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Minutes 08-31-00 MINUTES OF THE EDUCATION ADVISORY BOARD EDUCATIONAL ISSUES ROUNDTABLE PRESENTED BY THE CITY OF BOYNTON BEACH EDUCATION ADVISORY BOARD HELD AT THE BOYNTON BEACH CITY LIBRARY PROGRAM ROOM THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2000 AT 6:00 P.M. PRESENT: Diana Tedtmann Ron Ehster Aly Gore, Student Michael Hazlett Revia Lee ABSENT: Arlene Greenberg Caroline Roter, Student ALSO PRESENT: Kurt Bressner, City Manager Ron Weiland, Vice Mayor Bill Sherman, Mayor Pro Tern Bruce Black, Commissioner Charlie Fisher, Commissioner Virginia Farace, Education Adv. Board Liaison PARTICIPANTS: School Board Chamber Board of Directors Area Superintendent School Principals Palm Beach Community College Various local education boards and committees At 6:05 p.M,, Chair Nominee Ms. Diana Tedtmann, called the meeting to order at 6:05 p.m. and led the group in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Ms. Virginia Farace, Education Advisory Board Liaison, welcomed the attendees at the meeting, saying that the meeting had been called as a result of an earlier City Commission and Chamber of Commerce workshop concerning what was happening at South Tech and Palm Beach Community College. It was believed that it could be helpful to bring all of the responsible parties together in one room for discussion, questions, and answers. Ms. Farace explained that the Board was in the midst of appointing a new Chairperson and that Ms. Diana Tedtmann had accepted the nomination. A meeting was planned following the roundtable to finalize this vote. Chair Nominee Tedtmann acted as moderator for the roundtable, asking that the participants introduce themselves by name and capacity, and thanked everyone for attending. Following the introductions, the first topic of the roundtable was brought up for discussion. Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 1) Community School Program Transfer from Congress Middle School to South Tech High School Chair Nominee Tedtmann directed the first issue to Mr. Ken Meltzer, Principal, Congress Middle School, who stated that Congress Middle School was a fully implemented magnet school. He expressed pride in the things that were happening at Congress Middle School. He stated that as they put the magnet program on line, they were informed in the spring of last year that their Community School Program was going to be transferred to South Tech. He stated that what had been moved to South Tech was the adult education and administration part pertaining to the GED and ESOL programs. What remained at Congress was the Interlocal agreement with Boynton Beach, which was basically Parks and Recreation, including a full-scale summer program, Saturday track, some evening programs, and some lease programs. He stated that the transition had worked itself out successfully. Congress Middle School will continue with the Interlocal Agreement and with what the City of Boynton Beach and Recreation and Parks would like to have them do. The only problem was that as a math/science technology magnet school, they were a "hidden gem". They had more technology than any other middle school in the district in place and operating, yet some of the opportunities for adults were limited because they did not have the facilities and operations coverage of a community school. Mr. Meltzer added that Congress Middle had over sixty-six 7th graders doing HTML programming and web page design and that they were "pushing the envelope". Their next venture would be to have 8th graders working on COBOL programming. The City of Boynton Beach donated $100,000 to Congress Middle School the previous year, which allowed them to put together a 35- station Intemet Lab. They used this lab to teach every child in their school and over the summer, taught dozens of teachers from across the district in the use of the Internet, including search engines and related topics. He concluded his remarks by asking the recipient of those programs, Mr. Jim Kidd, Principal of South Tech High School, to comment on the topic of the transfer. Mr. Kidd stated that this had been an interesting summer and an interesting transition. He was told not long after he was appointed principal that they would be getting a community school component at the end of the summer. The day before the fall semester began this was confirmed. This made them a little late gearing up for it. He said that this had turned out to be a positive because it gave them time to hire an assistant principal, Larry Coup, who had been the district guru on adult and community education programs for a number of years. Their intent was that with the continuing workforce development programs they were already running, the community school programs would give them an opportunity to have a far better offering of courses. The transfer allowed them to do some things for retirees and senior citizens at a much more reasonable rate than they had been able to do in the past. Since it was late and advertising had already been done when the program actually came to them, they had a limited (though adequate) offering. Their intent was to fill the school at night. They wanted to expand all their offerings to the point where they were not only running the four nights that they had in the past but possibly run some programs on weekends if there was a demand for it. They are still "satelliting" some programs to Congress Middle and Poinciana Elementary. They wanted to move as many of the programs as they could to their campus, strictly for financial and control reasons, but it was not going to be something they tried to do immediately. Instead, they would try to phase the programs. 2 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August31,2000 He said that he believed in the long term that they could offer far superior service by having the programs all under one umbrella. He said that he understood that Mr. Cornell, the principal of the new high school in Boynton Beach, would be getting a community school component and they would be working with him very closely to provide the courses that the community actually needed. He said that Mr. Cornell would be better set up to handle some programs than they would be at South Tech and vice versa. They would be able to offer some community school programs that could be structured along the lines of continuing workforce but would actually be for that segment of the population that, rather than enhandng their occupational skills (the purpose of continuing workforce), would actually be involved in life enrichment, (the purpose of a community school program). City Manager Bressner asked what kind of outreach was going to be developed to determine the kind of course offerings they would make available at South Tech? He asked if there was going to be a process set up where there would be community input and suggestions, perhaps from the business community, for some areas in which they wanted training made available? Mr. Kidd stated that they were looking at traditional program offerings to see what had worked and what had not and offering them. They were limited on advertising money so a lot of it would have to be word-of- mouth until it became self-perpetuating. We do welcome community input. As far as a formal vehicle goes, we have not had time to develop that. We do want to work with the Chamber, work with the City, and work with any other groups within them to try to provide programs that will meet your needs. City Manager Bressner said they were welcome to use some of the City's communication vehicles as far as newsletters and similar outreach in order to get feedback on the type of programs people were looking for. He said that Boynton Beach was pleased that the facility was in Boynton Beach and they wanted it to flourish. Mr. Bressner stated that the City of Boynton Beach was a potential employer with 800 people on staff. There were some training needs that he wanted to see expressed through South Tech and that the City of Boynton Beach as well as the Chamber of Commerce were stakeholders in the issue. He hoped the City and South Tech could set up some kind of formal mechanism to provide assistance on program development, and offered access to the City's resources to publicize and get the information out. Mr. Kidd really appreciated that and stated that was the type of partnership they were hoping to establish. Mr. Kidd referred to the long-standing relationship between South Tech and the City of Boynton Beach in the continuing workforce arena. They had done a tremendous amount of training in the past and hoped to continue with that. Chair Nominee Tedtmann asked City Manager Bressner if his question had been aimed at K- 12 or adults and he said it had been aimed mostly at adults. Ms. Paulette Burdick, School Board member, said she thought they were getting out of the adult training and that it was being turned over to the community college. Chair Nominee Tedtmann said they were addressing the community schools and the transition of the community school evening programs from Congress Middle School to South Tech. Mr. Kidd stated that this question would be addressed more fully in the next segment of the meeting, which was Workforce Development, funding and Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 programs. He said he was going to try to give a breakdown of an issue that few understood, the difference between post-secondary adult vocational, the continuing workforce development arena, and the community school in the adult education arena. He said basically it was post-secondary adult vocational programs that were going over to the community college. They expected about 30,000 registrations this year in the continuing workforce arena. Mr. Kidd was asked to speak about the Annenberg Quantium grant with regards to development of the program. He stated that the Annenberg Quantium grant was awarded to the district last year. The major thrust of that grant was to develop academy programs for students in grades 9-12. A large component of that was providing support directed towards development of an integrated curriculum between the academic and vocational programs. By integrated curriculum he meant a curriculum that would enhance and enable learning by tying the academic curriculum to the vocational field the student was in. If the student was in automotive, then the science and the math curriculum would be more directed to the automotive arena. Computations would be more along the lines of displacement, gear ratios, and so forth than it would with a person sitting in class doing algebraic or geometric functions without really understanding the practical applications of it. The math, science and social studies would mesh. There would be a degree of team teaching between the academic and vocational instructors as well as the development of curriculum. Another component of that grant was the publicity to actually promote these programs in the community and throughout the school district to build these programs from non-existence to working programs that would fill a comprehensive high school. Mr. Kidd stated that they started their first class of academy students in 1997, 36 residential carpentry students. Of those original 36, 28 were there as juniors this year. Those students went out this summer for On-the-Job Training and he said they started at $6.50 an hour and they had to cap them at $8.75. In two weeks the contractors raised them from $6.50 to $8.55 an hour. He said they had to back off because he wanted them to finish high school. Mr. Kidd commented that South Tech was not yet complete in their curricular development but that some of it was in place. He said 95-98% of the teachers were pouring their hearts and souls into their classes. They are doing so much there that during the summer some was accomplished but during the school year it had been difficult with all the changes. At the moment they were handling five different groups of people in their daytime program. They were handling the academy students who were in grades 9-12. They increased that enrollment from 110 full time students last year to over 400 this year. That was a 400% increase in that population. They increased their dual-enrolled high school students who attend their academic classes at another high school and came into South Tech for a vocational component. This group increased from less than 300 last year to 525 this year. There was a decrease in our adult enrollment by the transition of additional programs to the community college from around 300 last year to 100 this year. My vocational teachers have always handled a variety of students, sometimes simultaneously. In our vocational programs, we have our full time high school, our part-time high school, our full time adults and part-time adult students. It is not ideal but it is a survival issue until we get to the point where we can have those academies set up for you and we are making great strides. It looks like the Quantium 4 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 Foundation is going to extend the grant to the academy portion of the school, which will have at least one person on board full time to promote the academies in the community. Each student that came in was called a minimum of three times in the summer. We did that having lost 56 instructional staff members and 21 support staff members last year because of the transition process and the reduction in force. We had parents that came in and volunteered, teachers that came in and volunteered. I begged money from any place in the district I could to do that. It paid off because we had a 400% increase in enrollment this year. Mr. Kidd was asked what the capacity of the school was? Mr. Kidd replied that the school was built in 1976 with Federal grant funds as an adult vocational center. The philosophy then was large vocational labs with very small if any classroom. A lot of the vocational labs were air-conditioned and are considerably larger than this room we are in now. They are far too large for a regular academic classroom; they are too large for two classrooms but not structured in a way that you can get three into them. Under the setting that South Tech was opened in, we have 554 student spaces but that is 554 adult vocational students. We have virtually no academic facilities. Last year there were two of the vocational labs that were cut in two and converted into four academic classrooms. There was one of the large vocational labs that was turned into a large biology lab. There wasn't room to put two labs in that area. That's the sum total of our academic facilities. We do not have a gym; we do not have assembly areas; we do not have a cafeteria (but we do this year have a serving portable); we do not have shower facilities; we do not have any type of P.E. facilities. We do not have covered walkways to facilitate the transfer of students in inclement weather. Our capacity right now is 700 kids at any given time on campus. We are accommodating them through portables. We are accommodating them through being creative. I think we are doing an extremely good job considering the amount of change and growth we have had in a short period of time. We are actually over capacity. Mr. Kidd was asked how the academy differed from what was being offered at other high schools? He replied that the academies that they had set up were concentrated in the vocational arena without sacrificing in the academic arena. As they develop, academic quality will improve greatly but they had been through a period of time in the last few years where the perception of vocational education had declined. Mr. Kidd assured everyone that vocational education was indeed alive and well at South Tech. They prepare people for employment, they prepare them for life by employability and life management skills and now an opportunity exists to give students a high school diploma. By the time they go through they will have spent half of the first semester of their senior year of the full block schedule and on-the-job training. They will spend the last half of their senior year at their academic studies. When they receive a high school diploma they will already be employed. We are trying to instill the desire in those students for continuing education. We are working on things with the Community College where there will be a natural movement from our program into their program. That is how we differ from a traditional high school. The traditional high school gives a small vocational component and those kids still have to have training when they come out of high school before they can actually go into a profession. Mr. Kidd was asked to name the vocational tech offerings at South Tech. He responded that the first academy they opened was residential construction. They added 5 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 the automotive technology program, the health occupations program, a cosmetology academy, commercial foods academy, and a new one, computer electronics. Next year they plan to open their air conditioning program as an academy, their body program as an academy, and their marine technology program as an academy. They also intend to open a plumbing program, which they had never had as an academy. They were going to try to breathe life back into their cabinet-making and electrical wiring programs, which did not operate in the daytime this year. They are also going to try very hard to open a law enforcement academy. They are trying to grow. A participant asked Mr. Kidd if the School Board was behind him on the growth? Mr. Kidd said they were very much behind them. There is not a lot of money out there this year. We had a 9M budget last year. This year our budget was cut to $6M and we are serving three times as many students as we did last year. I had $400 in my budget for capitalized equipment replacement and repair this year. I can't do anything with $400. Things are tight district-wide. Most of the money has been poured into instructional units because with a twenty-eight member junior class I may have two or three students who need honors English or honors Math and with a per teacher count of 25 to keep those programs open, that means that I have to pick up 22 additional students somewhere else in order to offer that class. The thing that impressed me and touched me this year was the amount of support we have gotten from industry and the community, People have been good to us this year. Resources and money have been poured into it and more is coming on a daily basis. Ms. Farace asked: "What is the timeline to get those things you need at South Tech?" Mr. Kidd responded that hopefully, I will have a Chemistry Lab when the school opens next fall. He said instead of waiting for facilities to put students in, he wanted to produce the students and then put the pressure on the District and the Board to put the facilities there for those students. They are doing that. Mayor Pro Tem Sherman said he had understood that the capability no longer existed at South Tech for massages, manicures, and facials for the general populace? He said that the seniors were getting a terrific service and now they were going to have to pay commercial prices for those things. He asked if an allowance had been made for this issue? Mr. Kidd replied that this facility had gone over to the Palm Beach Community College. They were completing their last small class and would be doing some facial programs as part of their continuing workforce cosmetology re- certification process. For the cgsmetology services there will be a "lull" in the quantity of services we can do but we have 80 kids in the cosmetology program who will be ready in another year or so. Mr. Ehster asked Mr. Kidd if his campus was big enough to support extensions? The site was originally a 30-acre site. He said that 14-16 acres acres had been dedicated to the South area bus compound. As far as building a full high school facility on the 15 acres, it is virtually impossible. Mr. Ehster asked if there were any plans for expansion. Mr. Kidd said there were plans and that he hoped formalized plans would go before the Board very soon. If things go as they have been we are going to have 600 - 800 full time students next year and it is going to be tough to accommodate them. We are going to have to be very creative. Mr. Ehster asked if there was anything in the budget in the five-year plan for South Tech. Mr. Tom Lynch, Palm Beach County School Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 Board member, replied that he did not remember seeing any capital spending for South Tech. Ms. Gleason responded that you really couldn't put money into the capital budget till you develop the Ed Specs to decide what you want to have and those specifications have to be brought to the Board. That is what the budget is based on. We have three academies and all three of those should be brought forward together at one time because all three are in the same position, South Tech, North Tech and West Tech. Mr. Ehster asked if there was money in the budgets for the plan ~n general? She responded that there was $1,5M for planning and that was all. Mr. Ehster asked if there was any capital money for any: of these facilities? Ms. Gleason replied that $1.5M is capital money and once we get the Ed Specs, we take those planning dollars to assist in developing those budgets. Mr. Ehster asked if all the schools were in approximately the same boat and she replied "Yes" except that West Tech was a little bit smaller. They are all waiting for improvements, for classroom space, and regular high school space because they were being converted from adult sites, to sites better for teenagers. Mr. Kidd responded that the sites were similar but that South Tech had more students than the other two combined. Another question: "If you are already full and there is no capital plan to expand, how can you add programs for air conditioning and law enforcement etc?" Mr. Kidd responded that the law enforcement would only require a classroom, at least for the first two or three years. Air conditioning is one of their traditional programs that they have had for a number of years and there is a vocational shop available at this time. Again, it is theoretically possible to keep adding portables. He had in mind one more large bay area that may be freed up. His intent was to put plumbing, electrical and carpentry on one side of that entire building so that the carpenter class could build it, the electrical class could wire it, and the plumbing class could plumb it, and they could all have a party and tear it down and start over. We can accommodate this. The circumstances are not ideal. What I have said is that I don't feel like the quality of student education is suffering, I think kids are inconvenienced. They have to participate in P.E. and wear the same clothes the rest of the day. I do have high hopes that there are a couple of portable shower rooms that can be relocated and moved on campus that may alleviate that. We have 300 kids in P.E, this year. Ms. Revia Lee said she was hearing Mr. Kidd say he was already overcrowded and he was looking for dollars for expansion. She questioned this, wondering why he was going to continue to try to attract the students? Mr. Kidd stated that he did not have any trouble accommodating the ones he had. The District is obligated to these kids for four years because we have started something that is going to have to be continued. It is going to have to be self-perpetuating now or it is going to be a loss situation. I think the further it goes I really feel like the more demand there is for what we are doing. There is a large segment of the population that do not want to go to college and you have a large segment of the population that goes to college, comes out and takes $25,000 to $30,000 year jobs. I am putting kids out there that are up in the $100,000 a year category. This is not just an unusual circumstance. Vice Mayor Weiland stated that the question was that Mr. Kidd's hands were tied and perhaps the other two schools as well and there was only $1.5M in the budget 7 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 for planning and nothing in there for the next five years. When is the School Board going to look into providing more money for these three schools? A comment was made that a five-year plan was a plan and it did not mean that it was in concrete. Eventually you add other things to your plan as they go along. The plan is a work-in-progress at all times. Vice Mayor Weiland said, "Can it wait five years?" Can they "tread water" for that long? Ms. Gleason stated that you made plans and then you adjusted those plans. Each year they made a five-year plan and the next year there will be another one. We have money in there for the planning of the reconstruction of these buildings. It should have been done last year and updated into the plan for this year but it was not. Somebody dropped the ball. Now we have the money in there for the planning of these things and then we will see about adjusting our five-year plan once these reports come in. Are we going to do it tomorrow? No sir, but as we go along these things will be added. 2) Workforce Development (Funding and Programs) Mr. Larry Coup, Assistant Principal for Community School at South Tech, distributed copies of a Power Point presentation, which he went over and discussed with the participants. Mr. Coup stated that there had been a lot of confusion in the community about who was doing what and What the programs were. He hoped his presentation would clarify the issue. He first addressed the Applied Technolgy diploma, which was an entity that did not exist a few years ago, It came out of Senate Bill 1688 that passed in 1997 and was in response to the Legislature's demand for an Associate degree of 30 hours. Associate degrees are not 30 hours; they are 60 hours so the Applied Technology diploma was born. It is the technical half of an Associate degree. In this County that is the responsibility of the Community Colleges. It is Job Preparatory that is purely technical in nature that does not have an academic component that enables people to train to enter the workforce and if they want to get an Associate degree they need to take the academic component. He next addressed Job Preparatory - Post Secondary Adult Vocation which for years was addressed by the School District and the Community College until the Bill 1688 was passed when they were passed to the Community College. These are long-term vocational certificate programs, from one to two years in length, full time for a student. That is the PSAV that we talk about, the lOng-term certificate programs that were really the essence of the transition that took place a few years ago. He then addressed Continuing Workforce Education which accounts for short and very short-term training from a few hours to 30 or 40 hours in length, designed for currently- employed persons to upgrade their skills, and is a piece of a PSAV program. It used to 8 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynt?n Beach, Florida August31,2000 be called vocational supplemental and today it is called continuing workforce because the intent is to provide the opportunity for us to help the workforce continue, in the State'S definition. This is the kind of program where, for example, currently employe, d cosmetologists come in for 30 hours to get upgraded on the new techniques ~n cosmetology. We do not compete with the Community College, who are training cosmetologists, because we train cosmetologists who are currently licensed to upgrade their skills. That is how continuing workforce works. He then discussed adult basic education, which is the adult literacy component for reading levels 0 .to 8.9. Anyone who takes the State test for adult basic education and scores in that range can avail themselves of services that are funded by the State to help them improve their literacy. This is designed to help employability in the workforce. He spoke of the adult ESOL program, which is a language program designed to improve employability in the workforce, and focuses on communication skills for people whose language is other than English. It helps them understand the new cultural environment they are in and read, write and speak English so they can move into employment situations. We will be implementing in South Tech the very first program of its kind in Palm Beach County, the Vocational ESOL program. This program is focused around a technical training program in order to accelerate the language acquisition appropriate to entering the workforce. Under ESOL is the adult credit program, a huge program '~n some communities in Florida. In our County about 1/3 to 40% of our high school graduates every year have earned at least one adult credit. Maybe they got a D in a course and they want to go to night school in the adult program in order to raise the grade back to a B or C or they are transfer people from another state who do not have enough credits to graduate in Florida and these people use the adult credit program. Another purpose is to take an adult who has been in high school and is a few credits short of a high school diploma. They can go to the adult credit program, finish their high school and go back to their home high schools and get a diploma. The GED is a test of general educational development, which is a high school diploma that meets Federal standards, and also the State's standards for graduation. It mirrors the knowledge required for a high school graduate. He stated that community school was defined as the use of a school for the purpose of providing educational and community services. Community schools in the past were funded from the County's regular operating budget. Last year, because of budget crunches they are now funding this using Workforce Development dollars. The reason goes back to the definition of those programs. The State of Florida has applied performance standards to all the programs mentioned today. They need to perform in order to get a portion of their funding. He believed this model would be used in the future. Eighty-five percent of their money is given up front. The other 15% has to be earned through performance. How can you hire teachers with 85% of your budget? It has caused us to get very creative about the way we staff these programs. Because Community Schools were funded by workforce dollars and no longer operating dollars, 9 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August31,2000 Community Schools had to meet these performance benchmarks in order for them to have continued funding. If you don't earn the money you put the District in a debt spiral and if you continue to lose 15% every year, we would spiral right down to where there was no money. That was part of why the restructuring occurred. Community Schools are no longer the cost recovery schools they used to be. They are no longer schools where you can take basket weaving, and aerobics, but instead they have to focus on adult ESOL programs, adult basic programs, GED programs, and continuing workforce education programs, to "pay the piper" in order to get any money for programs. The last slide was to clarify adult education issues and who does what. He explained that South Tech continues to do Workforce Education, registering 30,000 or more adults this year in this program. They will be doing adult basic which is the adult literacy program. They will be doing adult ESOL and will have one on opening night this fall. They may not have an adult credit program for a couple of years until their students start to need that. GED is ongoing in the daytime and nighttime. The daytime program has a waiting list and the nighttime is just about full right now and we are looking towards expanding that program as we relocate it to the South Tech campus at least four nights a week. South Tech continues to do them in this County. All of the programs just mentioned are programs done at South Tech and North Tech for adults. As for the programs done at the Community College, obviously they do the A.A. and A.S. degrees but they now do the Job Preparatory (Post Secondary Adult Vocational) programs that were transitioned. They did these in the past but they did things we didn't do and we did things they didn't do and now they are responsible for all of them. On July 1, 2001 all of them will go there. They have an Applied Technology Diploma program and they also do Continuing Workforce Education. In addition to the 50,000 we do, there are a lot of people getting Continuing Workforce Education. It would be a nightmare if we asked the Community College to take on Continuing Workforce Education. It would double their enrollment. We need to continue to run and develop programs in the school district to serve our community in the best way we can. Ms. Farace asked for a recap on the definition of Continuing Workforce Education and Mr. Coup gave an example. He said, you just got a new job and that job requires that you learn Microsoft Excel and so both of us run Microsoft Excel as Continuing Workforce Education - there is that much demand. In order to meet the demand we do it through 23 community schools and Palm Beach Community College does it through six to eight sites. There you get up to 30 sites who literally have classes filled every night to get that shod-term training program to upgrade their skills for their jobs. Ms. Farace said, "So the training that the City had, we brought South Tech over to teach Microsoft Word" - that was continuing workforce education? Yes. Ms. Farace asked if a Chamber business had a need, if they could call South Tech and they would put together a program to take care of it? Mr. Coup responded yes and that the program cost was the same whether it was on-site or at the school, by agreement. City Manager Bressner stated that the roundtable had been very helpful to him in understanding the educational framework of the City he had come to manage. Someone asked what programs South Tech had lost to the Community College? Mr. Coup said the basic long-term adult post-secondary vocational certificate programs 10 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 that took more than a year to complete. If you are already trained but want some training on a new technology, South Tech handles it under Continuing Workforce. That is where the line is drawn. One is Job Prep - you're not employed, you are getting ready for a career - that is a long-term training program. Continuing workforce is where you are already employed but you need to upgrade your skills. That we both do because the demand is so great that no one entity could do it. 3) South Tech/PBCC Transition Issues (Programs and Facilities) Mr. John Schmiederer, Vice President Workforce Education Development, Palm Beach Community College, spoke of some issues surrounding the transitioning of programs to their school. Mr. Schmiederer stated that he knew there had been a lot of confusion in the community about the issue. He thought it went pretty well considering that in Palm Beach County 36 years ago, decisions were made by the administrative entities of the School District that there would be some break-outs in the technical training and the occupational training that y~)u would have at the certificate level or the non-college level. One was to go to the School District and the other part would remain at the College. 14 communities in the State of Florida did it the other way and had the Community College take over everything, so in 1964 when those decisions were made, half of the Community Colleges did what Palm Beach County did, half of them did everything. He gave as example Indian River Community College, which had been a technical center and vocational center since they started. When the change was made in 1998 when the two Boards met and a shift was made, the difficulty you have is that you have a community which for 34 years had pathways that they were used to using and they had certain institutions they were in the process of working with. For example, the City of Boynton :Beach has worked with South Tech for years. In the issue of moving the students over a couple of things had to happen. One, technical centers had to re-tool, looking at faculty and staff who were now going to be handling non-adults. The Community College had to change its infrastructure to bring in brand new programs. They both have facility issues. Actually Palm Beach County has a facility issue with education. The School District is getting 4,000 to 5,000 new students a year. No matter what happens with that you are going to have to have new facilities. The State is not necessarily generous with their funding for construction. We have now transitioned 66 to 70% of the programs over from K-12. Students are beginning to understand where to go. The two boards in 1998 made a decision that as the transition occurred we would try not to disrupt service to the students. We have agreed in certain areas that the technical centers will continue to finish those classes and Mr. Kidd mentioned that he has some adults that are still there. We had some adults that we picked up that the School District had not quite finished so we tded to make that transition as smooth as possible. No County in the State of Florida has ever done this. We had no blueprint. We are in the process of doing that transition. We have another 12 - 15 programs to go and the process that we've used has been as smooth as we could get it. We put together a transition team made of K-12 individuals, faculty, administrators, Palm Beach Community College individuals and advisory committees that have worked with these programs and we considered how best to make the shift. You also have to remember that we had to keep these programs coordinated. As Mr. 11 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Flodda August 31, 2000 Kidd mentioned they are going to run a cosmetology program. They are running it for high school students and we are running it for adults. When those high school students finish, they need to be able to transition into a Community College program and get some credit for that and a degree if they wish. So our programs have to mesh and I think we're working fairly well on that. The difficulty is communication, getting the word out, getting the information out. A lot of people felt that if you go to a Community College: you have to have a high school diploma. You do for some things but for some programs you do not. Those concepts out there haven't had time to change. Each year it gets better. We don't always know how many people are coming through and we have a dual enrollment issue to contend with. I think, overall, that the County has made great strides. I think it's important to realize the whole reason behind this was business and industry saying we needed more workers. The career academies of Mr. Kidd and Mr. Mergio etc. are putting out high school students who are able to enter the job market with a profitable, reasonably good career ahead of them without building a building. The Community College then is taking those adults. You had no room in the Tech Centers to do that. The whole point was to increase the production of workers. You can't do that with a 4% unemployment rate if you don't find new resources and the resources are high school students. With programs integrated and advisory groups common between us, we see this is working out. The residential construction program is a good example. When they finish that at South Tech for instance, they can come to us and take a Management A.S. degree program and learn to supervise and run their own business. There is a pathway there. Ms. Farace stated that there were a lot of issues surrounding the fire training academy. Mr. Schmiederer said that one issue was that there was a concern amongst the service providers that they would lose the opportunity to have the training. There were some concerns in Personnel about what was going to happen. There are still some concerns between Mr. Kidd and myself as to facilities. Mr. Kidd just told you how tight he is on his facilities and there are no other fire training facilities available yet. So, those issues are ones we are trying to deal with. We are looking at additional space on other sites to relieve the pressure that is being placed on South Tech with their enrollment in their academies. When we began this process, we tried to transition the programs that were least facility-dependent first and greatest facility dependent last. Sothe automotive and construction trades would be last. The first part was the computer stuff, the drafting stuff, the accounting stuff. That integrated right into our programs. But you can't take an English lab and turn it into an Automotive lab. Somewhere along the line when you look at your Workforce Development Board employment needs and you see they need 200 to 300 automotive technicians out there, we are turning out 50 to 75 a year in the K-12 system. When the Community College system gets to a place where it can turn them out it will do maybe 25 to 30 a year. We are not there at all. Somewhere we are going to have to build more facilities in this County. I think most of the issues with fire training have been solved. We have run four or five academies and I think that's coming along pretty well. The Chiefs have met with them and are pleased with what they are doing. They have endorsed a plan for expanding the facilities and are taking that to their Board to try to get the capital outlay for it. Ms. Farace asked Mr. Kidd about leasing space at South Tech. She asked if they were leasing the automotive labs? Mr. Schmiederer said that one of the things that 12 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August31,2000 had occurred was they have had a joint-use facility agreement between the School District and the Community College for years, where if we need to use a conference room or classroom we get them through dual enrollment. What we began to see last year was the fact that we were going to be running a full program in a space that the school district would need to run other programs. They were being hurt on the dollar end, they weren't generating what we call FTE. The two boards worked out an agreement where we are leasing space for the programs we need. At South Tech for example, we are leasing the fire facility area and we are leasing the portable where you have the fire sprinkler program and those particular facilities are being used. We are leasing an area for cosmetology at North Tech so we are running a dual enrollment high school program up there. The labs and facilities being used for the construction apprenticeship programs that we are running with the ABCI and AGC are being leased out. There is also a Roosevelt Service Center where we have a sheet metal welding program for apprenticeship that is being leased. They are yearly leases. Ms. Farace said this appeared to be causing duplication of facilities? Mr. Schmiederer said let us say we are going to run an automotive facility for adults. If you look at the number of automotive programs necessary to fill the need in Palm Beach County and the Community College and the high school programs are still not meeting the need, you can't run a full high school program and an adult program at the same time. The numbers that are available for those labs right now are maximum and if you are going to go and train more people you are going to need more lab space in Palm Beach County. Ms. Farace said that was another issue that the public does not understand. Mr. Kidd said that if the Community College and South Tech both had state-of-the-art facilities today, and they ran 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, they could not meet the training needs for southern Palm Beach County and northern Broward County (because they come up here recruiting our people all the time). Mr. Kidd stated that one must factor in something else when speaking to their legislators about the problem. He said that right now the economy was good and that vocational programs did not traditionally thrive when the economy was good but did when times were tough. This is because when times are poor people want to enhance their skills and get new skills because they are desperate for jobs. Mr. Schmiederer stated that it was important to realize that the two programs coordinate. There is a history in Palm Beach County for 33 years that the School District and the Community College have always worked together in looking at program needs. We always looked to see that we were not over-duplicating, that we weren't over-producing. We use the Development Board data, we use the Department of Labor data, we use our own advisory group's data, and I don't lose too many people. We are production funded. You have to have "X" number of placements and "completers' in order to get full dollar funding. You might also want to mention this to your legislators. If they continue to fund education in this way, in bad economic conditions they are going to go broke. As Mr. Kidd mentioned, in bad economic conditions, when they come to get training and you can't get them placed you won't get your extra 15%. I do not think there is any proof or data that will show that there is any facility that either of us needs that will cause 13 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August31,2000 duplication in such a way that we are going to be producing more people than the workforce needs. The data does not support that. A comment was made that the educational infrastructure did not have to supply 100% of those needs. Transient people who come into the County to take those jobs supply a portion of that. So if we needed 300 auto mechanics a year (the current demand), it would not be appropriate for the private and public school systems to produce that many mechanics because probably 100 of those jobs would be filled by transient people. Mr. Hazlett asked Dr. Cornell if he would be having any automotive training at the new high school? Dr. Cornell said they were in the process of designing the programs that would be in the school and they had not yet done a needs assessment. They are starting initially with programs being offered by Atlantic and Santa Luces High Schools to see what is at one, what is at both etc. We will offer a full range of programs and I hope to do a needs assessment and speak to the Chamber and to the City in much the same way as Mr. Kidd in terms of trying to meet some other program needs in the area. At this time we are still in the bricks and mortar stage. Mr. Schmiederer said it was important to realize that there was a difference between the career academy automotive programs, which put 1700 or 1800 hours in during a four- year period, and a secondary vocational high school program that has about 500 to 600 hours. It may be wiser as an institution to go to career academies. If there's not enough room in the career academies, it is possible to have some of those students dual enroll in Community College. At the end of a high school program they are still not going to be ready to earn a decent living and will have to go to some school whether it is continuing education at South Tech or to the Community College for post-secondary work. A participant said that the facility infrastructure is much different in a comprehensive high school than the facility infrastructure in a technical center. The technical center is really set up to address those technical programs such as the automotive program, licensed practical nurse, welding, air conditioning etc. They take 12-15,000 square foot lab facilities in order to carry on. In a comprehensive high school you have a bunch of smaller facilities. For example, our whole business education program for the most part in this county rests on the comprehensive high school. That's where we can deliver that instruction, probably right up to 800 or 900 hours of web page design. We can exit that from the high school very easily and we find it difficult to have enough classroom space to think about that. We have to worry about English, math and social studies. I think there is a logical place in both sets of institutions within our system of the technical center and the high school for vocational training. They are different and they are facility-dependent. We need to be very careful when we look at that to make sure we understand that vocational is being done in both sites, but there is a difference in what that is. Mr. Kidd said we would find in the future that the Community College and the School District, probably on a level of principals, are going to have to work closely together. They are going to have to think "outside the box", look at non-traditional ways of making these programs work. If we can do that, we can come nearer meeting needs than we can any other way. We have all been involved in the transition and Mr. Schmiederer would admit this that there have been a lot of hurt feelings, especially employees that 14 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August31,2000 were hurt through this thing. We are trying to work through those things and mend those hurt feelings and some headway is being made. We are working closer together. There is no vehicle in place to do some of these things that we have talked about. We are going to have to design and build a vehicle that will allow us to work more closely together. I think there is a spirit of cooperation there to do that. Commissioner Black asked Mr. Kidd about the possibility of getting sponsorship money or tutoring from places like Maroone Automotive? Mr. Kidd said they were doing some of those things and were expanding more all the time, but the most support had been on the corporate level. They had an Automotive Youth Educational Services program and this was put together by General Motors and they had probably received at least $300,000 of donated vehicles within the last six months. They were getting them as fast as they could pick them up. That helps some. Gaskets, brake pads, test equipment and those sorts of things help a lot too. We have had some avenues opened where some of those things have flowed into the school but we haven't been deluged with those. Commissioner Black said there were all those dollars there that they could commit to the school that could be pursued. Mr. Kidd said they were pursuing it but cars were a little easier than dollars. We have some pretty good leads for developing things next year. You work very hard to set this type of flow up, bringing donations in and if it is not maintained you lose it. The South Florida Auto and Truck Dealer's Association donated $25,000 about three years ago. The Industrial Cooperative Education program was mentioned, where students near the end of their schooling go out and work at places like Maroone. Ms. Diana Johnson asked the School Board what they thought about the situation going on with their academies? The business community and the residents are very concerned that we not sacrifice the wonderful programs we've had and we make sure that the quality of the education we are able to deliver stays on a good level. Ms. Montgomery said she thought that would be the ultimate education if we could walk across a stage and get a diploma and a career where you could go out that day and get a job and that's the way it happens a lot of times in our community. College is wonderful, but nobody ever puts in the paper the dropout rate. I am glad that we have finally gotten to the point where the vocational schools will be speaking to the needs of our students. We have to get the word out that college is not the ultimate. Ms. Gleason mentioned a family member who had gone to a cosmetology program in a high school, did not go to college, passed their Boards and began working after high school. Mr. Lynch said the Board was not unanimous about how things were. He said that it was very confusing. He thought the Community College had done a very good job in starting to take over the programs and getting geared up for it. In contrast he said that the School Board had done a very poor job and a lot of our employees were sitting around, not knowing if they had jobs or not and developing hurt feelings as a result. The purpose I was told for Bill 1688 was the School Board was going to concentrate on K-12. They were going to focus on the children and do a better job on educating children and, therefore, that was the reason to get out of the adult programs. It doesn't sound like we're out of the adult programs. I am even confused about it. I have learned some things tonight that bother me. I want to know why we have a vocational school that's doing automotive, then we have a career school and the community college is doing it. It still seems like there is too much duplication. Obviously if its not filling the need, there 15 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August31,2000 are things we need to address as far as doing it better but I still think our focus needs to be K-12 and we need to do that better before we do a lot of other programs and we are not there yet. Jody Gleason stated that how we got to the year 2000 doesn't matter but we have to make it work. There is a commitment to make sure we're providing that quality education for everyone. There is no easy answer for that. It will take a lot more on the planning side. The nineteen comprehensive high schools do offer vocational programs. The three academies all need an infusion of capital dollars. It is not in the five-year plan. The 5-year plan is really cast in stone for the year 2001. You are going to see very little change. The next two years are a little less cast in stone. For the most part, everything in the five-year plan has to happen. If there's anything added it is because there's a projection of additional dollars that are available. I don't see three new campuses being built in the five-year plan but there are planning dollars to make it happen. We don't want to piecemeal campuses together. When we build those campuses they will be first quality from day one. The planning has to be done up front. Mr. Lynch mentioned that now that the Cities and the County and the School District were agreeing on concurrency, the dollars were going to be much more cast in stone. We are saying there is a school there when the development is done and all the rest of it. So, in my opinion, if South Tech hasn't been planned and you are looking for some major changes, it is going to be very hard to get it done in the next five years. We are committing to the cities and the counties that we are going to be building $1.3M worth of schools to catch up for the last fifteen years. It is going to be a tough process. Ms. Gleason said the easy answer would be to say that we can work it into the plan but I don't think it's fair for us to sit here and say that is going to happen, from my perspective, because I don't see how we are going to be re-directing someone else's planned dollars. Ms. Johnson asked if Boynton Beach would be able to maintain a tech center? Is there any threat that we may not have South Tech? The Board said, not at this time. Ms. Gleason said we want to make it one of the best technical centers around, we just don't know when that will be. Ms. Gleason said that there was a comprehensive high school that needed to be replaced also and the kids were in sub-standard facilities and had been waiting for "their turn" for a very long time. Ms. Montgomery suggested that everyone stay on it and stay on the school board. Plans do change, she said. Other cities and other towns are getting changes made and she counseled everyone to be very active with their school boards and she had been on the board four years and the plan had been changed and could be changed. She thought the tech centers would be getting some renovations done, which is separate from building other facilities. Mr. Hazlett asked the Chamber President, Ms. Diana JohnsOn, if the City could get a block in the newsletter that is going out to some 31,000 homes and businesses in the Boynton Beach area to alert people relative to the needs of the tech centers? In fact, he said, can we entice the folks who aren't giving to do so? Ms. Johnson said they would 16 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 be happy to do that. They dedicate two or three columns every month to education now. She said the next issue was being planned for October and the deadline was September 14, 2000. Ms. Gleason said there were two elementary schools, Golf and Congress and the reliever for Citrus Cove and that the education specifications were on Wednesday's agenda, plus they were buying additional property on Hypoluxo across from Santa Luces. Congress Middle needs a lot of work. We aren't forgetting South Tech. 4) Other Educational Issues Magnet schools and the redrawing of boundaries and how it will affect Congress Middle School were the next topics under discussion by the participants. Chair nominee directed the topic to Mr. Ken Meltzer, Principal of Congress Middle School, saying she was not sure how the redrawing of the boundaries had affected his school and its magnet program and asked him to speak about this. She heard it would increase his enrollment from the boundary district and eliminate the space they had for the magnet program? Mr. Ken Meltzer, Principal of Congress Middle School, spoke, saying it was going to have a dramatic effect on Congress Middle School and the magnet program. He believed that the new boundaries would make the school much less diverse and would lose seats for the magnet program and erode their socioeconomic base. The School Board mentioned some preliminary plans concerning the newly opened Village Academy in Delray that would affect the boundary plan, asking that people call them to discuss the matter if they wished. Chair Nominee Tedtmann said, "How do we stay on top of where those boundaries are being drawn to make sure that those magnet programs have room at Congress Middle School? Ms. Gleason replied that they needed to make sure someone was at the boundary meetings. She suggested talking to the School Board staff individually to tell them about their concerns and what they wanted the School Board to take a look at. She said the existing boundaries were on line. She further recommended that everyone give their input at public meetings. It was mentioned that traditionally, the parents in the Boca Raton school districts were the most active in the boundary issues. The parents from Congress and Carver do not, typically, go out to boundary meetings. Mr. Hazlett commended Mr. Meltzer on his efforts at Congress Middle and expressed the Chamber's desire to help the school with some of their needs. He mentioned the Chamber was having a scholarship drive and were trying to get matching grants from companies. 17 Meeting Minutes Educational Issues Roundtable Boynton Beach, Florida August 31, 2000 The issue of busing was discussed. The group also discussed the magnet programs at length. Chair Nominee Tedtmann stated that what we can do is try to make sure that the boundaries have enough space for the magnets. The 50% cut in magnet school budgets was mentioned. Ms. Gleason said that the budget cut did have to happen but they would not cut across the board. Some schools would not be cut at all and other programs had a lot of money spent on them that were unsuccessful. She said that when you put $3 or 4 Million into a school and you don't see any difference at all, then it would be prudent to look for a better way to use that money. Ms. Montgomery stated that the magnet programs had not been evaluated. She said she had asked for this evaluation on several occasions. Are the magnet, programs successful and are they contributing to the achievement of students? We have a magnet program in a D school that is still a D school. Ms. Montgomery offered to assist anyone who called her who wanted to discuss any concerns pertaining to school board issues. Chair Nominee Tedtmann thanked everyone for coming to the meeting and sharing their ideas and thoughts. She stated that there had been a great exchange of ideas. She announced that the Board members would be staying after the roundtable discussion for a short meeting. The meeting ended at 8:30 p.m. The Board members did not reconvene for the planned meeting. Respectfully submitted, Susan Collins Recording Secretary (3 tapes) 18