.

I understand. Understand you have a team and mr. Goodman has a team But I will say this through the chair into my committee members. We had an opportunity to engage in a discourse regarding this at a previous committee meeting and the lucidity and clarity and knowledge that miss Sanchez demonstrated on the spot really speaks to not Reliance or an application to the team team is important But leadership requires that you have some sense of ownership and understanding and I just have to say that I have to say that You know one would say I had a team that helped me with my dissertation but at the end of the day I have to sit there and defend it and articulate it and speak to it and And on this particular topic you have been very very comprehensive. So I want to just say that And you're a good guy too. Mr. Goodman Pretty good guy too, you know? But on this, I mean, I've seen it, and your staff as well, they always do a phenomenal job. But through the chair, I think it's important to note, and I want this to be noted for the record, and I think you have said it throughout the presentation, this audit appears to be a clear reflection of the implementation and operation of the bus patrol program that is implemented and operated by bus patrol. full stop. I want us to be very, very clear for the listening public and for those who may have questions. This did receive unanimous support from the board to conduct an audit. So the board recognized some gaps that existed. There was no dissent amongst us regarding the need to review and make some determinations regarding those particular gaps. This obviously was a program that was procured pursuant to policy, but not through an actual action of the board. And I'm not trying to abdicate the board's role and responsibility, because the board has assumed that role and responsibility by calling for this audit. But this particular issue is not something that the board or the administration, quite frankly, is implementing. And I went through the findings, and I would say a preponderance of the findings are outside of the scope, the responsibility, or the accountability to a greater extent. Responsibility, no, accountability, yes. We may not be responsible for the implementation, but we're ultimately accountable for the implementation, and I think this action shows that we embrace that accountability. But I think it's important to note that, because if someone's listening, In this particular day and age, parents may be wondering, you know, we're not talking about reading. We're not talking about arithmetic. We're not talking about science and social studies or how to make sure that our students appreciate the arts, athletics, and activities because that is our core mission. And we're true to that core mission as an A-rated school district for the sixth year in a row. but we also recognize that there are opportunities pursuant to state statute to expand our footprint in the space of school safety, but we have to do it in a responsible way. But the implementation and operation of this program is not something that's implemented and operated by the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. That being said, it is a concern of what we see. The barn doors are up, the horses are already out. And for us not to continue to have this to be an albatross on the district, this audit was necessary. And I look at it as an opportunity, and I would be hypocritical if I didn't say that. I say it about school principals. When there's a finding, we have an opportunity to make some adjustments. Dr. Lewis mentioned that we had some findings at a school, they made adjustments, and we obviously have to move forward. But I think this is a great, great foundation, a critical foundation, for us to move forward or not as it relates to how we address these particular issues. I'm glad to see that bus patrol has been a partner in this work. I didn't see any resistance to providing the information, although some was delayed. And something as complex as this involves multiple partners. So you have the county, which we have no jurisdiction over. You have the disposition of citations, which we have no role in. And I was very, very clear that is not the space that we want to get into in terms of litigating and disposing of citations. So those things are important. I think you started out by saying the relevant stakeholders. I think I saw it on one page, you identified the entities responsible. On page 20, I think you started out that. Responsible entities, bus patrol, Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, and Miami-Dade County Public Schools. I don't know if that was in alphabetical order, but I'll take it. I'll take it, because we obviously have some role in this. Moving forward, This can serve as a blueprint for us to remedy some of these areas, but I want to caution everyone that, again, when you have other stakeholders that are involved in this process, our role and our responsibilities are somewhat restricted. And so I'm glad to have this as a foundation. It is concerning. We obviously as a board will have an extended conversation regarding this, specifically the actions that we've already begun to take to dispose of, I think it's 8,000 or so, but the 43,000 is something that still is lingering that we have to kind of deal with. That being said, I just wanted to say that for the record, commend you for the work, commend the board for its decisive action. Within a year, they knew that we needed to take some action and it was unanimously addressed and the work that your office has done is a great step in the right direction. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Gallin. John, do you have a response?

through the chair. I just wanted to respond to something Dr. Gallin said. So I do have an outstanding team of which I couldn't function without them. And Elvira is right at the top of that. Brilliant, brilliant person. I want you to also keep in mind that I'm intimately involved with all of the audits, including bus patrol. And that, you know, the whole team here put a lot of effort into that, including myself. So I just wanted to make that point.

Through the chair. I'm not showing you enough love today, John. John Goodman, you know I said it before. You know I love you, right? Yeah, but I receive that. I know that it starts at the top. It starts at the top, but I love all of you. You're not getting enough love today, huh? Or maybe not, okay. All right, hang around and see if the day gets better. But again, I receive that great work under your leadership, but again, great articulation by Ms. Sanchez and the work done by the team. Thank you, thank you.

Mr. Superintendent, you had a comment? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Gallin, thank you. Thank you for clearly mentioning the distinction in terms of operating this. And I did speak about the title of the report with Mr. Goodman, and I told him that I would publicly say it. I don't want the public or anyone to think that this is about our bus safety program. Our bus safety program contains many, many different steps. of how we maintain our students safe, the procedures that bus drivers have to follow, what happens in an emergency. This is strictly one piece, and it has, this is strictly one area, and it is about infraction detection system. So I don't want it to be seen as a bus safety program issue. To me, that is really, really important. I would wish that the report would be strictly labeled an audit on the bus infraction detection enforcement system. Just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Dutra. Any other questions? Dr. Gallin, you want to follow up?

Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you, through the chair. And Dr. Dolchis, you must have read my mind. I was going to say that, but I was restricted by the language on page 14. In hindsight, being 2020, the item read, request for independent audit of the district's school bus safety program. And it gives the appearance that it's the comprehensive program that we're implementing, and it is not. And so I do share that sentiment. That's why I wanted my comments to reflect that. But I think the item had to reflect what the item was, and that's what the subject of the item is. But I think moving forward, we'll have that opportunity. Through the chair, would you maybe summarize how I see it? Three to four salient issues, and I'll probably save the fourth. The disposition of the existing citations, the establishment of a process to address future citations that come forward, and ultimately the district's role in terms of accounting for the revenue sources that come from this particular relationship. In a nutshell, would those be three salient points that this report would reflect or anything beyond that through the chair?

I'll mention something and then I'll defer to others who may want to speak. For the disposition of the NOVs, for example, that were dismissed, we asked the three parties that we thought perhaps would have done the work, be it the 11th Judicial Circuit Court or the clerk of the court as their ministerial office or even bus patrol, and they all stated that they had not issued those dismissal notifications. If that's what you're referring to.

No, through the chair, I guess I'm asking the direct question. What would be the three salient? We're very nice in audits. We call them findings. But those of us on the receiving end, we know those findings usually speak to problems. So the three salient problems are that we did not have a full mechanism or the mechanism wasn't totally... effective in disposing of citations. That's number one. Providing a mechanism for due process, et cetera. Potentially number two, that has resulted in this particular conundrum that we're in. And if that process is addressed and remedied, that will be a significant portion of the issues that beckons this particular program. Would you not say that through the chair?

Yes. I would also state that following the instructions of the law enforcement agency to the letter, is critical as well. And in finding four, we point out that that did not occur. So that would be another salient point, I think as well, to ensure that there is a system in place that captures that without fail.

Yeah, I think, listening to the report, that some of the issues of the conundrum is a result of communication and coordination, and I think that's very, very important. And I think you had a flow chart that showed all of the relevant parties, and to the extent that those parties were not fully engaged in this particular process on the front end, as a good friend of mine often say, if I'm not with you on the takeoff, don't have me with you on the landing, because it's not gonna be a landing, it's gonna be a crash. So just wanted to say that, and I think we have a good framework for how we need to remedy this as a district, but how bus patrol needs to remedy some of the gaps in the implementation. And my last comment, I promise you, we as a district often have vendors that represent their capacity, their ability to provide turnkey operations. And those are very appealing to school districts and large organizations. So in this particular case, this may have been framed as a turnkey operation, but as a third largest school district in the nation, a transition from, in some cases, A COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT ENTITY TO A DUALLY ELECTED SHERIFF. THERE ARE A LOT OF PIECES THAT OBVIOUSLY WERE MISSING AND CREATED SOME PROBLEMS, NOT SIMPLY FOR THE DISTRICT, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY FOR OUR CITIZENS AND FAMILIES, AND THAT'S SOMETHING WE WANT TO REMEDY MOVING FORWARD. THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR, AND I PROMISE YOU THAT WAS IT.

THANK YOU, DR. GALLAGHER. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? MS. MALLIGAN.

Thank you for the share. So I think this is an observation or a comment rather than a question. So in the responses to the recommendations, we have resources or responses. We have a response from the administration. We have a response from law enforcement. And lastly, but most importantly, we have a response from Boss Patrol. WHAT STRUCK ME THE MOST ON THE RESPONSE FROM BUS PATROL IS I THINK THAT IN THE MAJORITY OF THE AREAS THEY DISAGREED WITH SOME OF THE FINDINGS OR THE LANGUAGE OF THE REPORT, WHICH I THINK SPEAKS A LITTLE BIT AS TO ACCOUNTABILITY. SO I JUST WANT TO ASK ADMINISTRATION WHETHER BASED ON THE RESPONSE THAT THEY WILL WORK WITH THE VENDOR AND LAW ENFORCEMENT TO REMEDY THE ACTION, SO HOW this administration that they will be able to be successful in working with bus patrol. Because in their response, the devil's in the details, as they say. In their response, it struck me as a lack of accountability and responsibility in accepting some of these issues. So I think it's more of a comment than a question. Thank you.

Does anybody have a response?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much for that question. So, whether confident or not, whatever step we take forward with this, we're going to be three, four, five, six times more thorough with everything that occurs regarding our approach with this program. It was clearly stated by Dr. Gallin, and I said it from the very beginning. had we been at the table and been less reliant on what could have been done, and it would be about us, the sheriff, the clerk of the courts as well, right? Had we all been at the table every step of the way, we would not be here today. So one thing that would absolutely change would be that is the one critical step. Are we all on board? Does the process work? Is everything in place? So the way Dr. Gannon stated is perfect. There's a foundation here that establishes what went wrong, what needs to be corrected, but the level of thoroughness that will be needed if we move forward is guaranteed, is guaranteed. And I think from everyone involved, because at the end of the day, we do not want to impact our community negatively. And the only way to do that is to come together, collaborate, and make sure that there's a process that's solid and that we all back and understand well. Thank you, Ms. Mahoney, for that question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Norwood?

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. As I read this report, I mean, it's very alarming. The level of, I don't know what to call it. I mean, it seems like a bad case study in intergovernmental relations, if you ask me. I think that the the problems that existed in the coordination, it appears to me in my comments to the auditor, if I'm reading this wrong, then just tell me. Clearly the school district is not responsible. I'm not alleging that, but it seems like there's a lot of actors in this play and no one is following the same script. You have the sheriff's office that is following a script. You have the 11th District Circuit Court that's following a script. You have the clerk's office that's following a script. It appeared to me that how many times did the chief executives of these offices or the chief judge or whoever, how often did they sit in the room together and map it out. Because that's not, what I see here is just a bad case study of intergovernmental relations. I mean, to me, you know, and if I'm, if I sound like I'm saying, speaking a foreign language, then I apologize. But it seems like the, you know, it just seems different. And as far as the turnkey principle of what was described, I mean, it's very easy to say something is turnkey in other parts of Florida, but we know Miami-Dade is different. So did what was supposed to be turnkey when applied to Miami-Dade just came out a lot different than what was assumed? But it just seems like, and the reason why I'm speaking this way, because we're talking about people's due process rights. So we're not talking about a vendor who is providing computers, which of course has a lot of financial accountability and we need to make sure the computers get in the classroom and everybody knows how to work and what have you. We're talking about people's due process rights, meaning if someone gets a ticket, not get a ticket, NOV, whatever it's called, I don't agree with it, I want to appeal it, and What happens? You're supposed to get it back in 30 days. People are counting different days. There's no agreed upon time when that count. We talk about statute of limitations. These are people's constitutional rights to due process. The principle itself requires so much more than what I'm reading here. And so what I want to know from the audit department, how many times, because I would look at the Appendix A and I see the timeline, and I've read portions of it, I will admit I have not read everything, but I've read a portion of it, and I understand that this piece of it is speaking more so to bus patrol, the last piece, the first part of the audit spoke a lot about the district, but How often do these people get in the room, the people who matter in making this program run, is there any documented meeting or workshop that they sat there and said, okay, how are we gonna do this? It's gonna be this, it's gonna be that. I don't see any of that at all.

Through the chair, Elvira, do you wanna address that briefly and then I'll also weigh in?

Right. We did not see per se minutes of meetings and things of that nature. So we did see through email communications between the judges and bus patrol or certain employees of the clerk of the court's office and bus patrol referring to meetings. It was nice to meet you at the meeting yesterday. We discussed, you know, some emails back and forth. So there were several many. We don't have a specific quantification, but there is evidence that we saw through emails of meetings that did take place. Undoubtedly. What exactly was the content? It was discussed, but there's no minutes of the meetings. So that's based on just the email exchanges and some of the conversation that Bus Patrol shared with us.

And then I guess my question or comment, whatever it is, is does this work successfully in other counties? And if it does, why did it turn into this in Miami-Dade?

I can speak just a little bit of what I saw, and that's we were among the first, if not the first. One other district was concurrently more or less the same time period. From looking at a few of the states where bus patrol worked earlier, and I can't speak to all the states, this is just for a few that we read about and looked into, they don't have a uniform traffic citation component, meaning when you get a notice of violation, it stays as a notice of violation. So they don't have this I don't know for a fact or not whether Bus Patrol had encountered a state like Florida before. Maybe they had, maybe they had not. But from the few states that I saw, their notice of violation just stayed at that level. They didn't turn into a UTC with these other repercussions that we have in Florida. So the process may have been different in other states.

And then I guess my last question is, is the letter from Bus Patrol on page 55 and 56, and it talks about... of 43,000 of these were not paid or contested and without consequence, is that some sort of note by the auditor? What is that comment in reference to?

Go ahead, John.

I'm sorry.

Which page, Mr. Norwood?

Page 56.

Which comment? The first one? The first one. Yeah. Well, the vendor, Bus Patrol, is basically saying that this finding, while true, is not a failure and it's not accountable, no one's accountable for it. And we're saying that, yes, it is a big problem that 43,000 motorists were issued a notice of violation and basically they ignored it. They didn't contest it, they didn't pay it, but nothing happened, there's no consequence. So that's a big problem and it aligns with what you were saying earlier on the due process. So there's a case, the vendor is saying that it's not that big a deal, And we're saying it is a big deal. And due process didn't happen in this case to the tune of 43,000 NOVs issued.

And one more thing, I remember reading somewhere within a document about some citizens of our county who received these tickets, whatever, that they were supposed to be reimbursed. I saw that somewhere in the document. What was that in reference to?

I could speak to that a little bit. I think that was referring to, I'm assuming, uniform traffic citations. We did see through emails and in conversations with the court that they provided us that some people did pay some citizens on their uniform traffic citations. I don't recall the exact number. It was less than 100. I don't recall at the moment. It was less than 100 who did make payment on that UTC that was issued. But because the judge later dismissed all of the UTCs that were issued because they had errors, those individuals that did pay were issued refunds. That's as far as I can speak to refunds, that is all we saw, and that we... And those refunds came from whom? Those came from the county, from the Miami-Dade County, because the clerk's office had received those payments.

So the county reimbursed those people?

Right. Now, in Bus Patrol's response, I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to, they referred to issuing some refunds. That, we became aware of that in their response. There was NOVs that had been voided by police that we noticed had, payments had been made in other situations. In their response, they say that subsequently, bus patrol states that they have issued refunds. As I mentioned, at the end of field work and even in our discussions, that was never mentioned. So those refunds that they refer to here, we can't speak to those because of course, this has already happened subsequent to the audit.

Those particular refunds were for what? Well, you don't know, you can't verify, but what are they supposed to be for?

I believe, I'm trying to look here where they mention those refunds, I believe they were for some of those NOVs that maybe have been voided by police.

And Mr. Chair and our auditor, is there anyone here from bus patrol?

Do we have anybody in the audience from bus patrol?

I don't want our assistant auditor to speculate.

Right, no, we cannot speak to, we state very clearly that all the responses have not been audited clearly. Got it. So we cannot speak to that.

No problem. I'm done, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Norwood. Mr. Darson? I think the superintendent might have a response to Mr. Darson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Norwood, I wanted to just follow up on something that you said because I didn't want to interrupt you.

Yes, sir.

But I do have to give credit to the sheriff because this happened also when we went through a transition of the county having the oversight to the new sheriff. And so when Sheriff Rosie comes on board, she realizes that there's an issue. So she's the one that calls. She dropped the hammer. She's the one that, but more than dropped the hammer, she's the one that calls people together. She brought three of ourselves, them, and bus patrol to a table to discuss, right? the procedures and so forth, and then she makes a call. So that was the one meeting that I believe brought most of us together. So that, you know, your point is, I mean, you're right on point, but it is important for me to stress that the sheriff was dealing with a transition issue and she did call us together and I was multiple times on the phone with her. So I just wanted to clarify that for the record.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Dutris. Mr. Darcy? Through the chair.

Echoing what everyone said and reading the report is very impactful. But I keep in mind every time I head out in the morning and I see traffic, we are talking about safety. We're talking about, you know, people just blowing through speed zones, bus, what do you call that, bus arm? right, the bus arm and whatnot. So it is groin pains, and I agree, but I believe that I see people stop now. So they were warned about basically passing a bus. So I know I'm more mindful about when I see a bus, do I see the yellow lights, do I see the arm and whatnot? So I think in the bigger picture, it worked, it just needs to be fixed. And considering the fact that I do work through the state with different agencies, Miami-Dade is the third biggest, largest, and we're talking about a lot of bureaucracy as far as all the wheels turning at the same point. And I mean, it's a foreseeable issue, but I believe if we work out the kinks, it should work to the benefit of the little ones, the students crossing the street, because traffic's still crazy in Miami-Dade County, and that's beyond us as far as the concerns about the paperwork. you know, that needs to be taken care of. But I want to just point out the fact that children was at the point of belief of this issue. I know we all did not agree with it at some point, but I do see that as being something that is very important. And thank you for pointing out, Superintendent, that there are multiple programs on board. I know that we have you know, a bunch of stuff going on. So the busing, though, I've always seen kids and, you know, it's very scary. So thank you to my colleagues for pointing out all the different things. I'm not going to echo, but I want to point out what Dr. Gallin said, that the children are important and their safety. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Darcy. Any other questions?

I had a couple of points. Ms. Sanchez, so at this point, I did read, I think it was former Chief Judge Safey's omnibus order basically discharging all of the UTCs that were pending before the court. So those are wiped out, correct? And then what we're saying is that the NOVs that remain, those are either at or beyond the one-year statute of limitations. Is that kind of what one of the findings was?

Right. Well, for the ones that were dismissed, we're saying for those, notification to the motorist is still pending. So the notification to let that motorist know, they may not know about the omnibus order, so they need to be individually notified that their case has been dismissed. So that's one thing we mentioned. As a result of that dismissal, that notification is pending to be done. Got it. The other 43,376 are people who received NOVs from the beginning of the program as early as May and through the whole duration of the program and never paid, never contested, never did anything about it. And those remain outstanding. So we just brought up the statute of limitations. Our office, you know, we're not attorneys. There's lots of parties involved. There's judicial partners involved. as well as to interpret if, in fact, that statute of limitations renders those 43,376 as expired. So that is something that needs to be done. And as a recommendation, we mentioned that the judicial partners and the government entities, all those involved, need to communicate and come to an understanding of what needs to happen with those 43,376.

With regard to your comment about other districts, I think there was another district that was doing this simultaneously with us. I believe that when we brought this back up, I believe it was in the September ABAC meeting, there was an issue that came up that there was no district in Florida and or no district as large as Miami-Dade that they were implementing this program. Is that the case based on your findings?

I believe we're the largest in Florida, obviously, who's implemented this.

And I'll rephrase it. I mean, I guess there's no other district in Florida that's doing it because obviously the other counties also have to abide by the same statutes that we have to abide with, at least when it comes to the issuance of citations. So just to rephrase my question, there is no other district in Florida that was doing it where we could say, well, Palm Beach was doing it right or Hillsborough was doing it right.

I don't know that any other district has done an audit as we have done, so I can't speak to that.

Lastly, I guess my comment is to be a general comment as well, and I commend Mr. Goodman, Ms. Sanchez, and the entire audit team for their hard work. But I would go back to the comment that I think I made in the September meeting, which had to go with procurement. The procurement issue on this was partially because it wasn't an expense to the county or to the district that was extremely large. But I think that this kind of situation where we are looking at revenue streams to the district needs to be seen with a second, third, 15th pair of eyes so that we don't fall into situations like this again, especially when we're offered turnkey services. So thank you for that. With that, any other questions from the committee? Motion. Seeing none, is there a motion?

Motion.

Motion. Is there a second? All those in approval respond by saying aye. Aye. Thank you very much. I'll turn it back to the chair.

Thank you. Before we leave this agenda item, our illustrious school board attorney reminded me, I state for the record that the nature of my conflict was a business conflict. Bus Patrol is a client of the law firm where I am also a partner. I gotta add anything else?

No, you just need to turn in the form. 15 days, right?

Right. 15 days, I got it, I got it. Moving forward with the agenda, and thank you, Mr. Atala, for that. Agenda item eight, review of charter schools financial statements presentation for 56 of 160 charter schools audited financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025. Mr. Goodman.

Thank you. Mr. Mike Hernandez, CPA, Executive Director, will make the presentation.

Good afternoon. We are presenting 56 of the 160 charter schools audited financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025. There were no significant fiscal issues at 55 of these 56 charter schools. The one school with a deficit net position demonstrated an improvement of nearly a million dollars in this net position. And additionally, our analysis revealed that 44 of these charter schools made transfers of approximately $28 million in the aggregate to the respective parent companies. an independent third party examined via attestation standards that these monies were in segregated parent company accounts and remained unencumbered as of June 30th, 2025 and also as of December 31st, 2025. I along with the district and charter school management would be happy to answer any questions that the committee might have on these schools audited financial statements.

Thank you. Turning it over to the board. Mr. Norwood.

Mr. Hernandez, you just said that there was no significant issues with 55 of the 56 schools, but yet the report mentions this transfer. That's not a significant issue. issue?

Those 44 schools that we're talking about are part of the 55 that had no significant fiscal issues and we did have to rely on some additional testing that was performed by a third party And as a result of those additional tests, we were able to conclude that the monies that were transferred out of these charter schools, sort of like off our quote unquote radar screen, that those monies were unencumbered and were not utilized as of those two points in time, one of them being the end of the fiscal year that we're auditing and the other point being the end of the calendar year 2025.

So why are these dollars being moved from the charter school? I guess they're, I guess, I don't know, the operating account or what have you.

I don't know how to describe it. That's one question I would defer to the charter school management team that is here. I don't want to speak on their behalf as to why they did that.

Okay. Is someone here from the charter school would like to speak?

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Do you want me to state my name? You may. For the record, it'll be great. Sure. Anna Martinez, Chief Financial Officer, Academica. The transfers are actually, they're the unrestricted cash surpluses that the schools had. It was transferred over to the parent entity for purposes of investing in different banking financial vehicles, which to date we have not, the boards have not elected how they would like to invest those with financial institutions.

Mr. Norwood, any further follow-up?

Yeah, Mr. Auditor, can you enlighten me as to what are the responsibility of the funds that the public gives to charter schools? Aren't those supposed to be budgeted items? Aren't those supposed to be for school-related expenses? What is the purpose of those dollars?

Mr. Norwood, I'd like to, through the chair, I'd like to defer to Mr. Hernandez on this as the expert on this, if I may. Mr. Hernandez?

Mr. Norwood, could you repeat the question again?

The question is, what is the purpose of charter school funding for schools? Is it for budgeted items? Aren't there requirements what those dollars are meant for, school-related expenses, things of that nature?

For the majority, and again, I don't want to speak on behalf of the charter schools, but my understanding is all of these monies that we're talking about here, the $20 million, these were... expenditures that were incurred for the initial referendum here in the county?

Mr. Hernandez, with all due respect, that's not my question. I'm sorry. My question is, generally speaking, what are charter school dollars, what is the purpose of these public dollars? Are they supposed to be for school-related expenses, for budgeted items? What are the requirements for those dollars to be spent on?

Through the chair, if I may, could we have the administration of charter schools and perhaps Mr. Harvey or his team address that question as well? Because you're asking a general question about what the monies are supposed to be used for. So I think they would be in a best position to address that. Okay.

Through the chair, good afternoon. Usually the monies that are spent by the schools, they budget for these monies that they receive. And through the budget, it usually goes through for operations, staff, expenditures that the school includes with materials, resources for the instructional program. There are some discretionary funds that they hold onto for emergencies and such things.

Thank you very much.

My next, Mr. Steiger? Sure, I was just going to add to the chair. Constitutionally, all of us, district, charter, anyone who gets tax dollars for K-12 education, we use it for K-12 expenses.

Got it. So my next question, Mr. Chair, would be, I guess it's directed towards Mr. Hernandez. Is it typical that we would have audited financial statements of dollars that we cannot see? Is that typical?

That is not typical. We do have as a... And this is kind of indirectly and I would like to defer to the, I believe it's the second page, actually no, the third page of the Transmittal letter that says that are the district of that we provide a fiscal monitoring of responsibility to the district and also that As part of that we do have a right not just to audit the financial statements are Prepared and provided by a third party that is hired by these charter schools but we also have as a component of the charter contract, we do have the ability to request additional information as it pertains to these financial statements.

Through the Chair, at the end of the day, yes, the school board should be privy and know exactly where the monies are being used, yes.

Right, and so my question to Mr. Hernandez through the chair, these dollars, do we know what they're being used for?

Do you know what they're being used for? Well, as of right now, a third party attested as of the end of December that those monies remain unencumbered, that those monies are intact in parent company bank accounts.

Got it. Mr. Auditor, do you know what those monies are being used for?

based on conversations with the management company and the schools and the audit report and the examination, the monies were transferred to the parent companies to utilize, to get a better return on the monies eventually. But they're still there, as I understand it, they're still there right now sitting in the accounts in the parent company, which we haven't been able to see personally. We did initially request the audited financial statements of the parent companies and the associated bank accounts. but we did not re-get those.

I just want to cut the chase. We do not have the audited financial statements of where that $28 million, is it $28 million? Am I saying it right?

In this case, it's $28 million.

We do not have the audited financial statements of that $28 million. Correct, we do not. So I'm not understanding what we're doing here if we are not reviewing the audited financial statements of charter school dollars. That's what we're here to do. If we don't have them, I find that to be a problem. And if it's not a problem, then perhaps we should ask a question of the Florida auditor general to see if this is okay, because I'm not comfortable passing on to the school board the audited financial statements of things that you haven't seen, you haven't seen the audited financial statements of the entire school that is subject to this report, except for the $28 million from, that's in a parent account, a parent company account so why are these schools on our agenda for approval if we don't have their if you can't say to me that you seen the audit financial uh statements relating to those dollars

uh... correct and you know there has been a lot of back and forth the audit department me in particular uh... with the charter schools this particular group of charter schools yes there has been a lot of you know there has actually been a lot of friction uh... but at the end of the day it's not clear to me what the law is on that. And I don't even think the law is really settled on this, because it's such a developing, fluid situation. But the way we handled this is we agreed with the charter school management company and the schools that we were going to have their independent external auditor do procedures and an examination that tell us that for the time being, anyways, those monies that were transferred off the radar are in a place and they haven't been further invested in something, you know, they're still sitting there. So, but overall, the tenant of your questioning, it has been a contentious issue and I think it involves also the state of Florida and legislative decisions as to what the sponsoring school board is entitled to and what we're not entitled to. But in general, yes, public monies that are used have to be, we have to know exactly where they are and where they land and where they end up, yes.

And so my final question would be, we've done this in the past when there's been, I guess, different opinions about different things from charter school management companies and this audit committee in the past. We've asked for an opinion. Why can't we just ask for, that's what the Florida Auditor General has a process to ask for an opinion, whether these statements should be made available to us? Through the chair, we can.

Dr. Gallin? Through the Chair, this brings back some previous discourse relative to some of the inquisitions of this committee, specifically a member who is no longer on the committee that really continuously, and I say this respectfully to my good colleague, former Chair Norwood, This prior colleague consistently requested admission to a place and a space by which the law does not provide. So I want to kind of set that as the stage in response to something Mr. Goodman said as it relates to the law. I noted that in the transmittal, this issue has not been declared as a finding. So through the chair, has this issue been declared as a finding?

Through the chair, it has not, we're comfortable with the third party's opinion.

Okay, so thank you, through the chair. So we call balls and strikes, and I call them fairly. The conspicuous nature of the response clearly said that it wasn't a finding. So I think in that particular case, the auditor is comfortable with respect to their review, And I understand your concern, but I will kind of paint a picture as it relates to the minutia of how some of these things work. You do have, Guardrails, Mr. Goodman, I was a little miffed that you said the law, the law is the law, and you mentioned the legislature, you mentioned the state of Florida, that's where we happen to live right now, and that's the landscape in which we operate. But through the chair, there are four corners of legislation that guide what we can ask for and what we can request and what we have a right to inspect through the chair. It's very, very clear and with respect to the language about a deteriorating financial condition, or any other particular issues relative to financial emergencies, and I know you know this, Mr. Norwood, very well, that is guided by statute. That is guided by statute. So I would probably recommend, Mr. Goodman, that maybe Mr. Harvey and Ms. Gonzalez and Ms. Pauline, maybe a review of what the guardrails statutorily provide for, speak to, because we went down this rabbit hole several years ago For several years with one of our former colleagues, every board meeting, every committee meeting, Madam Chair, he was asking for, and he was pounding his hand, we want this. And I would have to say, respectfully, the law doesn't entitle you to have that. The law does not entitle you to have that. The law is very, very specific as it relates to what we can and cannot inspect. Through the chair, can you potentially speak to something that recently happened? I heard it being stated about how can a school end up with a significant amount of cash flow? And in most cases, I ask the question, but I kind of know the answer. So the utilization of funds is not always something that results in an expenditure. Viable financial organizations want to establish a strong financial position. Full stop. And I would defer, and the auditor knows that I'm gonna ask her this. I'm not gonna ask her publicly through the chair, but I hope that she nods when I say this. When I was a high school principal, I would get a note or a finding if I allowed a significant amount of money to remain in my internal accounts. I was always told that that money should be transferred. She's nodding. She's nodding through the chair, Madam Chair. I was always told that that money should be transferred to a money market account to allow at Northwestern at the time, I was sitting on $300,000, $400,000 of cash My auditors had a problem with that because they felt that the school was leaving money that they can earn more interest rather than it sitting in a checking account, putting in a money market account. And that was always something that was recommended. I wanna juxtapose that to what some charter school operators would do. They would do the same thing. And most recently we've had, and I'm not gonna ask Ms. Gonzalez to respond, but I know she's ready for the answer. We recently had a settlement in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools in which the referendum was settled, no pun intended, as it relates to the initial allocation had not been given to charter schools. That was litigated across the state and the district wisely reached a reasonable settlement to reconcile that particular issue. What happened when that settlement came through? If you get a settlement post-June 30th, your expenditures have already been incurred prior to that during that particular fiscal year so i don't want to use the word windfall but some schools got a significant amount of money that came through and in this particular case some schools may decide not to leave it in their bank account their checking account they may want to place it in an account that will bear some uh significant interest my last point is and i'm not speaking for the organization i just have some understanding of how some of these things happen To be more competitive, some of these entities front-loaded investments, allocations so that their schools could be competitive. So when the district was providing referendum funds and charter schools were not, some say, hey, we have to compete. So we're going to compete while we litigate, but once it's settled, hopefully we'll be made whole. And that's why some of these schools have had a significant amount of revenue. So I'll close by saying the auditor at the onset said there are no findings. There are some guardrails as it relates to what we have a right to inspect and review. And I don't necessarily see it as... Contentious I'm not in your seat I just think you know people have a different disposition around what they advocate for what they want to be entitled to my former colleague on this committee He was somewhat contentious and I haven't seen you mr. Goodman bang your hand on the on the dyes But each meeting he was demanding and everybody know what I'm talking about. He was demanding. You know what I'm talking about He was demanding certain things and we would say you have no right to have that because we have to follow the law so Having no findings, I have no problem with this. This is something obviously that if there's an exception, we may want to explore that through legislation, but I'm gonna defer to the auditor who has indicated that there are no findings, there are no irregularities, and he, on the record, stood by the independent validation from the third party reviewer, you stand on what they recommend as it relates to that. Because we don't actually audit, we receive their audits and the audit pursuant to statute on an annual basis has to be done independently and they simply review it. So I think it's a conversation worth having moving forward, but no harm, no foul here pursuant to not only the language here, which cited no finding, but also the public on the record declaration of the auditor who did the work through the chair.

Through the chair, if I may very quickly, that was part of the conversation and Dr. Gallin, you hit the nail on the head. A lot of the money that is received here almost tied dollar per dollar with the referendum settlements that these schools received. Those monies, as you explained very well, The those expenditures already had incurred. So when they received these monies, it was what do we do with these monies? And they're looking for the appropriate investment vehicle at this point.

Thank you. You know, I'm always... See, John, he's showing love here. He said, I hit it on the nail. You know.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess, for the chair, I'm going to try to emulate that hymn and show more love.

Please, you're being a little contentious today, John.

I'm not very good. I hear from others... including my wife, that I don't always, I'm not always an agreeable person. But I'm gonna do better.

Mr. Chair, if I may. Mr. Norwick, go ahead. Yes, sir. I agree totally with Dr. Gallin's comments. The only difference is this. Yes, schools have a freedom in many ways to expend dollars in ways in which further the school itself and its institution. The question is whether the school district has access to see those dollars. And so those financial statements could have been made available to the school district if they chose to. They chose not to. My question now is, are financial statements, Mr. Harvey, that schools have, are those susceptible to public requests for information?

Yes, through the chair.

Our records are subject to public records. The charter school's financial statements, are they subject to public requests for information?

Primarily, yes. Unless it's some exempt material, it's subject to public records.

Are these financial statements subject to public requests for information, the ones that we're talking about?

Through the chair, you mean the parent companies of the not-for-profit parent companies?

Yeah, are they suspect to request for information?

And I would have to defer to Mr. Harvey on that, I don't know.

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

The question is, normally charter schools financial statements, audited financial statements, normally, are those susceptible to public requests for information? If I was a parent and I wanted to see the financial statements of my school that my child goes to, can I request, do a public request for information to receive those?

Yes, through the chair, not only can you make a public records request, but they're supposed to actually publish them, yes.

Right, but the question that we have here is to a parent account that the parents of those schools will not have access to that information, I'm assuming because it will not be in the public sphere. I'm assuming that.

But through the chair.

I'm asking the attorney, Mr.

Auditor. Yes, through the chair, I'm not certain of that. I can say though that if these are public funds, certainly it's subject to audit. It has to be used for a K-12 purpose. K-12 purpose can be spending and K-12 purpose can actually be investing as long as the proceeds are used for a K-12 purpose.

Right, so my question to the school, I guess, the schools, is that account susceptible to a public records request?

Would you like me to answer that?

Yeah.

And I think it's just important to clarify that on the financial statements of every single individual charter school, it does reflect these funds as due to the school. It's not like the money is just off the balance sheet of these specific charter schools. In addition to that, there was full transparency. It's noted on the audit financial statement notes that these funds were transferred to the parent entity. In addition to that, there is a single audit report that shows a schedule. and that schedule is for every entity including every charter under that parent entity and it's the balance sheet of the parent entity and that I believe is due end of March so you will have that. This is just money that was transferred for investment into different banking options that the board just hasn't decided where they want to invest within that financial institution but the money has not been spent. I know you've mentioned spent several times, so I wanted to clarify the money is not spent. The money is sitting in a bank account.

I understand, but my question is that parent company account, is that account susceptible to a public records request?

I couldn't answer that for you. I'm not an attorney.

Got it. So, Mr. Chair, just for me, this is gonna be a no vote on these schools to transfer them, and I'm probably gonna sit here by myself and do that, and that's fine. If you wanna bifurcate that, I don't wanna vote no on the other schools, so if you wanna bifurcate them, we can do it, or I could vote no on everything. Because at this point, we have funds that, to me, are public funds that my auditor cannot tell me what those funds are being used for and whether they're being used in whatever fashion. And with that being said, I don't see how any of us could actually vote on this. And I think that this is something that we should take to the auditor general, because if this is something that's going to be done in the future with charter schools where dollars can be transferred to parent accounts for whatever reason, and we can't receive the financial statements for them, because I don't have a problem with that happening, but if we can't see the financial statement, how can we validate anything? but I do think that this is something that should go to the, get an opinion if this is gonna be happening in the future. And I would like to hear from some of our accountants here, because I'm not an accountant, but this does not seem right to me, but I would love to hear if any of our AVAC members who do have a background in this nature to make a comment and maybe I can change my mind, but right now I'm not really seeing how I can vote on this.

So Mr. Norwood, before I even open it up down that inquiry and what little bit I know of Robert's Rules of Order, would allow you the ability to make whatever motion you would like to make with whatever change you would like to make and see if it gets a second, at which point then the discussion that I think you wanna have can be had on that motion or you can of course not make that motion and we can have a vote and then you could make a motion that the body put in a request to the Auditor General, or you could even make the motion that the body request from Mr. Harvey, a legal opinion, which I believe was a suggestion from Dr. Gallin, As we start down that particular path, I only say that to say that I don't want a whole lot of confusion on the day. You have the ability to direct or attempt to direct the discussion wherever you think it might go. I just don't know if your colleagues will second or if we'll even go down that route.

I understand exactly what you're saying. Before we do that, I contemplate any of that. I would like to invite any of the CPAs or people with financial background to apply because I'm hearing something different than maybe other people at the table are hearing. I just want to know.

Through the chair, I'm kind of afraid of jumping in this grenade. But I'm going to give a very, very general opinion here. Opinion is not the word, by the way. If I wanted to put you at ease, which is not my intent, I would say there is a report that has a good opinion. There is certification. There's also some validation from the person that has looked at it, and they are comfortable with it. That doesn't necessarily mean it has to make you comfortable, but if it was me, I am comfortable with this, and I would request that if the police could show us that later on, and then if that doesn't happen, then I would have a problem. I don't know if that helps you or not.

Thank you. And he's my neighbor, too, so, you know what I mean?

Mr. Taylor?

Through the chair, and Mr. Norwood, I know that we've bifurcated items like this before on this committee. When you were chairing it, and I remember making that myself a request. I agree with you, sir, about having the Florida Auditor General give us the opinion if we're entitled to it. If not, because I agree, if the answer's no, not entitled, and this is what we're gonna get, then that's what we have to live with. However, you know, Also, with the limited knowledge I have of Robert's rules, I think that we would have to have some sort of motion whether we intend to bifurcate it or not or pass it as a whole or not. And I don't know if Mr. Harvey needs to give us clarification on what we as a dais can vote on or can take this as part of new business of submitting this to the Auditor General to get more clearance. But that would be my... you know, limited legal information I could give on that subject.

At the risk of stepping on the illustrious school board attorney's toes, As chair, I would deem that discussion to be pointed on this issue. And if you want to have that discussion so that we can vote on what's before us and move on, I'd rather do it now than table it and reopen it. And there's a reason why that I'll explain at New Business. But if we're going to have the discussion, it is literally about the item before us. And so I would deem that to be relevant to the item before us.

Mr. Chair, I'll be happy to support this if we can agree to ask the auditor to request for an opinion of the Florida Auditor General on this for future reference.

I would suggest you make that motion, but can I go to Dr. Gallagher first?

Through the chair. I know I'm not his neighbor, but that's my brother. And when he said he wanted to hear from accountants, that was his way of saying, I don't want to hear from Dr. Gallin. I have a lot of hats. Trust me. I can sit in some rooms. Financially, I try to stay in my lane. I think your point is valid, but to some extent, these processes as it relates to the statutory provisions, our role, not only as an ABAC, our role as a board is often ministerial. because the law is pretty clear as it relates to an independent audit. And to our colleague's point, what could happen potentially is When an auditor puts his or her license on the line and they validate certain things, they can hire who they want as long as they meet the requirements of a CPA. That being said, outside of an opinion from the Attorney General, I think it would be prudent for Mr. Harvey at the subsequent meeting to provide the framework that is guided through statute for our oversight role and authority for financial matters involving charter schools. It's pretty explicit. It's pretty explicit. So an opinion, I think if we get to that, fine, but I definitely would like to respectfully defer to our board attorney giving us specific statutory language that drives and governs our oversight and our authority. And you asked a great question earlier. I wanted to jump in, but I got a sense you didn't want to hear from me again. I know about Chapter 119 too. You know, I used to teach school law at FIU for like 15, 20 years. But the private entity is not subject to Chapter 119, full stop. Public entity is, and I think it was answered earlier by Mr. Harvey, their financials are required by statute to be placed on the website. So you don't even have to request that. Statutorily, the financials are on every school's website. you know, to the extent that one would say, and our former colleague would almost want to say, I want to see their bank account. You know, if it's a private entity, you're not, they're not subject to Chapter 119. And if the law has to change, you know, fine, but I don't anticipate that because private entities are private entities who are reasoned, but if they can give an account of where that money is through their financials that are reported readily available on the website pursuant to statute and subject to the annual requirements of charter schools to submit annual independent audits, I think they satiate the letter of the law. And that's always my question. Are we in compliance with the law? And he's nodding. Are we in compliance with the law? Are we in compliance with the four corners of our authority? Or are we exploring going down a hole, I wanna call it a rabbit hole, to kind of go beyond our authority? And I think that's what John and I have had conversations maybe six months ago about a matter. And he's nodding, because he knows what matter I'm talking about. it was certain things he had concerns about, but what does the law say you can implement your concerns from an authoritarian standpoint? So I think it's important that maybe Mr. Harvey provides that legal framework for us at the next meeting, guiding what the statute is, and if there's a need for us to explore that further, I don't wanna step on the toes of my board and have a legal opinion leaving the district on a matter that is well settled in law, you know, because we do have a legislative platform where we address issues that we may want to change in law. But I think not to preempt our very qualified, Harvard educated attorney who has a proven track record and has an outstanding team of people, Mr. Harvey, respectfully, through the chair, maybe he can provide a document at the next meeting speaking specifically to the statutory provisions. For those of us who don't know, we have a new colleague here, it's very important for us to know what the law says and not, quite frankly, as the accountant said, an opinion. What does the law stipulate? And with that, you know, I respectfully say if you want to not support it, but remember, it's ministerial. It still goes to the board. And if, you know, for your own reasons you want to do that, I respect that. But I think it needs to move forward because there are some timelines that we have to deal with in terms of complying with our legal obligation to get these things resolved through the chair.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to make a distinction because I don't want to be misquoted or misguided. My question for opinion is from the auditor general. But with that being said, Mr. Chair, I am prepared to make a motion to approve these schools' audited financials with The with the request in that motion that our auditor make a request send a question to the auditor general asking whether he is entitled to review the audited financial statements of those dollars that's it.

I would like to second that through the chair, but also I'll support his motion, but I would also like to have the recommendation I made from our attorney to give us some guidance as it relates to what the statute says, because to Mr. Norwood's point, I've been around long enough and I know he has, They call it a legal opinion because it's just that. It's an opinion at some point. But I want to have this committee to have the actual law that's on the books right now for our own edification and understanding moving forward. So I think we can have, it's not an either or, it's a both and. So I support what he's requesting, but I don't want to neglect what I'm requesting as well that I think will be beneficial to us moving forward through the chair.

Yeah, so it's asking our auditor to request an opinion from the Florida Auditor General and also asking Mr. Harvey to opine on the legal, whatever Dr. Gallo said. Yes, I agree.

Through the chair, just for the record, I don't want to be misquoted either. Not opine, provide the framework for what the statutory provisions stipulate. I don't necessarily respectfully, I like Mr. Harvey too, you know I love you, right? But I don't necessarily, I want what the law stipulates. So sometimes we know the law, but it needs to be in plain language before us so we don't start having to go down that journey later on. So I think reconciling both of those will put us in a good position to either settle this matter or not. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

the motion to discussion, because I'll get to you in one second. I just want to make sure that the motion is clear enough so that the body can vote. So the motion is to accept the report as presented, direct or ask our auditor to contact the Auditor General for guidance as to what extent or what audited financial information we should be entitled to from the parent management companies of these charter schools when money is transferred, and ask our school board attorney to provide statutory guidance as to what the outer limits of our inquiry powers are. Have I stated that correctly? That was a risk there. All right, so it's been properly moved to second, and I think I stated it. Now, unreadiness or questions? Let's discuss the item.

You've stated it beautifully, but I don't know if I fully understand. By accepting this, this doesn't mean that we are okaying it. It means that we understand it and it's coming back to us, or we're okaying it.

So my understanding of what's going to occur, this is the only time these schools are going to come before us on this item. This item would be accepted, moved and voted on and sent up to the school board for the school board to make its decision concerning the item itself. However, the ancillary questions that were asked would be follow up issues probably in old business in our next meeting.

Okay, so basically, without having verification, we're saying, okay, we're sending it to the school board and we're okay with it. Is that what we're saying?

That is the motion that's presently before you.

With all this discussion, I don't know how we could do that. how we could, without verification, say that this is okay. Maybe I am not understanding it, but personally, we're asking for all this kind of stuff after the fact that we should be getting from them, all this stuff, and we're saying it's okay, and then we get the verification, and what if the verification says, or the information says, And we've already passed it. So I think we're better off. And we're not meeting until April. And she said that it will be done in March. That was the date she said. So I don't know why we're rushing ahead and why we're passing something that we're asking for all this extra stuff. So somebody please explain to me because otherwise I can't vote for it.

Understood and appreciate. And then we're gonna go here and then here. Yes.

Thank you, through the chair. So just to add as the other CPA on the committee. So the auditor accepted the financial statements from the charter school. They requested the external auditor of the charter school to review records and ASSERT THAT THE TRANSFER DID TAKE PLACE AND EXISTS IN THE BANK ACCOUNT OF THE PARENT COMPANY. SO FROM AN AUDIT PERSPECTIVE, DOING AUDIT PROCEDURES THAT WOULD BE SUFFICIENT AND THAT'S WHY THE DISTRICT AUDITOR HAS ACCEPTED THAT DETERMINATION. In terms of having monies transferred to an account for future investment, that's something when you do an audit, you see that it's listed in your balance sheet for investment, and you get a copy of the bank statement. In this case, we didn't get the copy of the bank statement because it's a parent company, and that's the question that Mr. Nordbrook said. But based on the audit procedures performed, and the professional judgment of the district auditor and the external auditor who are putting their professional reputation on the line, and the fact that the charter schools financial statements have in a footnote that they have transferred 28 something dollars to an investment account, That has merit, and that, you know, we haven't seen a bank statement, but that's in the footnote, and that's publicly stated in the website. $28 million have been transferred for future investment. From an audit perspective, I think that would be sufficient. So I think asking the questions are good for the future and to guide the audit in the future, but I think from what we have seen and what we have presented, I'm fine with what has been provided.

Hopefully so we can move on. The other thing that brought some, I don't want to use the word credibility, but some confidence for me was they mentioned there are other statements out there, financial statements audited that are published that show these $28 million receivables. So do you have, I don't know if it's the same auditor or some other auditor that's saying, hey, this is legit. I'm not trying to change anybody's mind, but I'm just trying to give you my professional view, okay?

Any other unreadiness? Yes. I'm confused. For Mr. Harvey, we're getting an opinion or we're not getting an opinion because I heard what you said, but in the world of opinions, that's an opinion. So I'm a little confused. What are we exactly getting from him if it's not something that's going to guide, which is an opinion, or are we getting a non-opinion, which... Why do we need it then? And number two, from mechanics and mechanical. And I agree with my colleague and I just want to say from the standpoints of you, I get it and I totally get it also because we all see things through different lenses, right? There's the procedure and then there's the actual process. So the procedure looks great, the process looks questionable. So I agree with both of you. With that said, I'm still stuck on what are we getting from Harvey Water.

So, Mr. Gallant, or excuse me, Dr. Gallant actually only asked that the school board attorney provide the statutory guidance, meaning the statutes themselves that are supposed to guide our actions on this committee.

The chair, so we're getting basically, he's just going to send us the law.

He's going to produce it and provide it at our next meeting, I think in April, hopefully in April.

Through the chair, so we're basically- Harvard, I'm still confused. I'm like, wow, that's a big deal. I gotta tell you, I saw it, I just looked it up. I was just like, who is he talking about? I thought you were talking about . My question is, so we're getting from you just the law, and we're gonna dissect it ourselves and whatnot. We're not getting an opinion from the attorney.

That's the motion before you now.

Perfect, okay, I was unclear about that. Thank you so much.

Dr. Gallin. Yes, yes, thank you. And through the Chair, the difference in the request, and I know Mr. Harvey is going to provide much more than just here's a copy of the law. He's going to provide some lucidity around what the implications are and the nexus to what we're doing here. But I do want to say, unlike the Auditor General that has no obligation to respond, Mr. Harvey is under obligation to provide a response. So we can anticipate that. with much more expediency than we can potentially from the Auditor General, but I support the request for it, that we've done some due diligence, but I just wanted to clarify that as well. Thank you, and I'm ready to, I think the question's been called on this. Mr. Chair, however you want to proceed. Have you called the question, Dr. Gallin?

Through the Chair, can I? Well, we're going to observe Robert's rules. Have you called the question, Dr. Gallin? I know I heard the words come out of your mouth. I just want to make sure before I let Mr. Goodman speak. I mean... Yeah, okay. We're going to call the questions. All those in favor, respond by a sound of aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing none. Mr. Goodman, I wasn't trying to cut you off, but I do have to conduct this meeting. Thank you all very much.

Thank you. What is? I just wanted to get clarification. So I'm going to reach out to the state auditor general and ask for an opinion, and I think I'm gonna do it and say that, give background that it's on behalf of the school board's audit committee. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that process.

Right. Was a contentious discussion with these management companies about what they were and weren't going to give you as we perform these audits. So we're going to get some guidance. Or not, based on what Dr. Garland said, we may not hear back from them. But at least we, this body, is taking that step to attempt to get some guidance and address Mr. Norwood's question. Thank you. i tell you i didn't think i'd need my robert's rules book but you guys It is. It really is. It's going to be fun. We're going to have some fun. I believe that was the last of the action items. Moving forward, we have an informational. The remaining items are informational. We're at agenda item number nine, which is Office of Management and Compliance Audits Activity Report. Mr. Goodman.

I'm prepared to answer any questions that you may have on this report.

One question I have is how you doing, John?

I'm good, thanks.

Here you go. Any questions? All right, let's, I know, right?

Mr. Goodman, who's retiring so we could acknowledge him?

Okay. Okay, through the chair, Mr. Louis Paluja, who was with the district for a long time and our outstanding district director in charge of IT audits, he did officially retire and he took a job as the head of audit for the city of Miami's inspector general. So that's Mr. Louis Belujasso. We'll miss him and hopefully we'll stay in close contact with him.

Anyone else? All right, we're at old business. Follow-up items. A, a third update concerning the transmittal of the educational facilities impact fee study pursuant to state legislation and prior board action. Mr. Goodman.

Yeah, through the chair. So this is the transmittal letter from Mr. Harvey. And it explains where we're at with the impact fee issue. And that's what this is. So I don't know if anyone else wants to weigh in on that. This is somewhat of an update on where we are with the impact fee, where there's an effort to raise the rates.

Just as a reminder, and informationally for our new board member, the school board is entitled to a percentage of the monies received from the county in the charged impact fees for new development. and the Miami Dade School Board has not renegotiated that number in a significant period of time and it has come to the attention of this board that we are so far behind what is average even for the state of Florida. that it's time for us to get a raise. I believe it's about 20 years old almost. About 20 years was the last time we had negotiated those impact fees. So they're in the process of, and this will remain an agenda item until, unless and until it's resolved, hopefully positively for the school board, but it remains an agenda item for us to discuss and get an update on so that we're kept informed. And Mr. Goodman, B, update request for proposal, external auditing services, and ABAC poll for selection committee dates and times. Okay.

Ms. Monfort.

Good afternoon, Ms. Monfort. We're trying to get to you as quickly as possible.

Through the chair, good afternoon. I'm gonna try to be as quick as possible. So a couple of updates related to the External Independent Auditing Services, RFP. It has been released and is under the cone of silence. A couple key dates related to the RFP, there's a non-mandatory pre-proposal conference that will take place on February 11th, and the deadline for the solicitation is March 15th. Fifth, this particular RFP was released to address some of the commentary and conversations, and as a result of the rejection and the protest, there were three main things that were updated that I want to highlight. So there's language on independence and conflict of interest. language that specifically highlight our school board policy 6320.05, which is our state inventor preference. And then third, pursuant to the goal setting committee process, there are delineated participation points that have been assigned based on a sliding scale. So those three things have been addressed in the new RFP that is released. What I'd like to talk to this group about is the selection committee. So I know that just in general, based on our last sets of conversations that you guys are, you like the Tuesday meetings. And so I just wanted to know if you wanted to meet in the same fashion where we do the review proposals or presentations in the same day. And then if we could just block two dates just in case. And I'm looking at March 17th and March 31st for this to go to the April board meeting. I know that was a earful.

It was. So you want to pull from this board which dates or whether or not we accept your dates because you wanted two dates.

I'd like to know if you are, number one, okay with having the meeting and the oral presentation in the same day, just trying to, in the essence, trying to make sure that we navigate your time as best as possible. And then two specific meeting dates to hold, and I know if you guys recall, I know there's one new member, that we hold one date, but hopefully we can get it all in one day. So the two dates are the 17th and 31st of March. Yes.

March 17th, ABC meets. I'm on ABC.

Got it.

Through the chair, I'm not available March 31st.

Okay.

I probably am not either, but that's neither here nor there.

Through the chair, when is spring break?

It is the week of the 24th. Okay.

Through the chair also, Ms. Mumford, I think that, and I don't think I received it. If anybody else did, correct me if I'm wrong, we were gonna get a copy of the protest so that we could compare it with the new RFP. I'm not sure that I didn't receive it. I'm not sure if that was certified.

I'll send it through Mr. Goodman's office.

I was about to ask, Mr. Goodman, can you get that out? Yeah, I'll send it. Because I think everybody is going to need that before we meet again in March.

So what I'll send to Mr. Goodman is a copy of the RFP that is released. Remember that's under the cone of silence and then also a copy of the previous protest.

Through the chair, unless we decide that we do not want to meet on a Tuesday.

Yeah, you can pick another day.

Through the chair, Ms. Mumford, when is the school board meeting so that we could see what your...

I believe it's April 22nd.

April 22nd, I'm sorry?

I believe it's April 22nd.

And we meet in April as well, before that meeting. Yeah, you meet on April 7th. That's what I thought. I'm fine. As it stands right now, the 17th and the 31st are fine for me.

There's ABC, right? I thought there was a ruling that you couldn't have two meetings on the same day.

The 17th doesn't work for you?

ABC is meeting on the 17th.

You know what? How about we alternate a Thursday and a Tuesday?

That's fine.

Would the 12th and the 31st work for everyone?

I like that. No, the 31st is a Tuesday. You're not going to be on the 31st, right?

How about the 19th?

We're looking at March 19th?

Yes.

That's a Thursday. That's fine with me. That's fine with me.

So why not look at it? I can't on the 19th. I'm having surgery the day before.

Ms. Heller, do you have an alternate for that board that you can send? How about the 6th?

So the solicitation comes back March 5th. So we still need the ability to do. How about the 11th?

Six is good for Friday.

The 11th is a school board meeting.

April 11th? No, March.

I meant March. Unless you want to, if you push it back into April, then we go to the May board meeting.

What was wrong with the 6th? Somebody said the 6th. What's wrong with that?

Friday? Well, it's the day after the solicitation is released.

Right. They need time internally to prepare.

Well, how about the 12th?

I'm going to be actually a little bit even more aggressive. How about the 9th and the 12th? March? Yeah.

The 9th?

Mondays are never good. Both days work.

I was about to say, they both work for me. That's the only reason I asked. All right.

How about the 10th? No. You said the 10th was no good?

The 10th is an option if it works. I just want to give you the caveat, the same that we did before. If there's something that's missing in the due diligence, we need to give the proposers an opportunity to provide that information.

The problem is you have parents, and so the week of the 23rd doesn't work.

Yeah, spring break for me doesn't work, and board meeting days doesn't work. Anything outside of that I can adjust, so let me know.

What about the, you said Tuesdays and Thursdays are better days, right?

No. The whole calendar's open. I know we did Tuesdays before. That was an old regime.

Okay.

We're going to look at the whole calendar because we got a lot of people. And I want to make sure that everyone has a chance.

I have the 12th, the 13th, the 16th. the 18th and 19th i would do it on friday the 13th so long as everybody knows i'm going to wear jeans friday that's good that's friday the 13th work for the groups it might be for other folks though how about this i will send a poll for all of the open available days and then based on the poll if you can provide a response um i'll get the information from you uh mr gutman if you can provide a risk if you can't attend if you can see if you have a delegate that can attend And then that way, your alternate can do it.

All of you have an alternate.

Yeah, so if you can't attend and your alternate can, we'll go with a day of the majority.

Mr. Goodman knows who your alternate is, I'm assuming.

Most have an alternate. Okay, and for those who don't, and at the end of the day, you need a quorum for the process. It would be nice if everyone was here, but you need a quorum.

And it should not be on the day when the school has meetings of official meetings. It shouldn't be two at the same. I think there was a ruling that said that or a request that it should not be on the same day.

I will honor a ruling. I will consider a request.

Right. I request that it's not on the day of ABC.

Right. That's fine. That's fine.

I don't care any other day. It's good.

I'll send some dates through Mr. Goodman's office and then with a poll and you guys can just click on the links and then I'll take the majority and you'll see it populate on your calendars. That works.

Does that work for everyone? All right, this is important. The only question I ask or request, and Mr. Goodman, this should not happen again, but it might. The next time it goes out and we're under a cone of silence, can the members on this body get an email? Because I happen to be out and about in the streets and ran into somebody who wanted to chat with me about it and said, I don't know if it's under the cone of silence. And I said, well, then let's not talk about it then, right? Yeah. If you guys are doing your job, but if we can know as members of this body when we're under a cone of silence, that'll make our lives a little bit easier.

Sure.

All of a sudden you're getting lots of new friends when you sit on this body. Is that it?

Yeah, that's it. So I'll send those three things.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Moving on to new business, I only have one item of new business and I'll turn it over. I just want to let you all know that I've asked Mr. Goodman to move our action items to the front of the agenda so that we can kind of front load the things we have to vote on and it allows the people who attend our meetings the opportunity to leave after their action item. has occurred. If the body feels a different way, we can move it. But we used to do this action item, informational action item. To me, it just didn't make sense. What that means, though, is that the action items and the important part will need quorum for So let's try to keep us as close to 1230 as possible, or at least know in the back of your mind that all the voting will be earlier in the meeting. It just works better for everybody. Unless it doesn't, you guys tell me. We wanna do it differently. That was my two cents, and that's the only new business I have.

To the chair, point of personal privilege, wanted to go ahead and wish everyone a happy Black History Month. for future past and present leaders. We're thankful for all your work. With that said, I also wanted to move on and share with our committee and everyone that's still here. This morning, I had the great pleasure of joining Maritere at Riverside Elementary, and I know she stepped out, but the kids went ahead and made this, so we did, you know, Mr. Tala was present, we did Christmas at, Riverside Elementary, and it was crazy, and I wanted to share this with you. We had this ball from . We were passing out toys, and a kid started crying, and I looked at this kid, and I was like, what's wrong with this kid? He's getting free toys, right? But I asked, I said, what's going on? He's like, I wanted a soccer ball. So I kind of, like, thought about it. And I'm like, okay, whatever. You know, we have more toys we could get. And he was not happy. A second kid asked, I don't want a soccer ball. And I was just like, okay. And then a third. And they were crying. So, you know, conversation arose. And I asked, well, don't you want a toy? They're like, I want to play outside. So it hit me. In 2025, kids want to be outside, outdoors. And it just, like, so we made a point to, like, fundraise to get some balls. So this morning we were able to distribute 59, one actually blew up, 59 soccer balls to these kids and they were elated. Thank you to Maritere for being there and helping. She's a great emcee and it was very meaningful for Salad. It was very meaningful for the kids and those adults that were present. So I just wanted to share with you guys that It's always great to participate with our children and our staff at Dade County Public Schools. So thank you, and thank you Maritayra Rojas, the chairwoman. We really appreciate it today. Thank you. Anyone else have new business?

Oh, yes, Mr. Harvey. How do I donate to the soccer ball foundation?

We can talk. Yeah, I was about to say, I don't think you're subject to sunshine on that one.

I think we also have to wish a happy Valentine's Day since we had so much love going on up here. I love you, Mr. Goodman. I'll move to adjourn.

Well, right before that, since you said Valentine's Day, it's also my wedding anniversary, so shout out to my wife. We've got a few years in that marriage game. with that i've had a motion to adjourn is there a second we are gone thank you everyone