Fiscal Accountability and Government Relations Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning and welcome to the Fiscal Accountability and Government Relations Committee meeting for Wednesday, May 6th, 2026. I'm now going to call this meeting to order. Can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Board Member Danny Espino.

Please remain standing for a moment of silence. You may be seated. Before we get started, I'd like to state the committee membership. You have myself, Roberto Alonso as chair. We have Danny Espino as vice chair, Luisa Santos as a member, Joseph Geller as a member, and Dr. Dorothy Bendos-Mendigo as an alternate member. Our first order of business is to approve the minutes of the Wednesday, April 15, 2026 Fiscal Accountability and Government Relations Committee meeting. Are there any questions from any board members? Seeing none, we have a motion to move. We have a second. All in favor?

All right, next order of business is to move our E items to the floor. Can I get a motion?

Okay, our first item is E1, and this is yours, Mr. Steiger. E1 is the monthly financial report.

Thank you so much, and thank you, Mr. Steiger, for your thorough briefing. On E14 for our general fund, there's a couple of things I want to call out. Number one, I think this is the first ever budget resolution where I see a decrease in energy compared to budgeted, so that is... always a great thing, and so I wanna, I know some of that is due to using our rebates, electricity, EV charging stations, and making sure that all of those investments that have been made and efficiencies are actually being realized, so thank you for highlighting that. Secondly, can you tell us, according to this budg

Thank you. And Mr. Steiger, throughout the state, I know I've been reading headlines about counties that have fallen below. Can you just give us an update on what the statewide picture looks like?

Thank you. And so through the chair, I'll just say, you know, I'm as hard as these decisions have been. And I know I've been at school sites over the last few weeks and certainly there are challenges. I'm grateful that we are making the hard decisions needed to keep us away from a situation like what we're seeing across the state. And I certainly know that my colleagues and I will do our part to get the state to to alleviate wherever possible the situation and really thank you for your team and all the hard work and frankly every department because it's really hitting every single corner of th

Thank you so much. I now have Board Chair Rojas.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Any other further questions or comments? Mr. Steiger, just a quick question. We heard a lot of cuts going on and we're definitely hearing them from the schools as we go out there and visiting them. What are we doing at the three regional offices as well as the central office in looking at our costs? I know that they don't have huge budgets, but there is a lot of personnel out there. Are those personnels also going into the schools and assisting with some of these shortages and Yeah, so Mr.

Okay, follow up on that. I know that we're looking at ways to reduce the number of substitute teachers that we're requesting through our services to try to cut down on costs, but that also then creates additional stress on the schools, right? When somebody calls out sick or when somebody's there, what are we doing to make sure that we're deploying quick enough and that classes are not left empty while we're waiting for somebody from the central office to be deployed there? Because we know that Kelly Service has done an incredible job with their app, and it was something that worked smoothly, b

I appreciate we're being proactive, and obviously we're following up with principals and the regions. Is everybody feeling okay with the process? I mean, obviously it's a change, nobody likes change, but are we being able to fulfill the needs of the schools based on your department's sort of view into what's happening?

Is there a way that, being that we're such a great partner, that we can work with Kelly Services to have the same app that's being used currently that everybody was used to to kind of help us just with strategy for this short term? Because, I mean, we want to continue being good partners. And I'm just thinking for a quicker deployment, if we had several staff members that were on call and were ready to get those requests from the online system, just to alleviate and help get things resolved quickly, especially in the last couple weeks of school.

Okay. Yeah, I think it's important not just for the schools but also for the staff that's being deployed all over the county to go fill those vacancies that we have a process in place that is done in a timely fashion, similar to the way that we do our standards, current fulfillment of substitute teachers in those classrooms. So if we can follow up and then maybe provide the board with an update on that, Because it's important. I mean, our parents expect somebody to be inside the classrooms, and we expect that, right? And we don't want to put principals in those positions. So thank you.

Thank you. And just a follow-up, you know, and the information is going to be provided to the board. If we can get some statistics as to how many, you know, substitute teachers we're filling, how many staff members from central office are being deployed out, what departments are being impacted, Just general information, I think it'll be good for the board to have, just so that we kind of have an understanding and an eye into exactly where it's at. So when questions do arise in the community and we're asked what's happening, we can easily answer them. Thank you. Any further questions from the b

Thank you. Through the chair, this question was on E17, the food service resolution.

Thank you. Through the chair, I've learned recently that we may not meet universal criteria, objective criteria to continue providing free breakfast and lunch at every single school in the upcoming year. And I know that when we did meet the criteria and were able to start doing that, our meals served did go up, if I remember correctly, between 10 and 15%. Now that that won't be a universal option, how do you expect that to affect our food service fund?

Thank you so much for that thorough explanation. And through the chair, I know up to the year before the pandemic, that free and reduced lunch form had not changed much since I was even in school. It looked pretty much the same. What are our plans for the schools that will have to collect these forms to make it a very user-friendly 21st century system for our families and students?

Thank you so much and final point through the chair. As we, I know everyone is working very hard to solidify our rollout of the new student information system, ensuring that it's integrated and so that all of our systems are speaking to each other and they live in the same place I think will be really important. So thank you so much for the work done and I echo your sentiment. I have seen tremendous efficiencies built in through the Food and Nutrition Department and we're really grateful for it.

Thank you. With no further questions, you want to finish E35, Mr. Steiger, or were you done? I'm presenting it.

Any questions or comments from the board members?

Questions or comments? Yes, you're recognized, Ms. Hunt.

Thank you so much. Through the chair, obviously safety is our number one priority, so I even hesitate to ask, but we did spend 2.4 million this year, and the request is going up to almost double, and so I'm trying to understand, even with the merging of some sites, closure of some sites, how we land here through the chair.

As a follow-up to that one, Is there no way to obtain a waiver from the state in any way as we are consolidating these sites? Because the goal of consolidating these sites and bringing our service together is to save money. And if we're still having to spend money on maintaining these properties on systems that are not needed, because you need an active certified fire system if there's people in the building. If there's not going to be anybody in the building, is that something we can look at and see if there's any waivers? you know, and having a basic system versus a full-out system in the sc

Any questions or comments? No. On this one, this does fall within my district. just want to make sure that where I know there's been conversations between the superintendent and the city, and we always want to work with our municipal partners. So if we can just make sure that they're updated by our staff, um, last time we had a presentation, the city, um, it wasn't our fault. We had kind of left it on the developer or the proposers to communicate with the city. And I guess that hadn't occurred. So I think the district needs to be a little bit more proactive and I'm happy to join them in updati Thank you. Any other questions on 142? That was 144.

Thank you so much. Through the chair. I know here in this item we're presented with two finalists, let's say, and now we enter contract negotiations. I do see significant price differences and I understand we've got our processes to respect, but I really want to put on the record that as we finalize those contract negotiations for for our auditing services moving forward. It's gonna be really important as we have been discussing at Nauseam through these e-items that we are very fiscally conservative and do the right thing by the times that we're facing in our budget. And so I just wanted to pu

Any other questions or comments? All right, thanks so much. And thank you, Mr. Steiger, and to our auditor for your briefings and for answering all my questions. I, too, had some concerns on this. We're having very active conversations here on cost savings and to the point that our schools can't even purchase a lot of the supplies that they need. And there is a difference of $196,500 here between both contracts. I'd like to know through our legal counsel what negotiating powers do we have at this point and can we request that staff go back and say to the number one vendor that came through com

Thank you, Mr. Harvey. Do we need to amend this item in any way then to give directive to staff to do that or just through this conversation, they kind of have an understanding?

Okay, thank you. I'll go over language and I'll speak to Mr. Harvey and if I feel that, actually I'll bring in a suggestion to the board at the board meeting if we need to add any additional language here just to secure that. Thank you. All right, any other further questions or comments on E146? All right, E147.

Thank you so much. Colleagues, first of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Chair and Board Member Santos, for the action items you have on nutrition in the past. I can tell you from my experience with my own kids as well as the feedback I get when I visit schools that one of the critical factors of how the kids perceive the school is the food that they eat. And so while our food service is a great job and we're doing a great job especially under the circumstances, at what point do we take a look at some of these items that are ITBs and provide the lowest cost and look at the offerings? Because I do

Thank you so much for that comment, Board Member Espino, because certainly, as you know, that was the premise of the item that I brought, that we need to increase that percentage, and I know there's been tremendous work between the food show and the new offerings, moving away from some of those, I know Board Member Alonso was very adamant, and I agreed on removing the plastic, reheating, and so I have seen some concrete improvements, I think there are also new things that will be rolling out, even, for example, related to this item, milk and dairy in bulk, and really moving into something that

was incredibly difficult. And so we are going to maybe at some point hit a threshold where we're going to have to decide we might need to invest a little here. And I'm all open to that conversation, Board Member Espino. Thank you for bringing it up.

Any other questions or comments? You both make great points, and thank you, Board Member Espino, for bringing that up. I hear it all the time. And I know that our food and nutrition team has been working as hard as they can with the restrictions that have been put in place on them from the federal government going down to the state on how we can do things. If it were to me, I would sign a contract with Badia and Goya and Magic and just distribute Sazon Completa to every single school and we could fix the problem very quickly. But Angie has told me that that's not possible because of our federa

Okay. And just a follow-up. I know that in our current world of feeding so many students, right, we cook at volume sometimes and have certain limitations. With the changes that we might be seeing next year of now not every child gets a lunch and we're gonna be a little bit more focused on those students that really need it, is that gonna give us an opportunity to maybe become a little bit more focused on the scratch kitchen and being able to not have to cook at such a large volume? And because I know our staff is restricted, right? They have to cook at a high volume. So you look at things that

Okay, thank you so much, and thank you for all the hard work you guys do. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Rojas, you're recognized, and then we'll have Ms. Colucci.

Thank you. Board Member Colucci, you're recognized.

Thank you so much. With no further questions, we'll now move to E149.

Don't go too far, we're continuing the conversation. But on fresh produce, thank you again, Board Member Alonso for bringing your item on this. If Food and Nutrition could give us a quick update on our work with our Miami-Dade County Agricultural Manager. I know this item, my team looked and obviously has some products that aren't grown locally because we have to offer them. But can you talk about how we're going to incorporate that fresh local produce moving forward?

Any further questions or comments? I want to thank the team. You guys have been incredible. I enjoyed a very delicious lunch with Charles LaPrate and the Miami-Dade Farm Bureau at our cafeteria food services office. And I know you guys have been working really, really diligently to build that partnership. And I also want to thank Charles and the Farm Bureau for also coming together and saying, how can we work together? So I think it's an incredible partnership. not just to give our kids healthier, better options that are local, but to also fuel the local economy, which is something that we wan

Okay. Questions or comments? Okay, E152?

Thank you. Through the Chair, Mr. Steiger, will we see a revised item that includes the current spend?

That's totally fine, as long as it's included before our board meeting. Thank you.

Mr. Niccolo, you're recognized, sir. Thank you for all your dedication and service to our district.

Thank you. Any further questions or comments? Okay, E201.

Questions or comments? Seeing none, all the e-items have now been discussed. Can we take a motion to move the e-items to the board? All in favor? Aye. Okay, the next item that we have to discuss is contract expansions by Ms. Mumford. I think that was all distributed to board members. Does anybody have any questions for her? Seeing none, we now move to our legislative update. It was a real busy week last week in Tallahassee. Being sarcastic. Mr. Olivares, any updates? I know that we are preparing for budget that's coming up now.

Any questions or comments from board members? Okay, best of luck. All right, any new business from any board members? Ms. Santos, you're recognized.

Thank you so much. I have a quick clarification question to staff on the publishing deadlines for staff follow ups. I know our agenda and our items obviously we get on Fridays, but staff follow ups over time have seemed to come later and later, some of them Monday, Tuesday. What is the accurate or needed timeline for publishing of staff follow ups that are on the agenda for a committee through the chair?

Through the chair, so 48 hours before our meeting. Okay, thank you. You're definitely meeting that timeline, but would really appreciate if you could include them with the agendas on Friday so that we are not rushing to ask you questions an hour later at our committee briefing. Through the chair, thanks.

Okay. With no further questions or comments, I close our meeting. All in favor?