Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / Campaign 2024 - Leon County Schools Superintendent of Education Candidate Joe Burgess

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Campaign 2024 - Leon County Schools Superintendent of Education Candidate Joe Burgess · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  Mister Joe Burgess has been the long time principal at Chiles High School in northeast
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  Leon County. He has chosen to run for the office of Superintendent of Education
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  for the Leon County School District, and he and I sat down for what
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  proved to be a very lengthy chat. So gather yourself something to snack on,
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  and settle in for a while. All right, Joe, welcome,
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  How are Yeah? How good? Thank you sir for having me. Absolutely
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  Now, this is as relaxed a format as can be. Yeah, we're
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  just going to talk. So for those that might not know the snapshot,
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  you're running for superintendent of education, your principal at a local high school.
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  Yes, how's that working? People probably say I'm a little crazy, but
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  so my current job, I'm the principal of Chiles High School. And how
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  long have you been there? I've been there at twelve years fourteen overall.
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  I was there two years as an assistant principal as well. And actually it's
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  my third school that I've run. So I've actually wanted a few who have
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  been a principal at an elementary school, a middle school, and a high
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  school. Okay, so the element which is the easiest of the I know
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  that none of them is easy, right. I know being a principal is
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  not ever going to be easy. But of the three stages, what's the
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  easiest. Probably elementary, That's what my bet was gonna be. But I
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  will say so if I was saying it like as a teacher, the hardest
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  one is middle school. And that is because and anybody who out there who
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  has a kid who's in middle school, I pray for you every day because
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  you remember that the middle schoolers are up and down. They love you one
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  day, hate you the next. They've got actne one day there's somebody who
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  they looked at. They can't even think right. You're you're battling with them
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  about their hygiene. They're allergic to deodorant, trying to give them to brusht
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  their teeth. You know, high school is very different just because the complexity
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  of the now. I will say the most intense thing you could face on
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  a principal level is a missing kid off a bus in elementary because that mother
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  there's a look that she's going to give through you, and if you don't
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  have an answer with transportation, she will also hurt you. So I will
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  tell you just for those first couple of days, that was probably the most
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  nerve racking time was that if that kid didn't show up, we are hustling
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  going around trying to find where that kid is and so we can get them
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  home. Because nothing like a mad mama in elementary school. And it should
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  be. I mean, that's their babies and children. Yes, and so
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  even though you know, you can make the statement why I'm not in charge
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  of transportation, right, so as a principal, translation has their own department,
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  but they're my partner. They were the Elsie is tag and so if
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  they don't get that kid delivered home, I'm in the boat with them,
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  you know. And so it's like, hey, we got to come up
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  with an answer. So, you know, but all three are wonderful.
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  I mean, you know what I tell others that have become elementary principles,
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  be ready to be like a local celebrity. Like if you are in the
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  mall, in the family sees you, the entire family's going to stop and
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  take a picture with you. Right. It's that way when you're in middle
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  school. It's kind of like, man, it's almost like being on a
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  sitcom show, you know, I mean middle schoolers between six and through eighth
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  grade go through some serious changes. Right. You can have kids who look
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  in kindergarten, you can have kids who look grown, all on the same
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  campus, you know, high school. Like I said, it's about the
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  complexities, right. You got ninth graders who can't drive, and you got
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  seniors who may have been driving for three years. And you know they grow
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  a better beard than I do. And there are there are funny issues,
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  but there are very serious issues all at the same time. And so you
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  have to know how to manage such a large staff, such a large school.
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  Also, how can you be responsive to such a large community. How
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  has social media changed the dynamics for schools? Oh my gosh, so on
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  different levels, right, So on one level, let's just start with the
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  kids. So it used to be when I was in school, the worst
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  you would have would be used to have the paper that people would have.
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  You would fold it in and out and you might have something written on there,
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  something terrible about someone, or you had a slam book, remember you
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  remember those. I don't know. So it's like a notebook and you could
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  put somebody's name in there, and you could put different parts and it would
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  say like a noun a verb that was like in the eighties, right,
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  And so what's different now is social media. They have so much at their
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  fingertips and it almost you know how our grandparents, I know, would talk
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  to a lot of kids about don't be so vain. Social media allows you
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  to really be vain because you can post your picture a thousand times. You
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  can if you really want to destroy someone, you really can't because your reach
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  is so fast. If you know, it used to be radio used to
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  be one of the only ways you could reach a lot of people at one
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  time. But even and then you had to be very careful the way you
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  did it. Social media there's like no restrictions, right because you can be
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  anonymous, yes, yes, and so you can go get the fake accounts.
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  Now they've got AI, right, so you got all these things.
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  And so you know, one of the things that I worry about, not
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  only as a prince, as a parent somebody running for superintendent is like,
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  we've got to coach up our parents to be more conscious about what their kids
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  are doing on social media, even if they don't individually like it. You
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  know, what I would equate it to is back in the day, you
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  wouldn't let your kid, even if they could drive, You wouldn't let them
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  get in a car and drive all the way to San Antonio, Texas.
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  Why because there could be bad people there. I know no one there.
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  Social media puts you in the same perspective. It will put you in San
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  Antonio without you physically having to be there, and it will put you in
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  touch with people who have bad intentions about you. Right, everything from you
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  know, we've talked about the human trafficking, right, I mean, thankfully
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  the state they are all well in tuned about that. We have to be
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  watching our kids. Who are they connected with. You know, it used
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  to be a time that, oh that was at home. We didn't intervene.
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  No, we need we need an intervene. We need to talk about
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  we need to make sure that we're staying in tune with our kids. Joe,
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  Orange County, which from a political spectrum perspective would be looked at as
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  a very liberal school district. They have gone very successfully. I might add
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  to a program where they do not allow cell phones out at all. If
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  a student has a cell phone with them, that's fine. It's there for
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  emergencies, but if they need to use it, they have to go to
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  the office. Like the old days when you had to go to the office
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  to make a call to mom or dad. They have to go to the
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  office and make the call. Other than that, it's not out at lunchtime.
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  It's not out at pe it's not out in between classes. It's not
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  out at all. It's a violation. It's working. They're talking about how
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  students are engaging with each other in the lunch room. They're no more stage
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  fights. To put it on YouTube or TikTok or whatever, would you favor
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  such a thing. So there are parts of that that I really like.
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  I think that is something that we probably need to discuss with our parents.
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  Right there are I absolutely see the pluses of it. So as a former
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  classroom teacher, right you know, you can't have phones out and think that,
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  oh, kids are going to be distracted. I mean, first of
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  all, that happens with adults. You put a bunch of adults in the
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  room, you got phones out, they are distracted. So I do believe
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  that yes, phones should be up. I would prefer not to have them
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  out and about not to be used, but I would like to have that
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  dialogue with the parents as far as what they were comfortable with. And the
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  reason that I say that is you would need to work out some structures.
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  For example, if a kid is in a foster home, if they're in
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  certain kind of situations maybe where they need part of their plans to have release,
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  have somebody to call. Now, just like you gave the example,
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  I guess they worked that where they have a release to go to the office
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  or go to a counselor and talk to someone. And that's the kind of
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  thing that you would have to have in place, you know, just making
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  sure because there are those circumstances that you would need to have in place to
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  make sure we weren't in a sense by the rule that we've made harmed this
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  group of kids, you know who would need that. But I think I
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  mean you and I went to school without them, yes, and we got
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  along just fine, right saying, and they can't. And I will say
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  this, and that was one of the things that the pandemic made difficults that
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  people weren't talking to each other. And it's worse on the kids. Right.
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  You see kids, if you go to the mall, you'll see kids
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  in a group looking down at their phones and not connecting with one another.
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  You watch a team go on a trip on the bus, what's the first
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  thing they do? They sit down, They start looking at their phones literally
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  sending a message to the person who's two seats away. Right, we know,
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  just open your voice up and say hey, how's it going, or
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  you know, you go through your conversation. I think there are skills that
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  our kids are not picking up because they're not having that connection. They don't
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  know how to tackfully work their way out of an issue. Right. You
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  know, when you go work for an employee, there may be something that
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  you need to say to get some kind of change as an employee, But
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  if you're not practicing it, how can you execute it when you're just thrust
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  into it. So is that an issue where you would, for example,
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  talk to the superintendent at Orange County Schools and say, tell me about what
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  you're doing and how it's working, or what do you do to form an
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  opinion on whether this is a good idea or not? Well, thanks for
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  that question. You absolutely should. First of all, any district leaders more
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  than one should always be reaching out to others. It should be a two
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  way conversation because there could be things that get from Leon County that they may
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  want to emulate in Orange County. You also want to have like your community
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  conversations where you're going out and you're talking to the people. So something that
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  I do every week I do a Facebook live right now. I don't have
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  all the beautiful equipment that you have in here, but it's basically my phone
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  and me talking to the people who are following my page. And I don't
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  duck the issues like we talk about it. It's important that people and they
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  also need to hear how you think out of process, but they also need
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  to know that they can send things to you. Because here's the thing I
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  serve the public and the current job they have and the job that I'm asking
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  for. I serve the public. So if they can't speak to me,
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  if I'm not approachable, if they don't even know how to think, it's
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  almost like how can they feel that they have a part to play in it?
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  And to me, you definitely need to go out. You need to
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  talk to parents, You need to have you know, of course you're hearing
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  from the board members. You also need to talk to the other school principles
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  because you need to make sure you've got great rules laid down that they can
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  follow. Just like from being an old classroom teacher, I always say this
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  kind of mantra, don't make a rule that you can't enforce, right.
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  I used to say that in my classroom because they would say, oh,
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  you only got a couple of rules up. Those are the ones I know
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  I can enforce. You know, you go in the room, they got
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  ten rules up. All you're gonna do is you gonna see referrals coming from
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  that room. Right, few rules and it makes it easy on the kids.
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  You know, when we talking about midle school and I say, continue
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  to pray for those teachers. The more rules you have in place, it's
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  hard for them to keep up and they feel like it's always a gotcha.
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  But you need to make sure that everybody knows the process. If a kid
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  violists. You know, this is not thing that we're trying to sing you
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  home. But it's like that we protect the instructional environment. Right, It's
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  like church, like we don't mess around here. This is too important.
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  You've got other time that you can get on your phones and all that.
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  But I would welcome having a community conversation about that and how how to get
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  the rules laid out. Let's back into the decision, because I mean,
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  in the chain of command, you're a principal and you're running to replace your
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  boss. Yes, that can't be an easy decision to make. I mean,
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  right, look, it just is what it is. But every candidate
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  that I talked to, and I've talked to a few over twenty three years
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  here by running, your implying I can do the job differently and to a
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  certain extent better. What is it that drew you to make this decision?
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  Because I don't care what the post is. Running for office is not for
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  the faint of heart, that is correct. So what pushed you? What
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  nudged you? What was the thing that said, okay, I'm going to
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  get involved. So let me back up this. As far as running for
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  office for superintendent and it could have been appointed, it is something that I
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  wanted to do. So I have studied since I was twenty two to be
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  an educational leader. Right, So the first way I was an educational leader
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  was as a coach and as a teacher. But this was part of the
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  journey that I wanted to have. Now, okay, but I also wanted
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  to make sure that I fully invested myself in every position that I had.
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  And I tell folks that even when I first became Prince Wellst. Springwood,
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  I didn't have for the job. Mister Pond's actually moved me to elementary.
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  I'm a secondary person by nature, you know. When he sent me there,
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  like I had to go home and I had to like I really had
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  to get myself together. And people was like, you were afraid to go
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  to elementary school. I didn't know anything about elementary school, to be honest
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  with you, and so I had to humble myself. But it was the
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  best train I ever had, because now I saw a glimpse of the school
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  district that I didn't know before. You know, I overtime, you know,
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  like even with my family, I said, you know, one day
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  I would like to do it, but I know what I have to do.
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  I have to do my jobs that I have in front of me well.
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  And if I do those, the opportunity may present itself down the road
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  and so and as far as getting to the point of making the decision,
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  now, I'll be honest with you. And now, back in twenty nineteen,
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  our superintendent and I had a conversation about this, and I'm here to
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  put it on the record. He actually wanted me to come out and replace
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  dot Allan Cox because he wasn't sure when he was going to retire. If
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  you know doctor Cox, I mean he's got he's got other investments. He
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  I know, he worked for a little bit outside the state of Florida,
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  but he wasn't sure when he was going to retire, and so he felt
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  like I had the experience to come out and do his position. And I
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  said no. I said, if you just asked my preference, my preference
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  would be I stay out of school until I would like to run for office.
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  And he because he also asked that, he says, you know,
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  do you see yourself as a future superintendent? I said, I would like
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  to think, but I'm going to continue doing this job. Like I'm never
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  going to take my eyes off my current job while I'm still running, right,
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  because I owe it to that community who I've been serving, who have
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  entrusted me with their kids for this time, so I owe them that.
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  And like, for example, I don't post anything until after I'm off work
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  because I don't do anything like that. You can send me a million messas
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  I'm not responding until I get off work, you know, because to me,
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  that's to me is that's my own ethics that you know, you don't
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  do that. But you know, he asked, he said, you know,
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  do you want to go out? That said I don't. I said,
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  I'd rather I'd rather stay inside of schools, you know. And then
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  when I'm ready, I said, you know, I'll run for office.
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  I say, you know, and I see that, you know not because
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  he was asked me if part of it. He was asking me when I
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  was I was going to run twenty twenty, like had people come to me?
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  And I said no, I said maybe twenty four, you know.
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  But and also I was a couple of years married. You know, my
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  family had moved here to Tallahassee, and so that wasn't right. But I
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  will tell you I know where I was feeling, and I know where my
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  family and a number of my friends and supporters were. You know, I
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  was ready to make that lead, but you know, you have to assessing
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  the district. I just feel like we're not out of place where we should
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  be. So exactly so we are. You know, we have a unique
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  thing here in Tallahassee. We have Florida State, we got FAMU, we
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  got TCC. Okay, you're gonna be hard pressed to find other places around
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  the state that have that kind of of educational talent in one place. So
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  we were built, we have an infrastructure here that we should be top ten.
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  I know when I came in as a teacher under yes, yes,
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  sir, when you say top ten defined top okay, yes, top ten
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  districts in the state of Florida. So there's sixty seven districts in the state
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  of Florida, and so routinely if you go back, you know, ten
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  years, and then you go for the previous twenty years before that, we
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  were consistently pretty much a top ten district which means what which means which means
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  out of the sixty seven districts, we ranked somewhere between one through ten most
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  years each. What's the metrics, So the metric would be your student performance
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  data, okay, right, So graduation rate, graduation rate, So when
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  you do a school grad is on school ranking. There's a number of metrics
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  they look at, so everything from how you perform on English language, arts,
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  math, science, graduation rate, right, and so now they do
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  it with the fast Right, we've had FSA, they've had all kinds of
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  different actions of your wife's teacher. She's been through all that, right,
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  and so you know, so all those metrics right, and we were I
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  mean really people came to us in Leon County right where you know, you
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  use those words we're a diverse community, right. We have transplants, people
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  who move in, right, people come from college, they stay. And
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  so the fact that we were successful places like Bay County, Gainesville, they
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  came to us and say, hey, what are you doing you know,
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  to be so successful, But we were also going out to them, you
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  know, I will say over the last eight years, one of the things
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  is, first of all, we haven't been top ten. We've actually been
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  under twenty, below twenty. Our conversations with other districts, we don't have
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  that anymore. I mean, I can tell you what. I used to
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  be the secondary schools principal. So there's an association called Florida Association Secondary School
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  Principals. I was actually the president of that, and you actually have to
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  run for that, you have to be elected, right, and that means
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  we go to associations. I love going to associations and going to network because
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  I'm humble enough to know I don't have all the ideas. You're looking for
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  best practice. You're looking for best practices. I can tell you I went
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  to a national conference. So we have a program called the Ambassadors, right,
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  which are our upper classroom students. And they do two things. One
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  they go into the homeroom of our freshman and sophomores. One to welcome in
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  the campus. They've got an upper classroom, they've got a relationship with.
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  They give them the numbers, you know, all their accounts, you know,
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  so they can reach out to them. Because you need a peer because
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  sometimes even before coming to adult, you may go to another peer. And
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  these are peers we trust. We vet them before they go into these classrooms.
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  The second thing they do is they give campus tours. I could give
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  a campus tour as the principal. They're not gonna talk to me every day,
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  you know. And I'm the guy that can get in trouble with so
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  that that could be a little nerve racking. But a fellow student, a
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  fellow peer who may just be a year or two older, who knows the
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  campus, knows the layout, how do you approach teachers? So we do
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  that program. But I got that program from going to a national conference.
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  And listening to a rural school from Missouri and my mom's Missouri's. That's a
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  little plug out to my mom. She's passed. But this school in rural
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  Missouri had a program where they were doing this, and I was. I
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  was in there and listen to college recruiting where you're showing the possible recruit or
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  how things work on camp. Thinks about it like this. You know you're
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  a football guy. I mean, Nick Saban goes to camps. Even as
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  accomplished as he is, he's humble enough to say there are times when there
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  are things catching up with him and he was going to learn about those,
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  right. He installed different offenses, He adjusted his defenses as times changed.
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  You have to do that as an educational leader. If you do the same
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  thing, time will pass you by, right, And so when you go
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  to the conference. So I actually was sitting in there with this group from
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  Missouria's you know, small school, and they said, well, where are
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  you from. One of their team members looked my school up, right,
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  they looked up Childs. She said, why are you even talking to us?
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  I said, man, Ideas come from everywhere, But I was so
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  interested what they came up with, not I adjusted it. I didn't do
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  the same thing. I to the idea to fit a two thousand person school.
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  You know, they had a school of four fifty. But I said,
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  this is a great concept. It's scalable, yes, and I think
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  that's what you should do as a leader, Like when I was an elementary
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  principal. So I went into the school Springwood, and the school didn't look
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  like it did twenty five years ago. Right, this is a you know
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  mindset. You know your families involved with sports, they know mindset is a
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  huge thing, right, you know. And when you tell people I think
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  this place can be an A, people look at you crazy, They go,
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  what are you talking about? Said, we can be an A.
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  We have to just do things different. We have to act different, we
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  have to approach our kids differently. And so like one of the things is
• 20:41
  they many of the staff members said, well, the demographics have changed,
• 20:48
  right, and that can be all kind of cold words there, but the
• 20:49
  demographics have changed. It's just me kids were different on on an initial level.
• 20:56
  Kids weren't as affluent. Okay, so they don't come in with as
• 20:59
  many resources. Okay. I said, well, tell me, is there
• 21:03
  anything constant from twenty five years ago untill now, and he would sit there
• 21:07
  and they said, well me, I said, right, if everything else
• 21:11
  has changed around you and you are just you as you were twenty five years
• 21:15
  ago, hold that mirror up and tell me you see what the issue is.
• 21:19
  That doesn't make you a bad person, means you need to adjust.
• 21:22
  Right, I'll give you a little story. So we had a young man
• 21:27
  his parents had had his lights cut off, and this is why I was
• 21:30
  at spring Wood and wash. It was terrible, you know, like the
• 21:33
  kid was upset. He was like, I couldn't do my homework. And
• 21:36
  so what I told this one teacher, I said, well, give him
• 21:38
  a hug, right, hug them, give them a chance to do their
• 21:41
  homework here at school. You know, I said, if it happens again,
• 21:45
  though, you need to help them. They said, what do you
• 21:48
  mean help them? Like you want me to give them money? So No,
• 21:51
  what I want you to do is I want you to help them.
• 21:52
  And I said, one of the things you got to realize is that that
• 21:56
  young man is probably going to have some tough circumstances as he becomes an adult.
• 22:02
  So we got to help him become someone who can think like solve problems.
• 22:07
  Right, So if the lights get cut off again, does he have
• 22:11
  a way to still do his homework, Because that's because that's going to come
• 22:15
  back up. If the lights mean cut off one time, there's a good
• 22:17
  chance it's going to happen again. And eventually, like with the teacher,
• 22:21
  I got her to understand, say, oh, you know what, I
• 22:22
  can get him to go to the neighbor's house, right, or go to
• 22:25
  the library. You know, like you have to come up with solutions sometimes
• 22:29
  even outside your parents, Like you have to come up with solutions. But
• 22:33
  I said, the point is is that we've invested in that kid, and
• 22:36
  if that kid makes it as successful adult, they're going to be one of
• 22:37
  your most successful adults. Matter of fact, they're the kid that when the
• 22:41
  recession comes along, they don't fret, they handle it, they adjust,
• 22:45
  right, because I've already seen tougher as a kid, right, you know.
• 22:49
  So what I was doing was saying, like, the kids that we
• 22:52
  have with us can be successful. They just have to be successful differently.
• 22:55
  And we also have to understand that they got different circumstances. I had kids
• 22:59
  that had never been to the beach, were forty five minutes to the nearest
• 23:03
  beach. They had never been to the beach, and so a lot of
• 23:04
  times they had trouble with word association, you know, vocabulary, And so
• 23:10
  we did trips to build up the vocabulary. You have to increase the experiences.
• 23:15
  They weren't going to get that at home, right. You know,
• 23:17
  if you're at a more affluent school, parents take trips during the summer where
• 23:21
  their vocabulary is being built from the time that they are two or three years
• 23:25
  old, where these other kids are not having those opportunities. So the school
• 23:27
  in a sense, you have to fill in the gaps, right, and
• 23:30
  you can't be afraid of that. And so once we got everybody's mindset change,
• 23:36
  and you know, I do other things like I cook for my staff,
• 23:37
  right. I actually, until a few years ago, I cooked for
• 23:41
  the district staff because they didn't have a camaraderie, you know, like it
• 23:45
  was just hard for them out there. Like fellowship brings people together. It
• 23:49
  lets you not sulking. Oh my god, I got the toughest circumstance,
• 23:55
  right. It actually says I'm going to keep working to make things better for
• 23:59
  these is. I'm gonna do this lesson differently so the kids get it.
• 24:02
  Right. I always talk about lessons should relate to the kids sitting in front
• 24:06
  of you. If I got a bunch of kids from the country, I
• 24:07
  don't talk about the city. If I got a bunch of kids from the
• 24:08
  city, I'm not talking about the country. Not saying you don't eventually talk
• 24:11
  about that, but you put the lesson in terms that they relate so they
• 24:15
  can learn it. You know, that's my job as a teacher. Like,
• 24:19
  it's not me sitting in the seat, it's the person sitting in the
• 24:22
  seat, right. You know, tell me, Joe, did there was
• 24:27
  some animals between you and the superintendent over an issue involving your leadership at Child's
• 24:33
  High School? Did that factor in this at all? Nope? No,
• 24:37
  And I want you want to go go through it. I want to.
• 24:40
  I want to give you the opportunity to give the cliff notes version of what
• 24:42
  that was about. Okay. So basically, we have employees that we're allowed
• 24:51
  to do is to give them additional assignments. Okay, you have to,
• 24:55
  and this especially during our hybrid COVID times where you give different assignments everything from
• 25:00
  credit retrieval to maintenance of the campus. I mean, like it's you know
• 25:06
  it's teaching any way to earn an extra buck. Well, no, I
• 25:10
  mean you actually have to have something to do. I can't just have them
• 25:11
  sitting there. I mean, like, you know, we've got jobs,
• 25:14
  and we got things that we put you know, we need done. And
• 25:17
  so it is to help maintain the campus. And that means first of all,
• 25:22
  the education of the students. Right, So that's why I brought up
• 25:23
  the credit retrieval. I mean, you got and so what they then said,
• 25:29
  first of all, right, it's they is in the district along with
• 25:32
  the superintendent, right, so I'm just kind of looping them all together.
• 25:34
  They said that I had misused AP funds. Now I will tell you if
• 25:40
  you go read the court finance, I absolutely did not. So then they
• 25:41
  had to change. They found they looked for something else, right, and
• 25:45
  it changed a couple timescause they said I misupproted AP funds. But actually,
• 25:48
  if you look at it, the district misappropriated AP funds. In the state
• 25:53
  statue, it says that the schools a supposed to get eighty percent of the
• 25:56
  funds that they generate from AP test right, college board, I can tell
• 26:03
  you in all my time, and it aim goes back when Mster Palm's was
• 26:04
  in the office. I've never received eighty percent of the funds that we've generated.
• 26:10
  I know what the number is. We've never received eighty percent, and
• 26:11
  that's in state statue, okay. And that's why they end up they actually
• 26:15
  dropped that part, and they had a couple other things and they dropped those
• 26:19
  Eventually. What they landed on was that everybody didn't sign their timesheets for excuse
• 26:26
  me, for hourly positions at you know that they were assigned to. I
• 26:33
  will just tell you I had evidence that nobody at every school ever did that
• 26:37
  ever, you know. And so I will tell you. We were in
• 26:41
  the office that first day. He was, he and assistant Superintendent mccowster with
• 26:48
  me, and he said I had legally used AP funds until I dropped a
• 26:52
  note on him that that's not it. Now. After that they went and
• 26:56
  got an attorney to come do an investigation with me. I was at home
• 27:02
  for four days, I mean four weeks in a day, you could even.
• 27:04
  I still have emails where they up until they had decided what they were
• 27:10
  going to do. What they ended up saying it was, you know,
• 27:14
  I didn't keep track of the time sheets, you know, and listen,
• 27:18
  I'm not gonna sit here and say I'm perfect. You know, there's a
• 27:22
  lot of logistics and paperwork, but the one thing that they proved in court
• 27:26
  is that the time that people got paid for, they more than did the
• 27:30
  work. And matter of fact, even the judge said he didn't find me
• 27:34
  to be somebody who told a lie or just made stuff up. Matter of
• 27:37
  fact, most of the evidence that you found in there was stuff I printed
• 27:41
  out when it first happened, because I said, you approved these things.
• 27:44
  I sent them to you. I don't have anything to hide, which is
• 27:47
  why even every time when it came up, I had a statement ready to
• 27:49
  go, because like I just felt like you were trying to slammer my name.
• 27:55
  And the reason I say that is that the first that first day when
• 27:57
  we're having this conversation, it was very tense. One he said I was
• 28:03
  wrong, like I'm illegally doing stuff and that I'm moving you to an elementary
• 28:10
  school, and I said, you absolutely are not. I'm not going,
• 28:15
  and you're not going to discredit my name. Like I've worked too hard.
• 28:18
  You know, I can tell you this. I've been at three schools,
• 28:22
  worked with a lot of employees. It's forty five hundred employees in Leon County.
• 28:26
  You would be hard pressed to find somebody to say, who I mistreated
• 28:29
  them? I just make it. I don't. I really don't like that.
• 28:33
  That's not the way I was raised. And I'm a rule follower,
• 28:37
  you know, I follow rules. So even to this day, we don't
• 28:40
  have a policy on any of that. Like they said they were going to
• 28:42
  make a possible, they haven't made a policy. You know, there's not
• 28:45
  you know, and actually what the judge ruled on was not a policy.
• 28:49
  It was actually a procedure. Well the procedure wasn't followed, right, So
• 28:55
  so for some time sheets that you said, I, you know, I
• 28:56
  should have kept up with all of them, you know, for hundreds employees,
• 29:00
  thousands of kids and all the other things going on that I should get
• 29:03
  two weeks compared to all the other things that I know that have occurred,
• 29:08
  I should get two weeks. And so, you know, it was just
• 29:12
  really disappointing. I feel singled out. Oh gosh, yes, why because
• 29:18
  not saying why did you feel that way? But what's the basis of you
• 29:23
  were singled out? Because it doesn't make sense compared to others. So like,
• 29:29
  if you're a parent at school, right, if your kid got into
• 29:32
  a fight and I gave your kid ten days and another kid got in a
• 29:36
  fight they only got three days, would you think something was different? Okay,
• 29:40
  So that's the basic premise, right when you look at the level of
• 29:44
  things, and trust me, you know, I'm one of those that they
• 29:48
  knew I was a knucklebar to deal with, which is why they had to
• 29:49
  go out and get a private attorney, right, because I did. I
• 29:53
  pulled up every administrator, five reprimand you know, whatever trouble that was out
• 30:00
  there, and it was some pretty serious stuff. No one and I mean
• 30:03
  no one had more than three days like suspend it. And there was others
• 30:08
  who did. They just got a coaching memot, you know, And so
• 30:12
  it just didn't make sense. I know from that first day when we had
• 30:15
  talked, he didn't talk to me as a principal. He talked to me
• 30:18
  as somebody who is potentially an opponent. Right, because when you say to
• 30:23
  me, this is going to be in the papers, this is going to
• 30:26
  be in the papers. Do you think this goes back to the conversation where
• 30:29
  you announced that you were going to at some point run for superintendent. Then
• 30:33
  sure, okay, he knew, and he can he can deny he didn't,
• 30:36
  but I'll give you another true story, and you feel free to talk
• 30:40
  to principals who are at the meeting. So in twenty nineteen, right,
• 30:44
  so this is this is before COVID. This is like, you know,
• 30:47
  he we had a principal's meeting, and usually it's our Christmas principal meeting and
• 30:51
  we have our formal principals come back, and at this meeting, the superintendent
• 30:56
  announced that he was running for reelection. Okay, He turns to me and
• 31:02
  he says, you know, I feel like I've got some things left to
• 31:06
  do. I'm gonna run for super tender. Now, I'll just tell you,
• 31:07
  on the surface, that's totally inappropriate. You should never be mentioning politics
• 31:11
  at a business meeting with the taxpayers. But all right, so let's set
• 31:15
  that aside. He turns to me and he says, well, Joe,
• 31:22
  you and Scotty and Scotty would be Scotty Crow, who's the principal at gil
• 31:26
  Chris former sistant superintendent Scott. He says, now, Joe, you and
• 31:30
  Scotty, y'all wait to turn. If y'all let me get through this next
• 31:36
  term, y'all can run next time. And this is in twenty nineteen.
• 31:41
  Now, I will just tell you I kept a straight face because I know
• 31:45
  how to do that, right. It was a very uncomfortable air in the
• 31:49
  room because I just felt like that was totally inappropriate. That is something if
• 31:53
  you want to discussed that with me, you could have discussed that with me
• 31:56
  privately. Now, I still really wouldn't wanted to have done that because I
• 31:59
  just didn't think it really was that appropriate. I mean, to me,
• 32:02
  you have every right to make you know, to run for reelection, that's
• 32:06
  that's the right you have. But to do it in such a public form
• 32:09
  like that, you know, like waiting to turn, like I'm not here
• 32:13
  to go after you, you know what I mean. Like, but I
• 32:16
  can tell you this. I had a bunch of people who reached out to
• 32:19
  him and said, are you okay? Do you feel like you know targeted
• 32:22
  or And I said, I don't know. Like what I'm gonna do is
• 32:27
  I'm gonna go back to work. I'm gonna do my job. I'm gonna
• 32:29
  be dedicated to my kids, my staff, my parents, the community,
• 32:34
  That's that's what I'm gonna Scottie talk about it. Oh yeah, I mean
• 32:37
  did he walk away without putting words in his mouth, but generally did he
• 32:42
  walk away with the same kind of feeling you did? Yeah? It was
• 32:44
  uneasy. Okay, you know, I you know, I'll just say this.
• 32:47
  Probably he probably processes differently, but I and I can just tell you
• 32:54
  in Scotty's case, he wasn't interested after watching it up close, you know,
• 32:59
  he he was out there with mister Ponds. He really had no desires.
• 33:02
  You know. The desires are really on my side of our friendship.
• 33:06
  I mean, because he and our friends and I mean, and I don't
• 33:10
  want to say I'm speaking for him, I can just least say on the
• 33:13
  surface, it was just uneasy to hear that. I mean, it was
• 33:16
  just totally inappropriate. Besides the following metrics, and just an aspirational desire that
• 33:28
  you've always held to serve as as superintendent. In other words, in your
• 33:32
  mind at this stage of your career, it's the next logical step. What
• 33:37
  are the other issues that you think are most important that are fueling your decision
• 33:44
  to make this run for superintendent. So, I mean, if you look
• 33:47
  at course I was talking about the thistion, but just the academic performance of
• 33:52
  all of our schools. Sure, So one of the things that we You
• 33:54
  know, when a new family moves to Tallahassee, you want them to be
• 33:59
  able to say, say, no, matter where you buy a house,
• 34:02
  you should be able to count on the school that you have in your local
• 34:06
  community. Right. But I will tell you this, when a family buys
• 34:09
  a house, there's two things that they look at pretty quickly. If you
• 34:13
  talk to most people who bought a house, look at the crime rate and
• 34:16
  what's the local schools? Yep, you can best believe those two things on
• 34:20
  there, right. I mean I even tell my staff the way we perform,
• 34:24
  the local residents are counting on us because we're helping them out in a
• 34:30
  sense. Right, we drive their home prices. Right, this becomes a
• 34:32
  more attractive place to be, and so then they become invested how we perform,
• 34:37
  making sure we're communicating with them. So you've got, you know,
• 34:40
  the academic performers that I want everywhere I want. You know, you can
• 34:45
  have little pockets, but you know I want all sides of town. I
• 34:47
  mean, if you just have conversations with folks they'll say certain sides of town.
• 34:52
  Hey, you know, people usually like those schools more than others.
• 34:54
  But you should have that feeling all over town, you know. And that's
• 34:59
  my thing. And as I say that, that is not saying that I
• 35:02
  like even the area of town where I serve. I just want to neglect
• 35:06
  that side. It's like, no, continue to perform, but let's get
• 35:08
  the other areas to up their performance as well. Right, we have the
• 35:13
  ability to do it, and it is making sure that we also support our
• 35:16
  leaders and support our teachers. Also understand that our teachers and leaders are not
• 35:22
  only is it different as far as experiences that they had, the people that
• 35:27
  they're serving are different than years before. So it used to be when teachers
• 35:30
  got hired, most of them came out of the College of Education right from
• 35:34
  Florida State FAMU Flagler. Most of our teachers now come outside the world of
• 35:40
  education into education. So it used to be when you did a mentorship program
• 35:45
  or we work with you as a new teacher, you got mentor for a
• 35:49
  year. Right, we still have that in place. That's not really right
• 35:54
  if you know they're not coming out of a college education program. We really
• 35:57
  need to be mentoring them from three to five years. Why because you got
• 36:00
  to building that time they would have had in college while they're growing up with
• 36:05
  you in the school. And that just means you have to think differently.
• 36:08
  Right if the people coming in, Like so even before we talk about kids,
• 36:13
  if the people I'm working with are differently, I have to respond differently.
• 36:15
  Right. That means just like you did a great job, you made
• 36:19
  me explain a term that other people listening to us may not have known.
• 36:22
  Right, you know, break it down because you know in education we can
• 36:24
  talk from educational needs and have people lost in baseball, yes, right,
• 36:29
  And so that also happens with new employees who come in. They don't have
• 36:32
  all the tools in their tool belt that others who came in from the college
• 36:37
  of Education have. So you got to build them up. You still believe
• 36:39
  in them, just know you have to work with them differently, right,
• 36:43
  So you tell your mentor to you instead of working them over the year,
• 36:45
  you're going to need to work with them three to five to get them to
• 36:49
  the same point. But you know it's for our students. I need that
• 36:52
  teacher to build up. And then we also have to recognize the students are
• 36:57
  different. Just like you and I talked about social media, right, we
• 37:00
  also talk about like just the connectivity is different. There's the you know,
• 37:06
  what am I going to do after high school? Can I make it into
• 37:07
  college? Can I get into one of the trades. There's a lot of
• 37:12
  pressures on these kids that even to some degree years ago, we didn't face.
• 37:15
  And so how do we help them navigate that? Like? They have
• 37:19
  to be good people, you know, right, I mean, because that's
• 37:22
  the first thing you need to hire. You need to hire good people who
• 37:23
  actually like kids. Right. Kids can get on your nerves, but you've
• 37:27
  got to still like them. Like I tell, I tell all my students,
• 37:30
  I said, I love y'all. Some of y'all may get on my
• 37:32
  last nerves, but I love y'all, you know. And that's the real
• 37:35
  thing. I mean, that's something I learn from my mom. She says,
• 37:37
  I love you, but I don't like you. You know, you've
• 37:39
  taken a page out of my book. I mean, that's how God views
• 37:43
  us. Yes, that's all. Yes, loves us all the time,
• 37:45
  but he does not like us all the time. Absolutely. I love my
• 37:49
  children all the time, but I don't like them all the time. And
• 37:52
  that's that's what you're describing, and it is. And so you have to
• 37:54
  have that mindset in place, and you have to understand that kids are going
• 38:00
  to have moments less than what you haven't expected for them. They're going to
• 38:04
  fail if they were let them. We need to let them pay the consequences
• 38:10
  of making poor choices, yes, with their use of time or whatever it
• 38:15
  might be. Yes, But that now drags me to parents. I made
• 38:22
  a pitch to the school board when Jackie Pons was superintendent. You might not
• 38:28
  know this, but I ran a private school for several years, and and
• 38:31
  in that I learned some things. You talk about a learning opening, My
• 38:37
  learning curve totally different because you at least were educated in it. I was
• 38:42
  assigned and one of the things I learned is that in private schools at that
• 38:47
  time, you didn't have to take every student. So we were desperate.
• 38:53
  We kind of had to take every student. But I learned things. And
• 38:58
  one of the things I learned is that parents are essential to the success or
• 39:05
  failure of a student. And I learned that if you don't make parents accountable,
• 39:14
  and I see a couple of issues connected that are plaguing not just Leon
• 39:20
  county schools, but every school absolutely, And it's a connectivity between what students
• 39:24
  are doing or not doing. Assaulting a teacher, yes, belittling, bad
• 39:30
  mouthing, using profanity. The name list goes on and on, teacher turnover.
• 39:35
  So we're right there talking to you over So I want you to address
• 39:37
  that, But then I also want you to address the nexus that exists between
• 39:42
  that and kind of the administrative turnstile that exists where we're not making parents come
• 39:47
  down and deal with their kid. We're sending the kid back to the teacher
• 39:52
  that just sent them out because they're on their last nerve and they're disrupting the
• 39:55
  classroom, but we're not inconveniencing the parents. I hear the arguments, Joe,
• 40:00
  and you can tell me if they're legitimate or not. The arguments are,
• 40:04
  well, not all of them have parents at home. Okay, well
• 40:08
  they got a guardian, I got somebody, yep. So first of all,
• 40:15
  am I am I addressing something that's real? Yes, I think I
• 40:19
  am. You are, And that it doesn't mean we're talking bad about parents.
• 40:22
  I mean, like, well, I think we are. I think
• 40:25
  you said it before, and it's the part that needs to be highlighted.
• 40:30
  Parents are essential, right, so the garden is essential. So that means
• 40:35
  you have to do one. There's two things that have to happen. Right.
• 40:37
  You absolutely have to make them accountable. Right. If you talk to
• 40:40
  the parents out of childs they tell you, they probably will say, man,
• 40:43
  he runs a pretty tight ship, right, but that is part of
• 40:45
  your success. Well, I think so too, right, And that means
• 40:50
  sometimes I'm going to make a decision. You probably don't like it, but
• 40:52
  but it's also in the student's best interest that that decision was made. But
• 40:55
  we can also ask you, yeah, that decision. Is it not well
• 41:00
  received because it inconveniences mom or dad? Oh? Always, I mean at
• 41:05
  least in my Yeah, that's a reflection of where we are in the culture
• 41:07
  right now. And I will tell you this goes into the second part that
• 41:10
  educational leaders have to do is you have to build capacity. Mean, so
• 41:15
  think about it like this. You're a sports person, right, yep.
• 41:21
  Is a coach's best year when they took a team undefeated and they had the
• 41:24
  best players and they blew everybody out? Or was it the team that they
• 41:28
  got into the playoffs who should have been a team that was drafted first,
• 41:31
  but they got them into the playoffs. Now, maybe they didn't win the
• 41:34
  Super Bowl, but they got him into the playoffs. I would argue that's
• 41:37
  the coach's best coaching year. Right. So as a leader, besides making
• 41:44
  parents accountable, you also have to build their capacity to be parents. So
• 41:47
  think about it like this. Parents don't come with a training book. Now
• 41:51
  as educator, I really do have books that I had to read. Now,
• 41:53
  I've got a lot of educators who come in they've not had a whole
• 41:57
  lot of books. It's my responsibility to give than the knowledge to help them
• 42:00
  long. But I got to also do that with a lot of the parents.
• 42:02
  So we end up having to coach up parents. Right to say,
• 42:07
  if you're feeling like your kid is never going to talk to you again because
• 42:12
  you agree with this, let's say punishment consequence that went to your kid,
• 42:16
  they're going to be back that their conditioned, that food and that money that
• 42:20
  they need from you, they're going to be back. Right. But it's
• 42:22
  also saying if you don't get some accountability from them, the correctional system is
• 42:28
  waiting for them. They're like the more right they They're open twenty four hours
• 42:32
  a day, seven days a week, and I got to tell you the
• 42:36
  truth about what's out there. Like if you look in high school, you're
• 42:38
  going to get a job, You're going to drive a car. Meantimes you're
• 42:43
  gonna be maybe left at the house by yourself. There are responsibilities that you're
• 42:46
  going to have that are pretty large, right, even healthcare decision. Right,
• 42:50
  you go to this by yourself. I mean usually after seventeen or after
• 42:53
  sixteen, when you turn seventeen. So you've got things responsibilities that are put
• 42:58
  into your hands. If we don't tell you the truth about a behavior that
• 43:01
  needs to change, that needs to be different, and understanding that your life,
• 43:07
  that future life that you want best for your kid will not be better
• 43:10
  if they don't change the road that they're on, it will not. And
• 43:14
  sometimes you'll have parents like they actually come to us and they'll say, I
• 43:17
  don't want my kid to be upset at me. You know, I don't
• 43:21
  know how to do it. So a lot of times we're there and I'm
• 43:23
  talking about ad child's we have to sometimes coach up parents. When I was
• 43:28
  at Spring with that's a lot of times I had to do single parents,
• 43:30
  right. I would sit down with single parents and this is you know,
• 43:32
  for the listeners out there, I would sit down with single parents and I
• 43:37
  will say, if you do me a favor, if you died today,
• 43:39
  can you give me the top five people you would leave your kids with?
• 43:43
  And they would write it down and then I would say, now I've got
• 43:46
  your emergency contact lists. If the names you just wrote down on the paper
• 43:51
  don't match the ones on the emergency contact list, we have a problem.
• 43:54
  Because you only would leave your kids with the people you believe in who will
• 43:58
  take care of your children and your ass absence, so which means they need
• 44:01
  to also be the people that we see on the mergy contact I understand that
• 44:05
  you are single and you may have to work two three jobs in a day
• 44:08
  to make ends meet, which means you're not individually gonna have time that you
• 44:12
  give to your kid. But you got a team, you got a network.
• 44:15
  Even a two parent household has networks, right, You got friends,
• 44:17
  you got grandparents who help out with the picking the kids up, taking them
• 44:22
  to appointments. So when you're a single parent, you just have less of
• 44:25
  it, right, You don't have that next partner right there. But as
• 44:30
  a leader, I should help build your capacity of what your team looks like
• 44:34
  to take care of your kid, right, because you have to, You
• 44:37
  absolutly have to hold them accountable. You and how we agree on that you
• 44:39
  do something wrong, you gotta be held accountable before it Well, the teachers
• 44:43
  have to be ultimately in charge of their classroom, correct, and that hasn't
• 44:46
  been the case generally for two decades it So you know what it is is
• 44:52
  that you know everybody words. If somebody complains on me, I'm not going
• 44:57
  to get in trouble. So you know, I would say you what I
• 44:59
  always tell parents when they send me a complaint. I said you, and
• 45:02
  I'm telling you as the parent, you and I are the same on this,
• 45:06
  which is we weren't there. I said, I've been in this long
• 45:09
  enough to say that there's usually more than two sides to a story. All
• 45:13
  Right, we're gonna investigate because you know, a lot of times when you
• 45:15
  call in, they were like they want you to believe everything that they're saying
• 45:17
  immediately, and it's not like I'm just respecting you. But everybody could be
• 45:22
  telling the truth. And that still doesn't mean we have the whole story,
• 45:24
  right. There may be parts that were missing, but it's also letting them
• 45:28
  know that we got to look into it. I do that first of all.
• 45:31
  My teachers trust that right because it didn't mean not threw them under the
• 45:35
  bus. It also didn't tell the parent that they're a liar. Right,
• 45:38
  you shouldn't do either. Give me everything you got and then let me look
• 45:42
  into it. And I'm gonna give you my honest answer when all this is
• 45:45
  over. Now, you may not like it, and you're welcome to question
• 45:49
  any of it. But if you know, just like in the case of
• 45:51
  like you was talking about a kid, if your kid, if I got
• 45:53
  seven kids in the same class when they said that your kid cussed the teacher
• 45:57
  out and then did it again, Yeah, there's a consequence for that because
• 46:01
  their authority can never be questioned. Matter of fact, I've been in parent
• 46:05
  conferences before where the student has disrespected the parent. Now you know me,
• 46:08
  I'm you're a big dude. I'm a big dude. I don't have to
• 46:12
  stand up, but I certainly raise my voice a little bit and I say,
• 46:15
  you are absolutely respect your parents. While they hear I tell them said,
• 46:17
  look, when y'all get home, that's one thing, But while you're
• 46:19
  here at school, every adult's gonna be respected. I don't care if they're
• 46:22
  a custodian or they're the principal. They're gonna be respected. And the kids
• 46:27
  will tell you. That's one of the things I talked to him about,
• 46:28
  like do not disrespect adults not. I also say that doesn't mean I should
• 46:31
  be going out disrespecting kids, like sometimes first not we have adults who may
• 46:35
  trigger kid or they said something to instigated with them. That's not right,
• 46:38
  and I will tell you my staff, I get on their case, but
• 46:43
  also make it clear to the kids a child stays in the child's place.
• 46:46
  Well, you can't lead where you don't go correct. And if leaders aren't
• 46:51
  leading, then there's going to be a constable And you have to have the
• 46:53
  tough conversations. I mean, I listen, you know, I've heard everything.
• 46:57
  You know. You know they come in even with an attorney, right,
• 47:00
  you know, I go, hey, you know, you know what
• 47:01
  school I'm at. I'm used to seeing an attorney like that. You know,
• 47:05
  doesn't doesn't scare us off, you know, And you know, and
• 47:08
  I said, and of course we can get into long eye tribes on email
• 47:13
  and all that. You know, I always just remind them, I said,
• 47:15
  Look, emails and even phone calls are kind of cold until we see
• 47:20
  each other in person that you can see like my inflections and everything that goes
• 47:23
  along with what I'm saying. It's hard you get the total grasp of everything
• 47:28
  I'm trying to communicate. But let me throw something at you based on what
• 47:31
  we were just talking about. Yes, because the he said, teacher,
• 47:36
  she said, teacher student argument is only going to ramp up with where we're
• 47:42
  going right now. And by that I mean we now have questions of what's
• 47:46
  being taught in classrooms. Is curriculum being adhered to COVID opened up a can
• 47:52
  of worms. Sure, because you got the chance to view and every every
• 47:55
  school district on the planet it has been has been victim by the oversea right
• 48:01
  now. I have advocated, and I have done so on multiple occasions with
• 48:07
  the Commissioner of Education for the State of Florida as well as lawmakers, and
• 48:13
  I will argue this from my perspective until we both run out of breath.
• 48:19
  One of the solutions to a lot of problems today in the classroom, whether
• 48:22
  it's discipline, instruction, and eliminating just headaches, is putting cameras in the
• 48:28
  classroom, not live streaming, not because that violates all kinds of privacy guide
• 48:34
  lives, but settling the debate on what was said and what was taught,
• 48:39
  and whether the student was out of line or it's just that teacher that has
• 48:44
  a grudge. I think that's where we need to go, much like what
• 48:47
  we did with law enforcement. It's an arbiter. It may not give you
• 48:52
  the perfect picture, but if there was an issue, would you, as
• 48:58
  a principal or ultimately as a super tendative education wouldn't it be refreshing to be
• 49:02
  able to say, well, let's look at what happened that day and to
• 49:06
  have it on tape. So as far as the review, always having a
• 49:12
  tape is a better then, you know, because you can have eyewitness accounts
• 49:15
  and sometimes everybody's memory is their own right and every Yeah, so the the
• 49:22
  video doesn't have a bias. It just shows you what it shows you,
• 49:27
  a right, I think that you know. The part that I wrestled with
• 49:30
  even when we were doing the hybrid learning, uh, is the ability to
• 49:37
  see you know, people's faces, you know the name, image and likeness,
• 49:43
  right, But this is in the classroom, right, and you're talking
• 49:45
  about people's kids, and you know, there's everything. Of course, you
• 49:49
  deal with everything from custody battles to people who sometimes a witness protection. I
• 49:53
  mean, there's there's there are some but it was legally protected and only used
• 50:00
  by the administrator and appropriate staff. You know, well, of course,
• 50:04
  you know you would have to have some discussions with the teachers, right,
• 50:07
  I think you know, the teachers union wouldn't support it because they want a
• 50:13
  more radicalized agenda in the classrooms. I mean, I think so the you
• 50:20
  know, part of the issues are I mean like you're going to have some
• 50:22
  parents who actually are a little concerned about that. And that's what I was
• 50:25
  saying, there's just privacy issues. And then you have your kids who aren't
• 50:30
  protecting classes like you're students who are five oh four or who are ec And
• 50:36
  you know, if you've got this video platform that you have, can it
• 50:38
  be hacked? Can it be used now? And and and let me just
• 50:44
  say this, you already have it with the phones in the pockets of the
• 50:47
  kids, right, they could take it at any moment and film things that
• 50:50
  happen in class that already happens, and we have it in close circuit broadcasting,
• 50:54
  and we have it with police as we say right now, for that
• 50:58
  body camera can't be hacked, right, is the only difference is is we're
• 51:01
  talking about minors in the classroom, right because because in a certain sense that
• 51:06
  teachers, by happenstance, they have less. I mean, the students are
• 51:09
  to protected folks in there. So you know, only the only hesitation I
• 51:15
  have is on the legal front. You know, you know I would say,
• 51:19
  yeah, well, to solve a lot of issues, I would say
• 51:22
  there are parts of us that we already do that because if you look at
• 51:25
  school buses, we already have cameras on school buses. Correct. I think
• 51:30
  you know what I will tell you is this right. I think it is
• 51:34
  the way that something is brought forward. How it's how it's you know,
• 51:39
  introduced. What are the measures in place? Right? Because because even if
• 51:45
  you're asking cops, if you think about the cameras right at first, I
• 51:49
  mean, many of them think it's so gotcha, like this is you're you're
• 51:52
  preventing me from doing my job at the best that I can do it because
• 51:55
  now I have to become robotic and I'm thinking about everything. But you know,
• 52:00
  the leader has to come in and say, if you just do what
• 52:05
  you always have done, you shouldn't get in trouble. Right, So there's
• 52:10
  that discussion, but kind of meeting that and that's kind of what the job
• 52:15
  requires. Like let's just say, I mean because easily the legislator can make
• 52:19
  that a law. I mean, they could just take the discussion out and
• 52:22
  by by next fall they could say this is so right. I will just
• 52:28
  tell you, Like one of the things that I do is I work with
• 52:30
  my staff. I say, if you just follow these protocols, you're gonna
• 52:32
  be just fine. Right. When we had when we started, we changed
• 52:37
  some of the evaluation methods. This is going back to twenty eleven, twenty
• 52:38
  ten, twenty eleven. Here in the state of Florida, teachers were really
• 52:44
  concerned. Right, they had these different measures because we used to have these
• 52:46
  old forms and it was like carbon copy and that was the way we kind
• 52:50
  of evaluated the teachers. And then we went to a more of electronic form.
• 52:52
  Right, I can go in there with an iPad. I could just
• 52:55
  hit all these things as I was observing them with the kids. Right,
• 52:59
  And I tell you what I did with my staff. One day, one
• 53:01
  of my assistant principals. She was a twirler growing up. She's just twirling
• 53:05
  up a time. She doesn't realize she's being video right, and what happens
• 53:09
  is soon she saw that she was being videotaped, she lost her way.
• 53:14
  And I said, that's really the system. I said, guys, if
• 53:16
  you just do what you do, you're gonna be just fine. Like I
• 53:21
  should be having it. There should be a different kind of conversation with you
• 53:23
  if you if you think at the end of the year we may release you,
• 53:28
  right, We've already had conversations up until that, like I'm actually talking
• 53:30
  to you saying, hey, this has got to improve, or when it
• 53:34
  comes to the first of May, I'm going to have to release you,
• 53:37
  okay, because outside of that, you should be doing the teaching. We
• 53:39
  should be working on the craft, right, This shouldn't be a gotcha thing,
• 53:44
  And so that will have and part of this will also have to be,
• 53:49
  you know, the way the parents come in, and like there's a
• 53:52
  lot of discussion that has to go along with that. I mean, I
• 53:54
  actually hear that where you say, hey, look, that can help resolve
• 53:57
  some of the problems. I would think it would eliminate a lot of headaches
• 54:00
  for an administrator, but it could cause you some more because if parents are
• 54:06
  looking in, they may say, well, and I'll just give you one.
• 54:08
  I mean, now, maybe somebody looks at us a little bit frivolous,
• 54:10
  but to somebody is very real. So let's say teachers moving around a
• 54:15
  classroom, but they're on the right side of the classroom seventy five percent of
• 54:19
  the time, and it was on the left side class from twenty five percent
• 54:21
  of the time, and maybe the kid on that twenty five percent of the
• 54:23
  time they're struggling. Hey, you're supposed to be over there. Now here
• 54:27
  comes the email. Well, hey, when I reviewed the tape, this
• 54:29
  is what I saw. So that's why I said, a lot of the
• 54:31
  logistics have to be worked out right. And I would answer that by saying,
• 54:36
  in my idea, it's only reviewed when it's not available to parents.
• 54:42
  It's only available if there's an issue. So then I would say that as
• 54:45
  an administrator, then you say, hey, I've noticed your teaching and you're
• 54:50
  working one side of the classroom. Make sure you work well. So you
• 54:52
  would say, then, is that they have to put a question and it
• 54:54
  probably has to meet a standard correct, right before we even knew it.
• 54:58
  Right, can't just be for something general not available to look at. It's
• 55:01
  only there to solve an issue. So for you know, for you the
• 55:05
  pitch that you're making, right, I'm actually advising you here. You would
• 55:09
  say in matters of student incidents or student the teacher incidents, or just flat
• 55:15
  teacher incident, it would only be used in those matters. And then you
• 55:20
  may have a protocol before you know, say exactly in school, and then
• 55:23
  it's reviewed and then as needed people are called in. And I would tell
• 55:28
  you know, now, if you were talking to the teacher, they was
• 55:30
  like, well, do we have somebody that's looking at it now? I
• 55:32
  will tell you if you if we're being transparent right and talking with them,
• 55:37
  like you would say, well, there's going to be somebody from one of
• 55:40
  their representatives will be one of the people who will help review it, you
• 55:44
  know what I mean. So like because when you're when you're more transparent,
• 55:47
  people, you know, people fear what they don't know. Right, if
• 55:52
  I don't know you, well, like, well you could be somebody that
• 55:54
  can harm me, or you could be somebody uh you know, uh who
• 55:59
  will do So people fear what they know if they don't want you to know
• 56:02
  what they know. You know what I'm saying. I just wanted to throw
• 56:07
  that by you. Yeah, yeah, great question. One of the things
• 56:10
  I want to do in the time remaining shoe is I want to kind of
• 56:15
  hit a few topics. Sure, we've touched on it, just sort of
• 56:20
  in ancillary ways here of late. And that is just teacher turnover. Is
• 56:24
  that an issue that can be addressed best by the state and funding and like
• 56:31
  you know, the Governor's investing even more money now, I think it's another
• 56:35
  two hundred million in teacher salaries moving forward. Or is it best addressed locally
• 56:40
  by the district. So I'm going to tell you it's always local. And
• 56:47
  it is no disrespect to the Governor's, no dispect to the president any other
• 56:52
  leaders out there. My relationship with those teachers, or my relationship inside of
• 56:59
  that district with a team, your staff, whoever, that's a daily one,
• 57:04
  right. You set the tone. Like even in the if somebody grew
• 57:09
  up poor, they could say I still had a wonderful childhood, right because
• 57:14
  of what they had inside that house. You can be rich and it is
• 57:17
  a terrible house, right, So the money plays a part as far as
• 57:24
  your ability to take care of your family. All right, So you know,
• 57:28
  we know that it makes teaching more attracted. The more money you can
• 57:31
  make in the industry, the more attractive it becomes, right better, I
• 57:36
  mean and and and and you know your numbers guy, your economics guy.
• 57:39
  Listen. We had the recession going on, man, teaching was hot.
• 57:44
  I mean, we had teachers coming out, and you know, people wanted
• 57:46
  to be teachers because I had a guarantee the salary and you had benefits,
• 57:52
  right, and we knew what would happen once the economy got somewhat better.
• 57:57
  And you know, remember Florida we went it was two thousand and seven,
• 58:00
  our bubble bust before everybody else. Yep. But we also recover before everybody
• 58:05
  else. And so we started to see the ranks leave, right because that
• 58:07
  same talent that we had, the market wants them back. Market caught up
• 58:13
  and passed, yes, very much. Right. So people will stay based
• 58:21
  upon how they feel. Like you guys here, you've got a team,
• 58:25
  they stay because how they feel. If you superintendent impact that with so many
• 58:30
  schools, Here's what I will say, it's the relationship, it's your decisions.
• 58:35
  And it's the way you make your decisions. So like people. Number
• 58:38
  one, they have to feel like the decisions that you make had their best
• 58:43
  interest in mind and that you can explain it and if they have a if
• 58:46
  they want to confront it, that you will speak to them in a manner
• 58:51
  that they can understand and that they can trust. Okay, But secondly,
• 58:55
  how do you treat the leaders who are working with the teachers. If your
• 59:00
  treatment of the leaders is not at a certain point, guess what if you're
• 59:05
  doing things, Let's say like if I scream at my aps, guess what
• 59:09
  my AP's do to the teachers? They scream at them. Guess what the
• 59:14
  teachers do. They scream at the kids. Guess what the kids do?
• 59:16
  They go home scream their parents. Not to say it may be sound coming
• 59:19
  the other way, but we got to stop the cycle on our side.
• 59:22
  And so if they don't feel value, and value is not always money.
• 59:28
  It's not because sometimes people have left and they did not make more money.
• 59:31
  Right, they have to feel like their value, they can help make decisions,
• 59:37
  they have input. This is a place where they can ascend. Right.
• 59:42
  One of the things sometimes teachers are looking for is they looking for teacher
• 59:44
  leadership positions. Your wife was a teacher, but she was a teacher leader,
• 59:47
  right, she got a chance to help the other teachers on campus.
• 59:52
  Veteran teachers want those opportunities, and so you have to be able to give
• 59:54
  them opportunities. Everybody's not looking to become an administrator, right because that's a
• 59:59
  whole different ass. But they do want to become leaders. They do want
• 1:00:02
  to have ways of their influence in the campus. Like I know I can
• 1:00:07
  make this place better. My voice gives it that way, my work gives
• 1:00:13
  that, and so teacher turnover is a lot of those things. Now.
• 1:00:17
  Of course, as I said, money and benefits are they have a role
• 1:00:22
  in that, but the way people feel, the way their value just a
• 1:00:24
  small thing. So like right now, if you're a first year teacher,
• 1:00:30
  people who've been working for ten years should not make the same money, and
• 1:00:36
  it shouldn't even be close. That's a huge problem the state has to address
• 1:00:39
  and they do be interested if that two hundred million is going to address it.
• 1:00:43
  Well, but you also have to look at your budget, right,
• 1:00:46
  so think about it. Your budget is your priority. I mean, listen,
• 1:00:52
  we would love to pay for everything, take care of everybody, but
• 1:00:54
  you can't. I mean, the governor does that you I mean, listen,
• 1:01:00
  I tell folks all the time I said, he really, on a
• 1:01:02
  given level, probably makes more Republicans mad than he does Democrats because you know
• 1:01:07
  he got that lineup. He will take that sucker right out. I mean,
• 1:01:09
  and he has not shied away. Right. You can find a different
• 1:01:13
  district in somebody who's been mad. But again, the budget is priorities right
• 1:01:17
  so here locally, our superintendent, school board, they've made priorities about what
• 1:01:23
  they think the pace should be. Now, to me, I think we
• 1:01:27
  needed to do more because I want to attract more talent. You know,
• 1:01:31
  I will tell you this man we're talking about. You know, I'm at
• 1:01:35
  a national rank high school. In twenty twelve when we had an English teacher
• 1:01:40
  opening, I can tell you we easily had almost two hundred applicants. Right
• 1:01:45
  now, if we get three, I'm so happy. Now that also can
• 1:01:52
  be just where the marketing things are. But it's tough to be a teacher,
• 1:01:57
  yes, I mean, and I think and also we're we're not honest
• 1:02:01
  with our young We're not we're not even honest with our parents about how hard
• 1:02:06
  it is to be that. And that's why I say you actually have to
• 1:02:07
  coach up parents. I tell parents all the time, I say, so,
• 1:02:13
  how you say something on an email, Well, actually determine how you
• 1:02:17
  get an answer back. Same thing with a teacher when they responded to a
• 1:02:21
  parent. I need to get something from a parent. Listen, if you
• 1:02:22
  put it in bold, you put it in our talents, you put it
• 1:02:24
  in red, it already looks like you're shouting. Right, put it in
• 1:02:29
  plane terms, right, level headed. And I said, and when you
• 1:02:31
  can't go to a phone call, right, you can't do a thousand means,
• 1:02:36
  but man, you can do you can do three four minute phone calls.
• 1:02:37
  It just goes a lot further. So on a lot of that is
• 1:02:42
  the way that we're communicating, the way we recruiting students, I'm sorry,
• 1:02:45
  students who become teachers. How we cultivate them when they come into the to
• 1:02:51
  the district, equipping them to be successful? Yes, And I will tell
• 1:02:54
  you what is talk about essential. The people you choose to work with.
• 1:02:59
  Those teachers have to be above reproach. They have to be like if they're
• 1:03:05
  the people who are toxic, or this place is never going to get well.
• 1:03:08
  Those young teachers. They leave under five years, they're gone. What
• 1:03:13
  you got to do is you got to find that people say, I have
• 1:03:15
  joy in this, even if I'm not being paid what I thought I should
• 1:03:19
  get. There's such enjoyment that I get right talking about people that viewed as
• 1:03:22
  a calling. Yes, you know, like where the intrinsic really overwhelms the
• 1:03:29
  extrinsic, right, I mean, like, and that's what it is,
• 1:03:31
  is calling. It's a ministry, right, like you you know the difference
• 1:03:35
  that you making kids, I mean, and you know it's when you go
• 1:03:39
  to graduation. Rights, it's the culminating event, you know, a senior
• 1:03:45
  year. And like this past year I got the most hugs I ever got
• 1:03:47
  on stage, and you know, and I just got a relative count,
• 1:03:52
  you know, just from past years. But that's great, man, because
• 1:03:54
  you know, I'll tell everybody I said, look, you got the you
• 1:03:58
  got the magnum, a lot of assuming cum laude cum lades. But man,
• 1:04:01
  some of them HUDs are from them, thank you. Lawd is right.
• 1:04:04
  These are kids that they didn't have the best GPAs you know, they
• 1:04:09
  may have gotten arrested while they were going through school. They had some trying
• 1:04:13
  times. I mean their parents were ready to throw them out, but they
• 1:04:15
  made it. And a lot of times I said, that's just part of
• 1:04:19
  the story, right, Your whole few is not defined now, this is
• 1:04:23
  just a part of it. But like I just feel blessed and I'm almost
• 1:04:27
  here for you on this journey. And hopefully we gave you a good time
• 1:04:30
  here, We gave you a place for you to help build yourself up.
• 1:04:33
  You know, it's just it's just wonderful because it's it's a reminder that we,
• 1:04:41
  in a small part, helped shape these young people. And so that
• 1:04:45
  I take seriously as far as, like, you know, the things that
• 1:04:47
  we need to improvise, the things that we need to do better, the
• 1:04:49
  things we need to ask of ourselves. You know, when we do surveys,
• 1:04:55
  we only do surveys about the principals and the teachers. You know,
• 1:04:58
  if you know, like the old IBM standards, you do a survey on
• 1:05:00
  everybody. How is the district serving you? How's the support staff so serving
• 1:05:06
  you? How's everything bus drivers? How we all serving you? Right?
• 1:05:13
  And that doesn't mean like you're going to get you know, understand that you
• 1:05:15
  may hear loudest from the people who are most upset, but you still should
• 1:05:18
  hear them. It's just like when the school district recently turned off the comments
• 1:05:23
  on their social media page. You should never turn off the comments, even
• 1:05:27
  if now, unless somebody's threatening, they're doing harm, or they're gonna have
• 1:05:30
  to get right, you block them. But people should have the right,
• 1:05:33
  you know. It's just like I mean, I a fown. I don't
• 1:05:36
  like that decision you're getting on my last nerve. That's okay, but as
• 1:05:41
  you know, I told you off air, your job. Really, when
• 1:05:44
  you're in a calling with education, you got to serve those who even hate
• 1:05:46
  you. Well. The reality is, and I encourage my listeners on the
• 1:05:49
  radio program Joe that you know, at this moment, I have no children
• 1:05:55
  in the school district. I have grandchildren that will be in the school district.
• 1:05:59
  But it does matter. I pay my taxes. Yes, I have
• 1:06:01
  to say yes, and I will use my three minutes and I will use
• 1:06:06
  the opportunities that I have to share my views on education, on whatever the
• 1:06:12
  issues are. I don't think there's a more you know, I've watched so
• 1:06:15
  advocate of teachers than me. I've watched you, I've watched you up at
• 1:06:19
  the school board meeting. You know, cry my best. You know it's
• 1:06:23
  not usually warmly received, and that's okay, but but it it it kind
• 1:06:30
  of dovetails to something else, and it is this your principal right now you're
• 1:06:33
  serving as a principal. There's a view that perhaps principles are I think terminology
• 1:06:42
  like this has been used from the current superintendent sort of mayors of their own
• 1:06:46
  communities. In your view, are principles given too much autonomy to little autonomy?
• 1:06:55
  Or it's kind of where it needs to be. So the easiest answer
• 1:07:00
  it depends. So it's just like your teachers. So if I've got a
• 1:07:03
  new teacher, I got to be viewing them a lot. I gotta be.
• 1:07:08
  You actually have to micro manage them a little bit more, right because
• 1:07:11
  they're new, recent retire I'm just gonna say her name and for folks out
• 1:07:16
  that they know her. I had a wonderful lady, Pat Faaling. Pat
• 1:07:18
  Faaling retired at the age of seventy eight. I did not have the babysit.
• 1:07:23
  Pat Faaling. Okay, she's got clothing older than I am, but
• 1:07:27
  she could teach. She knew it. If I spent the same time with
• 1:07:31
  her that I did with a new teacher, that's actually wasting time. And
• 1:07:34
  that's not to say you still don't go in there and you don't check and
• 1:07:36
  you don't make sure, but I'm going to spend more time with those new
• 1:07:42
  ones. So this goes back to the development I was talking about. So
• 1:07:45
  when you have a new principle, you got to make sure that their skills
• 1:07:49
  are at a point that they can serve that community. If there are adjustments
• 1:07:53
  that need to be made, like how you talk with the staff, how
• 1:07:56
  you do your staffing on you on your campus, how do you work out
• 1:08:00
  the relationships you know, what if you go for example, if you go
• 1:08:08
  to uh, let's just say, there's a difference if you go to a
• 1:08:12
  staff that has a lot of young teachers versus the staff that has a lot
• 1:08:15
  of veteran teachers. You have to have a different mindset. They're gonna come
• 1:08:19
  at you differently. New teachers don't know what they don't know yet, they
• 1:08:23
  still got to figure out what they don't know and they need help with So
• 1:08:27
  you got to have a plan laid out. So if you are sending a
• 1:08:30
  new principle into a situation where even young teachers, we got to be there
• 1:08:33
  to help and say, hey, you got to have some processes in place
• 1:08:36
  and we need to help you with that. Right, as they become a
• 1:08:40
  veteran, you can give more autonomy. So it's the same thing you would
• 1:08:44
  do with teachers, your leaders. It's no different if you if you're doing
• 1:08:48
  everything. Let me let me just use the example of the tornado as a
• 1:08:53
  recent example. Okay, every day weather situations, I'm responsible on the ground.
• 1:09:00
  I'll tell you this. If there was a tornado that popped up on
• 1:09:02
  Charles High School, I'm not calling the district. That's not out of disrespect.
• 1:09:08
  I'm telling everybody on my campus to lock down. I don't have to
• 1:09:11
  call you like I'm taking care of the business right there. Now, you
• 1:09:15
  know, when you're first to principle, you may be a little bit more
• 1:09:17
  nervous. So part of your training would be like that summer going over those
• 1:09:21
  scenarios. Right. So, because I always tell people it's like vicarious learning.
• 1:09:28
  You learn through other people's experience so that when it comes to you,
• 1:09:30
  don't draw on your own conclusions, draw on the ones that they did and
• 1:09:33
  then input them. Right. But what happens is when you have a weather
• 1:09:39
  situation, we just take care of it. What happened in like what the
• 1:09:42
  tornado was, the district jumped in and they said, hey, we're just
• 1:09:45
  going to close schools down. Now I'm going to tell you my school is
• 1:09:48
  a Level five shelter. We're a hurricane show. Every time there's a hurricane
• 1:09:54
  that comes up, we get activated. And you're looking at the guy who
• 1:09:56
  runs the team for Red Cross right here right. My family not see me
• 1:10:00
  when the storm. I'm up there at the school right, And that's okay.
• 1:10:03
  I accept that as being the principal. And that's a service, an
• 1:10:06
  additional service that I give to the district. But I gladly serve in that
• 1:10:10
  capacity because we should do that. And I'm sitting here going you're making us
• 1:10:14
  have our kids leave and go out into terrible weather because we were making a
• 1:10:16
  decision for everybody instead of locally at the school. And whether it's something we
• 1:10:21
  did with every day, so whether you are at whether you're talking about Bond
• 1:10:28
  Elementary, whether you're talking about Raw Middle School, where you're talking about Child's
• 1:10:31
  high school, we handle it ourselves. You know, we look at now
• 1:10:34
  we may call them for a reference, you know, say hey, we
• 1:10:38
  know the storm is like the tornadoes maybe three miles out. You know,
• 1:10:43
  should we stay in place? You know, we can ask for advisement,
• 1:10:45
  but they're trusting us. They have to. You have to trust it.
• 1:10:50
  Like sometimes you know, you have those snap tornadoes, it just jumps on
• 1:10:55
  you. You immediately get on the all call you to everybody. Hey,
• 1:10:58
  tornado right now, everybody, get down right. I don't have time to
• 1:11:02
  call that. But you know, but when we did, when we made
• 1:11:05
  this like snap judgment, it was haphazard, right, And so just busses
• 1:11:12
  have even been on the roads given the weather that we knew was coming.
• 1:11:15
  So we didn't know a tornado necessarily was coming, but we knew severe weather
• 1:11:19
  was coming, severe enough that we historically have pulled buses from the roads.
• 1:11:25
  So here's a couple of things, right, so just you know, this
• 1:11:29
  is not to trash anybody. This is just as the statement is. Okay,
• 1:11:31
  a couple of weeks before we did the delayed start, okay, so
• 1:11:34
  we had already done it, and I think everybody was okay. I mean,
• 1:11:38
  listen, parents are gonna be upset. It's inconvenience, right, so
• 1:11:41
  you're gonna have that. But but I will tell you this, and I
• 1:11:44
  say this, even when we're talking about the superintendent. We're runing against each
• 1:11:45
  other. Never apologize for safety ever, Exactly. I tell folks that talk
• 1:11:49
  about me bad and I'll welcome it. Matter of fact, I'll put it
• 1:11:53
  on like a badge. The day before, we had already talked about it,
• 1:11:58
  and it was told to us that the storm was going to be showing
• 1:12:00
  up between three to six. Okay, so just keep that in mind in
• 1:12:03
  the morning, in the morning. Sorry, yeah, I gotta get that
• 1:12:05
  part. The night before we had our night of celebration. That's where the
• 1:12:10
  teacher of the year, a nonstructional person and you're kind of educator on your
• 1:12:14
  campus of the year are all getting recognized. I know there was a couple
• 1:12:19
  of folks that I kind of brought it up with. You know, what
• 1:12:21
  are we going to do? Because at about nine o'clock, that same National
• 1:12:27
  Weather Service that got blamed for not telling us about it, said that the
• 1:12:30
  storm was slowing. Now you've been on radio, y'all part of the emergency
• 1:12:34
  network team, all right, so you got a responsibility. I know that
• 1:12:38
  because I'm I'm part of it too. As a school, we're part of
• 1:12:40
  it, absolutely, right, they can come grab you any time and say,
• 1:12:45
  hey, we need to get this message out. Okay, So understanding
• 1:12:47
  that, the National Weather Service said later on in the evening some you know,
• 1:12:53
  around nine o'clock somewhere at that time, that the storm was going too
• 1:12:55
  slow. Now I'm not a meteorologist, but if they say three to six
• 1:13:00
  and it's slowing, that means it's now coming into the time that we'll ride
• 1:13:05
  to school now, right, bus windows already at six right, if you're
• 1:13:11
  now, let's just say it's a half an hour delayed. My first students
• 1:13:14
  a getting dropped off at six thirty, We're already in it. So for
• 1:13:17
  us, we were already sheltering in place on campus already. Okay, I
• 1:13:25
  can tell you this, Rob Nukletola, it's got a kid at my school.
• 1:13:30
  Rob Neuctota at five o'clock in the morning said get off the road.
• 1:13:34
  We still had the ability to go ahead and cancel things, and I said
• 1:13:39
  take the hit. I would I promise you pressing I would have still up
• 1:13:43
  there and said he did the right thing. You just cancel it or say
• 1:13:46
  we'll delay it whatever. Don't be out on the roads, which was also
• 1:13:49
  a dangerous thing for our bus drivers, right, So the drivers are in
• 1:13:54
  danger, even the other cars that are out there. Right, We usually
• 1:13:58
  we have a rule thirty five miles an hour. You're not supposed to have
• 1:14:00
  those busses on the road. That's too dangerous. The wind is too high.
• 1:14:03
  Even as heavy as a bus is above thirty five, the wind can
• 1:14:06
  topple. Yes, yes, a lot of yes, it's top heavy,
• 1:14:12
  right, and and so you know, so that's why I said, I
• 1:14:15
  just want to kind of give the facts. It became even more frustrating,
• 1:14:19
  right, So some of my parents out there, they know this. So
• 1:14:23
  we were actually doing AP testing, okay, And I made the argument,
• 1:14:28
  hey, let our kids finish their test. And they're more than halfway done
• 1:14:30
  because if we cancel, like a lot of our kids, they had to
• 1:14:33
  come back after graduation to finish up AP test that got canceled. They said,
• 1:14:39
  no, everybody's got to go. And I said, but right,
• 1:14:41
  you know, but right now the weather is like where we were, it
• 1:14:44
  was bad on the south end first, but in the north end it became
• 1:14:46
  worse afterwards, right, And I'm like, why would I send them out
• 1:14:50
  now? This is a level five shelter. That's not we do that even
• 1:14:54
  with lunch sometimes like the weather's too bad, we said, hey, we're
• 1:14:56
  going to hold you guys off, and we have kids like, well,
• 1:14:58
  I got to get to work. Have you lawyer called me? Your kids
• 1:15:00
  will tell you. I'll tell them that had them call me because I cannot
• 1:15:03
  send you out. I'm responsible for you if I put you on that Like
• 1:15:09
  risk management is going to come and say, we're probably getting ready to move
• 1:15:12
  you out of school because you let these kids go doing the weather emergency.
• 1:15:15
  Right, So we take that very seriously. I mean, like, first
• 1:15:17
  of all, we're already talking about young drivers, right, and you're adding
• 1:15:23
  close to childs high school. Right. I tell folks, I said,
• 1:15:27
  look at the beginning of the day when they go out at lunch, at
• 1:15:29
  the end of the day, probably not the place you want to be unless
• 1:15:32
  your business to be at school, right, you know, find somewhere else
• 1:15:35
  to go. But you know, I just think that when you're talking,
• 1:15:41
  when you're going back to the autonomy with the principles, right, they have
• 1:15:45
  to have some autonomy because with forty six school sites, you can't micromanage them
• 1:15:51
  all and you'll be unsuccessful trying to do that. What you should be doing
• 1:15:56
  is building up the leadership capacity of those different printsp right. You should have
• 1:16:01
  you know, mentor principles and principals has been successful, right, Who then
• 1:16:08
  they can talk to, because you got to have somebody just like that mentor
• 1:16:10
  teacher. You got to have somebody you ask the dumb question to, because
• 1:16:13
  to you read that moment, you're like, God, this is dumb,
• 1:16:15
  and I don't want to say this out loud, but you need to ask
• 1:16:16
  it. You need an answer, and they need to be able to call
• 1:16:19
  me and know that I'm not going to put them on blast because they asked
• 1:16:21
  me that question. I also got to sit there and be as a as
• 1:16:25
  a leader who's been a veteran, be empathetic to that said, man,
• 1:16:28
  that's that same dumb question years ago when I first took over, Right,
• 1:16:32
  I mean, because you do you question everything when you finally you know,
• 1:16:35
  I tell other you know, when we have teachers who are becoming leaders,
• 1:16:41
  you know, I always say to them, when you're a principal, when
• 1:16:43
  you turn around, there's nobody else there, You're it, right, and
• 1:16:47
  it's an awesome responsibility. You go read those state statutes, most of them
• 1:16:51
  for principles. It can be such an intimidating thing. But that's why you
• 1:16:56
  work on the processes and you work on your mindset. Why do you make
• 1:16:59
  decisions? And that's why even when I'm coaching up my teachers want to become
• 1:17:01
  administrators. I bring them in and I say, ask about the decisions.
• 1:17:05
  Let's walk through it. Right, do you do things a certain way?
• 1:17:09
  Like I said, my thing is like, you want your kids safe,
• 1:17:13
  you want them to be able to learn, you want to be approachable.
• 1:17:15
  Like say, you know there are things that in year one when I came
• 1:17:19
  in, they have evolved greatly over twelve years, Right, We've learned to
• 1:17:25
  do things differently, Like don't just be stuck. I mean I'll give an
• 1:17:29
  example. I mean you know this from being I mean you know you your
• 1:17:32
  step kids, right, I mean like they were great, but you probably
• 1:17:38
  remember this the first couple of years, like between I think through I think
• 1:17:44
  the first year with my first year, the summer twenty twelve, we didn't
• 1:17:47
  give out schedules to the first day of school. Now, that was something
• 1:17:50
  doctor Cox had in place, right. I didn't like that just because the
• 1:17:57
  kids and parents are kind of trapped. Right, if you already got the
• 1:18:00
  schedule. There's only so many days, and you can only change that schedule
• 1:18:02
  so much. You know, we changed it, and by two years later
• 1:18:06
  we were giving out the schedules weeks in advance. Right now, parents the
• 1:18:11
  same mad, but it was mad and now I've got a chance to change,
• 1:18:15
  and now we got a chance to adjust it, right or I thought,
• 1:18:18
  this is what we had, well, you know, and then you
• 1:18:20
  can explain, well, we we only could have you know, thirty get
• 1:18:24
  into this class, and we had to have a cut off somewhere. So
• 1:18:26
  we went with your second and third option. But you know I had to,
• 1:18:30
  you know, like as a leader, you helped the school evolve over
• 1:18:32
  time to do different things, you know, to respond differently to the parents,
• 1:18:35
  because you know, parents want the schedule so that they can ease their
• 1:18:40
  concerns. You know, just like when we do we do student tours,
• 1:18:43
  right and everybody says, well, why do you split up the kids and
• 1:18:46
  the parents? And I said, well, you're gonna walk together at orientation
• 1:18:51
  when you're doing a student visit tour. I need the student to get used
• 1:18:55
  to seeing this campus on their own, because like you and now, when
• 1:18:58
  we've gone with our kids somewhere we're peppering in their ear. You're looking at
• 1:19:00
  this, you're doing this. They can't concentrate. They actually need to be
• 1:19:03
  with their peers. They need to see what this campus looks like. Okay,
• 1:19:06
  can I get from that building that building in five minutes? Now,
• 1:19:10
  at first it looks like you can. Now, when you're been there two
• 1:19:14
  years, you know I can easily get that. I can get there in
• 1:19:15
  two or three minutes. But it's helping them get perspective. And everybody has
• 1:19:19
  to get through their anxiety. The parent has a certain level anxiety, which
• 1:19:23
  is why we actually have to walk to campus. Oh my gosh, this
• 1:19:26
  place is big. It's my baby going to make it right. So we
• 1:19:30
  have to know. You have to honor that they have anxiety, and it's
• 1:19:33
  part of our job to try to help them relax it. So if you're
• 1:19:36
  seeing it. That's why we've kept list serve. This has been a big
• 1:19:40
  discussion going on. All the other schools have lost their list. Sir,
• 1:19:44
  we pay for ours now. I think it's us in Lincoln. We still
• 1:19:45
  have ours because we pay for our own service. But the district is going
• 1:19:48
  through focus. I will tell you this. If you're on our list,
• 1:19:53
  serve. I don't know if you are. I don't know if any of
• 1:19:54
  your staff members on the Child's list er, but I like y'all being on
• 1:19:57
  the list serve. When we're doing a fundraiser, I want you to know
• 1:20:00
  about it. If we're doing we did, uh, we did. We
• 1:20:06
  got supplies for God be we after they had the flooding there. Right,
• 1:20:12
  We've done Title I sporting goods. I can't do that just with my parents,
• 1:20:17
  grandparents, community members. They brought up stuff too. When we decide
• 1:20:21
  not to want to communicate with our public, that's the worst thing we do.
• 1:20:25
  And we were talking about like if if you want people believing in the
• 1:20:29
  schools that you have, you got to communicate with them, and you got
• 1:20:30
  to tell them the good, bad and indifference. Gotta tell them everything.
• 1:20:34
  Don't shy away from I mean, look, my parents get mad if I
• 1:20:38
  don't tell them fast enough that if we had if we had ambulance up there
• 1:20:41
  with somebody for the nosebleed. We get on that. We tell them we
• 1:20:45
  sent a lot of messages, but that lets them know we communicate and we
• 1:20:48
  don't. We don't shy away from it, you know. And that's why
• 1:20:50
  I said good, badter indifferent. You said the word dumb about something,
• 1:20:56
  and I immediately and don't form an opinion about this, but it immediately triggered
• 1:21:02
  one thing in my mind, the logo. Oh boy, all right,
• 1:21:09
  I don't know your position on it. We haven't talked about this. You're
• 1:21:14
  making me giggle man, all right, there are there are so many layers
• 1:21:17
  of questions that I could throw but in the interest of time, yes,
• 1:21:23
  sir, you know you laughed. Oh why, it's absurd. So let's
• 1:21:30
  just on a on a couple of different levels, real quick. So let's
• 1:21:33
  just do let's do the political level, right, So I'm his opponent,
• 1:21:36
  But here's a here's a quick bit of advice. Don't change anything doing an
• 1:21:40
  election year. Okay, that'd be just one. Like everybody's like, why
• 1:21:45
  are we doing it right now? We got other things that we're distracted with.
• 1:21:46
  Well, there are obvious questions which I will ask if given the opportunity,
• 1:21:50
  about the connection between the person that was hired to do the logo and
• 1:21:55
  and oh yes, other responsibilities. But but so here you go. So,
• 1:22:01
  so here's the next part. Even if you know I've heard you know,
• 1:22:08
  I've heard someone say I didn't even care about the logo. Yeah,
• 1:22:11
  but the logo belongs to us, the people. You got to ask the
• 1:22:14
  people first of all, do you want something different, right, that's the
• 1:22:17
  first question to ask. And we did a proposal correct what we're thinking.
• 1:22:20
  Would you go out to the communey? Now, that was one of the
• 1:22:23
  things he said. So we had this meeting called District Advisory Council and he
• 1:22:27
  and our way in there. I actually still serving him, he did superintendent.
• 1:22:30
  So he was in there and he was taught this is right after they
• 1:22:32
  had already approved it, and he was getting torn up and he was trying
• 1:22:35
  to say, well, we did go out to the community, and I
• 1:22:38
  said, no, we didn't. I just had to confront him. I
• 1:22:42
  don't even care because I have to tell the truth. No, we didn't.
• 1:22:45
  We did not go out to the public. Now they said they had
• 1:22:46
  these little groups. No, I will tell you between your radio station,
• 1:22:51
  every radio station town, between the TV, between newspapers, between websites,
• 1:22:57
  just between Facebook. If we were talking about it, it would have been
• 1:23:00
  the talk because everybody will say, let's get the kids involved, helping them
• 1:23:02
  come out. Design. That's if we wanted. Because the first thing is
• 1:23:05
  you got to decide do you need it. I will say, doing a
• 1:23:09
  budget crunch and trying to get kids to come back into the school, getting
• 1:23:14
  a new logo is not it. Now, what they were talking about was
• 1:23:18
  rebranding. If you're rebranding, you changed the logo and you changed the name
• 1:23:24
  like went on. Like on my page, I talked about Comcast going from
• 1:23:27
  Comcast to Infinity because you said Comcast that was almost like a curse word.
• 1:23:31
  They went to Infinity and they changed their logo because that was called rebranding.
• 1:23:34
  Well, we went from clear Channel to iHeart Yes, right, and it
• 1:23:40
  was softer. I mean, just think about it. It kind of you
• 1:23:43
  know, we rolled out an app that was called the iHeart, and then
• 1:23:46
  we brought the company along because the app was driving so much popularity. We
• 1:23:54
  then aligned the name of the company with the with the app. Right,
• 1:23:58
  So you then had the evidence. You had your people telling you this was
• 1:24:00
  the way to go. We had nothing. And then the committee, which
• 1:24:03
  is a district advisor council that should review everything, brought before the school board.
• 1:24:08
  It didn't go before them. They showed it to the principals in January,
• 1:24:12
  and I'm getting ready to tell you. The reaction of the principals,
• 1:24:13
  you're ready. They just stared. They stared. It was silence. I
• 1:24:19
  wouldn't present on me. Yeah, I'm not in the room, So you
• 1:24:23
  tell me if I'm wrong. My initial thought would be there are schools that
• 1:24:28
  are not as well resourced as childs oh. I was sitting there saying,
• 1:24:32
  ah, one hundred thousand dollars would have provided fill in the blank. Well
• 1:24:38
  let's go further. The one hundred thousand dollars just for the research and the
• 1:24:42
  design of the logo. That's the one hundred thousand dollars, right, you're
• 1:24:46
  not even get it's going to be north of a million dollars to outfit the
• 1:24:51
  vehicles, the buildings, all the different stuff. That right, that's the
• 1:24:57
  part I was upset about. You if if you're in a budget crunch.
• 1:25:00
  So he stood there before the border, He got in front of the lectern
• 1:25:03
  and he says, we're in a budget crunch. This is after the teachers
• 1:25:06
  got their raise. He said, we're now in a budget crunch. We
• 1:25:10
  got a budget crisis, and we still go with this logo that should have
• 1:25:13
  been scrapped. You tell the company, I'm sorry, we got a budget
• 1:25:16
  crunch, you don't go with a logo. And I will tell you this,
• 1:25:18
  and this is no I say this and all do kind. Parents have
• 1:25:25
  the right to take their kids where they want for education. That is their
• 1:25:28
  right. But I will say this, if if the logo is as effective
• 1:25:34
  as you think it is or it is going to be, has it brought
• 1:25:39
  kids back into the district. And I would dare you to say, ask
• 1:25:44
  ask our teachers and our leadership who have kids that don't go to Leon County
• 1:25:46
  schools Because we listen, we got teachers, and we got we got leaders
• 1:25:51
  going oh wow, exactly. And and I'll just be honest with you,
• 1:25:57
  I don't like the way it looks. Well, the fact is your work
• 1:25:59
  the district is they're facing an exodus. We got ten percent or better of
• 1:26:04
  the students that have left in recent years. It's not going to get better
• 1:26:08
  anytime soon. The prevailing currents are just what they are. The state has
• 1:26:14
  availed parents of the resources to move their kids to the school they want.
• 1:26:17
  So this is the thing is that. So what you're discussing is how do
• 1:26:23
  we meet Let's just say it's a crisis. How do you meet it?
• 1:26:27
  I will tell you this. First of all, it's just like you remember
• 1:26:31
  if you went back just five years ago, so let's say it's twenty nineteen,
• 1:26:35
  there was arguments between virtual educations and in person education. Guess what the
• 1:26:40
  pandemic did? It said person is better. Okay, I just tell you
• 1:26:46
  that part of marketing our schools is we haven't marketed property and we haven't asked
• 1:26:51
  the right people like you know what we could have done. Ask the parents
• 1:26:56
  that it's two sets of parents. You can ask ask the parents who've always
• 1:26:59
  been admitted to Leon County schools, why did you choose it? And then
• 1:27:03
  from that we also need to determine what do we do to make it better
• 1:27:08
  to emphasize those things that we do well, and then the things that were
• 1:27:11
  not, how do we make those better to make it more attractive? Right,
• 1:27:14
  Because listen, if you could save a whole lot of money, even
• 1:27:16
  with of ours, if you can save money, you can go to your
• 1:27:17
  local school with all the resources that we have, a lot of people would
• 1:27:21
  choose that. But the second one would be there are parents who do choose
• 1:27:25
  to leave private school and come into public school. But I will tell you
• 1:27:30
  this. Back in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, I had a parent who
• 1:27:34
  had left Holy comforter well actually it was they weren't going to go to McLay
• 1:27:39
  okay, and nothing against them, but they and I went to the superintendent
• 1:27:43
  and I said, hey, I got a parent who knows some other parents,
• 1:27:45
  and they actually want to advocate for public schools of why it's a great
• 1:27:48
  option for them to choose. And you know, of course a lot of
• 1:27:51
  parents say, you know, y'all actually treat us like they do in private
• 1:27:54
  school, which I said, we should. There are things that from the
• 1:27:57
  different kinds of schools. They're like best practice. You should be borrowing right
• 1:28:01
  first of all, returning calls right, first class, you know all those
• 1:28:05
  things. And when parents feel like they're not getting it, that's what they're
• 1:28:09
  gonna do. They move with their feet, especially when you've been giving money.
• 1:28:12
  They're not gonna move with their feet. You gotta respond differently. You
• 1:28:15
  can't sit there and say we're gonna do the same thing. So we're gonna
• 1:28:17
  put out a logo, but we're gonna do the same thing. That doesn't
• 1:28:19
  make any sense. The actions have to be different. It's not the logo.
• 1:28:24
  The logo was fine. We have to be differently. Even if I
• 1:28:27
  feel like, well, I've been successful at my school, but I still
• 1:28:29
  need to do difference. That's when when I was going back before talking about
• 1:28:32
  Nick Saban. You can't rest on the fact that you've won six titles.
• 1:28:36
  I got to try to keep improving. If you're Kirby smart, you've won
• 1:28:41
  titles, but you got to keep improving, right, That's that's the challenge
• 1:28:45
  when you're a leader, like you can't rest on what you've done. You
• 1:28:48
  know, I think I think the county has and I'm gonna say things that
• 1:28:54
  that my audience will expect me to say, but it is not recognized by
• 1:29:00
  the majority of the school board and this district incidents as it relates to the
• 1:29:08
  LGBTQ issues gender issues that happened at schools in the northeast part of town.
• 1:29:15
  Parents want no part of that. They just don't want any part of a
• 1:29:21
  school district that's going to not rein in ideology infecting the classroom, the library,
• 1:29:31
  the resource centers, whatever it might be. That's the biggest driver of
• 1:29:36
  why people are leaving the school district is they don't trust that their kids are
• 1:29:43
  going to just simply be allowed to go to school and learn, there is
• 1:29:48
  a feeling and oftentimes, Joe in my seat, I see issues where national
• 1:29:56
  issues they try to make them local and they're not. It's not problem in
• 1:30:00
  our community. This one is. This one's been a problem in our school
• 1:30:03
  district, and ignoring it and pretending that it's not causes parents to just be
• 1:30:10
  distrustful. Well, give me a like a like an example, and then
• 1:30:15
  well what happened to dear Lake Middle School that led to a federal lawsuit.
• 1:30:18
  Now you could argue it needs to be a state lawsuit, and maybe it
• 1:30:23
  will be. But where administrators and staff are transitioning a child without the parents'
• 1:30:30
  knowledge, that just can't happen. That just can't happen. And the district
• 1:30:35
  didn't really address that appropriately, and I'm not sure still has addressed it appropriately.
• 1:30:45
  Staff members at schools putting up inappropriate posters for ideology, whether it's gay
• 1:30:50
  pride or whatever it might be. It doesn't belong in a classroom anymore than
• 1:30:56
  me putting up a Ronald Reagan poster back in the day would have belonged.
• 1:31:00
  Yeah, i'll give you, I'll give you, And I were in school,
• 1:31:03
  I would bet you didn't know the political leanings of most of your teachers.
• 1:31:06
  No, I knew none of mine. As matter of fact, I'll
• 1:31:10
  give you an example that I've had at each of the schools that I've been
• 1:31:13
  at. So on the election years and usually even the year before, I
• 1:31:17
  tell all my staff, I said, you can put whatever you want on
• 1:31:20
  your car, right, your car is your own personal vehicle. But inside
• 1:31:25
  your room and your clothing, there's no political paraphernalia. Right. So I
• 1:31:30
  remember I had a staff member they had a button you just gotta go,
• 1:31:35
  right. You know, I don't care you can't wear it, I said,
• 1:31:39
  because the moment you do that, well is no First Amendment right to
• 1:31:43
  free speech is employee correct, And that's a misnomer that people and so and
• 1:31:46
  that goes with your clothing, you know all that, right, No posters,
• 1:31:50
  nothing, And I don't care what side of the alue on like like
• 1:31:53
  like for exactly, I just don't and so like, look, we got
• 1:31:58
  to follow the last So that's one of the things. You know, you're
• 1:32:00
  a constitutional officer. You gotta follow the law right now, even whether you
• 1:32:04
  agree or disagree, because you could also say I don't think the law goes
• 1:32:06
  far enough. I think the laws would be less. That's not that's not
• 1:32:10
  your part of it doesn't matter. You follow the law right and you follow
• 1:32:14
  your local policies all that. And I think this also goes to why I
• 1:32:17
  think we need to return to community conversations. Right even the parents, Like
• 1:32:23
  even if I think they're going to be hostile, I gotta still meet with
• 1:32:26
  them. They should be able to see me in an open form. Now
• 1:32:29
  I do the Facebook lives, but I mean, like we get in the
• 1:32:31
  auditorium and you come there and it's a hot mic, and ask me anything
• 1:32:35
  and then let us talk through it, because you should get feedback and you
• 1:32:40
  know, because sometimes you know. And I can't really speak on an individual
• 1:32:44
  issue because I wasn't involved with it, but I can just tell you this.
• 1:32:46
  We we follow the law. You know kids. You know, when
• 1:32:54
  you have kids on campus, there are listen, we're statue of liberty.
• 1:32:57
  We serve all kinds you know of kids. What's been known is that here
• 1:33:02
  in the state of Florida, parent rights is it's listed. So it's listed
• 1:33:11
  what you have to do and the things you have to do, and so
• 1:33:13
  like we have and I will tell you just for most guidance counselors. It
• 1:33:17
  was an adjustment in their kind of creed that they are that they were taught
• 1:33:24
  as far as like, uh, in the past, it was conversations that
• 1:33:30
  were immediate to the health and safety of the student was something that you reported,
• 1:33:34
  right, But uh, now you know it says if a student says,
• 1:33:41
  hey, I'm coming out to you, you've got to notify the parents,
• 1:33:45
  right. And I will tell you there was good questions because I had
• 1:33:48
  questions from some of my status like well does that go even with like with
• 1:33:51
  religion, does it you know, like because there's other important topics that come
• 1:33:55
  inside of a household and how a kid is feeling as they're evolving as a
• 1:33:59
  person. And you know, now I tell every kid you got to listen
• 1:34:02
  to what your parents say. You live in their house. And I tell
• 1:34:04
  my saif that don't mean you have to agree with Just like here at school,
• 1:34:08
  we got rules. You don't have to like every rule, you just
• 1:34:10
  have to follow them. Follow and so like us as the employees, same
• 1:34:15
  thing for us. We don't have to like every law, but we have
• 1:34:19
  to follow it. And like I said, as a constitution officer, I
• 1:34:23
  have to do that. Now we can still have discussions about rules or sometimes
• 1:34:28
  I think the frustration sometimes that's been inside the school level, and if I
• 1:34:30
  was talking to the governor or even to the Commission of Education, would be
• 1:34:33
  the vagueness sometimes of a rule, because we do need clarity because as administrators
• 1:34:41
  we live in gray so when these moments come up, I actually have to
• 1:34:44
  know where that line is so that I never get my staff on the other
• 1:34:47
  side of that line correct. So out of respect, that's why we ask
• 1:34:50
  the clarifying questions. Now, if the superintendent and the governor, or the
• 1:34:55
  superintendent and the Commissioner of Education or having these back and forth, kids will
• 1:35:00
  losing out because they don't want to talk to us, and then we don't
• 1:35:01
  want to talk to them. We should have a line of communication that's opening.
• 1:35:06
  If I have a disagreement, it shouldn't be out here in the space
• 1:35:10
  for everybody to be talking about. We talk about it in the background,
• 1:35:14
  you talk about it tactfully, and I bring real points, right. I'm
• 1:35:16
  not doing a side show. I'm not just trying to get media articles written
• 1:35:20
  about me just so I can try to get disappeal from everyone, because that's
• 1:35:25
  what you end up doing, and it doesn't help any kid, you know,
• 1:35:30
  but we need more discussions between the parents. I should be approachable to
• 1:35:33
  them. And that's why I brought out community County. Remember those, right,
• 1:35:36
  that's where you go out and form. I mean a lot of our
• 1:35:40
  elected leaders aren't doing that right now. You need to be standing in front
• 1:35:44
  of the citizens. And that doesn't mean it needs to be every night,
• 1:35:46
  but hey, once a quarter something like that. Other thutes, yes,
• 1:35:51
  because it's not fair. So you've gone up there, You've done the whole
• 1:35:55
  three minute things. The three minutes is not long enough when you're talking about
• 1:35:59
  really getting down and you got to say, in my service to you,
• 1:36:02
  I'll come out to your neighborhood and to me if we af we're saying,
• 1:36:06
  hey, we got to help lift up some of these other communities. And
• 1:36:10
  if we're also worried about very opinionated communities. Because the community you live in,
• 1:36:14
  I will say, people will voice their opinion. Right, you can't
• 1:36:17
  be afraid of either one. You gotta go see You gotta go see them.
• 1:36:20
  You gotta go see the community where maybe they don't come out as often,
• 1:36:23
  but say hey, I'm right here, I'm approachable, right, you
• 1:36:25
  can see me you you can come and touch me. If we can't do
• 1:36:30
  that, how we know we're really serving people? Right? I need to
• 1:36:33
  hear you need to hear dissent. And why are you dessented? Like you
• 1:36:38
  know you say, just like I said, give me an example, right,
• 1:36:41
  you know, so I can really understand what's what is your issue?
• 1:36:45
  What it's like? You know, because just like you said, I know
• 1:36:47
  people who have left because of this, right, and even from them,
• 1:36:51
  I'll say, maam, I would want to get some more concrete examples.
• 1:36:54
  And so you got one or two decisions. You either say I just accept
• 1:36:58
  that they left, sure, or I say, okay, is this something
• 1:37:01
  I can do to change the way we operate so that they can feel better
• 1:37:06
  about the system that we have. Well, one thing we can agree on
• 1:37:10
  is that any business that loses ten percent of the market share needs to be
• 1:37:14
  looking at itself. Yes, they do the mirror, and you start from
• 1:37:17
  yourself, Like before I ask anybody else to do anything different, I gotta
• 1:37:20
  start with me. Last question if you get the job is superintendent of education.
• 1:37:30
  Let's set aside the first staff meeting. Okay, what's job one?
• 1:37:40
  So job one? I mean, like if we just talking about the first
• 1:37:43
  day. You know, oh, just what is the number one thing I
• 1:37:45
  need? Is the most important thing that's going to stay on the whiteboard,
• 1:37:49
  stay on the memos, stay on the board until it's solved. It's one
• 1:37:56
  of those slash because their time to get resked if not solved. So it
• 1:38:00
  is, so it's it's a slash. One is the improved school safety because
• 1:38:06
  we didn't I mean, we got into it some, but across our campuses
• 1:38:11
  there's just too many incidents and we've got to get that solved. I really
• 1:38:15
  feel they should be more foot soldiers and I say it like that, but
• 1:38:17
  you should have more hall monitors on the campuses. If you can prevent kids
• 1:38:20
  from getting in the fights, that keeps them in school. People think when
• 1:38:24
  you have more hall monitors, that means that's more ways I'm trying to get
• 1:38:27
  kids in trouble. I'm actually trying to diffuse more situations. Yeah, that
• 1:38:30
  too, but slash the student academic achievement. You've been a principal. One
• 1:38:38
  of the things that no, I wasn't a principal. I just ran o,
• 1:38:41
  so use a medicine. So you so you were okay? So you
• 1:38:44
  are you always saw the principal. All right, So for that principle,
• 1:38:51
  right, the teaching and learning for those students that never comes off that board.
• 1:38:57
  Actually, even when you think you've solved it, no you have not.
• 1:39:00
  That's why I said the improving. You're continuing to improve and you have
• 1:39:03
  to look at new issues. So just like as you've attacked one issue and
• 1:39:08
  you say, hey, we've made this better, there's something else you got
• 1:39:11
  to go get, and then there's something else you gotta go get. And
• 1:39:14
  by the way, as you saw those other things, you got to maintain
• 1:39:15
  them, and then you got to continue moving up. Does that does the
• 1:39:20
  improvement in students have to begin with K through three? Because what I sense
• 1:39:28
  and what I hear and what I read and emails from teachers not just locally
• 1:39:32
  but across the country, that right me when I when I talk about education,
• 1:39:38
  is that we're spending so much time doing remedial because kids have been passed
• 1:39:42
  and they weren't ready. They weren't ready to be passed. They weren't they
• 1:39:45
  hadn't mastered the basics of kindergarten. So let me just say this, and
• 1:39:49
  I've said this on my Facebook live, so those who have listened to me.
• 1:39:53
  They know I've said this. So the education of kids starts prior to
• 1:40:00
  a kid even being conceived. Absolutely, So the first thing you have to
• 1:40:03
  do is you have to have a more literate public, right. I mean,
• 1:40:10
  the more people know that gives them more opportunities they can make adjustments,
• 1:40:15
  right, you know, stable housing situations, right, because one of the
• 1:40:19
  worst things is when kids have to move around a lot. But you can't
• 1:40:23
  fix that. You can't you can't do. But there are things you can't
• 1:40:27
  address. And so for example, helping people learn how to read, believe
• 1:40:31
  it or not, that actually goes in it because they're going to have kids.
• 1:40:35
  So the more I remember I was talking about building the parent capacity,
• 1:40:39
  and I know a lot of times people saying, well, that's not talking
• 1:40:41
  about the classroom. It absolutely is. So if I if I help build
• 1:40:45
  the parent capacity. So when I used to be an elementary principal, the
• 1:40:48
  toughest time was when a kid came in and they only had maybe a max
• 1:40:50
  of three hundred vocapulary words. Right. That meant in that birth to five
• 1:40:59
  years, they really had only gained three hundred words when they should be like
• 1:41:03
  three thousand. Sure, Okay, that means we as a school district,
• 1:41:09
  we got to start touching people or to even bring their kids here. Like
• 1:41:12
  I said, I think like a coach, if you're waiting for them to
• 1:41:15
  show up, it's actually too late. So the time before, as they're
• 1:41:20
  having their kids and they're talking with teammates or the capital, you know,
• 1:41:25
  like we should be talking with them. When you have your kid, Hey,
• 1:41:29
  here's the things you need to work on. Here's the things you need
• 1:41:30
  to look at. But also put it in young adult being a parent terminology.
• 1:41:38
  Put it in the thirty zero terminology. And then if they're the older
• 1:41:42
  parent, maybe the first kid they're having us in their forties. But you
• 1:41:45
  still need to talk to them about what to do with their kid and have
• 1:41:46
  a conversation and tell them and then have resources where they can come. And
• 1:41:51
  then after you have the kid, you stay, you keep communicating with them.
• 1:41:56
  All of that is about getting them ready for that kindergarten time, right.
• 1:42:00
  What your teachers to tell you is true. When they're behind, it
• 1:42:02
  is difficult for them to learn. And then when you can't learn, you
• 1:42:08
  act out more. Well not just that Joe. You then are set up
• 1:42:12
  to have to do social promotions because their size because their age, and you
• 1:42:16
  don't you know, teachers don't want to hold them back or parents don't want
• 1:42:19
  them to be helped, but they're not ready. Well that's why I said,
• 1:42:24
  there's a lot of work on there. And then you also, you
• 1:42:27
  know, and it's really the two sided thing, right, you know,
• 1:42:29
  you have to say, yes, parents got to do things with their kids.
• 1:42:32
  Kids have to be ready, but we also have to make sure the
• 1:42:34
  lessons that we're giving the kid relates to the kid sure. And that's why
• 1:42:38
  I said, you know, if a kid is from the country, you
• 1:42:41
  talk about the country, you use those in examples to help teach the kid.
• 1:42:45
  And I tell any teacher, if you don't have the experience, you
• 1:42:46
  need to go get it. You need to go find out, like teach
• 1:42:50
  the lesson to the kids sitting in your seats. Don't add like as you
• 1:42:54
  sitting in the seat, it's them sitting in the seats, Like what perspective
• 1:42:57
  are they coming from? How will they understand it? But we have to
• 1:43:00
  we got to engage early, we got to engage often, and we got
• 1:43:05
  to continue. And you don't, you know, it's almost like you're pressing
• 1:43:09
  the gas. You don't come off the gas. Those things will help those
• 1:43:13
  situations greatly, all right. I mean like part of our turn around was
• 1:43:16
  having our conversations with our you know, our early learning centers, right like,
• 1:43:21
  making sure we had a relationship with them. You know, it was
• 1:43:25
  not you know, our place to try to you know what we all I
• 1:43:28
  could do is tell them what they had to be ready for in kindergarten.
• 1:43:31
  As a high school principal, one of the things that I talked to we
• 1:43:33
  even talked to middle school parents. We had a you know, like a
• 1:43:35
  high school night is we're talking to the colleges. Every year there's this Universe
• 1:43:44
  Registrars meeting that they have, so all the registrars from all the state universities
• 1:43:46
  here in the state of Florida. My curriculum person, my counselors, they
• 1:43:50
  go every year. They drive what we do. Also, we talk.
• 1:43:59
  I been I've been with the chamber since I've been the principal. Child's we've
• 1:44:02
  been part of the chamber. I actually made us a part of the chamber
• 1:44:05
  separately from Leon County School. You know why, if you look on our
• 1:44:09
  listener, we always are setting out job notices to our kids. You got
• 1:44:13
  to tell So you got to tell them about the higher learning world, and
• 1:44:15
  you gotta tell them about the real work world, the opportunities that are out
• 1:44:18
  there. How are you going to have gainful employment? Right? Like,
• 1:44:23
  it's important like those things drive what we do inside the building where they're going,
• 1:44:28
  because you always say you got to know where you're going, so that
• 1:44:30
  you know because sometimes they'll say, well, why are you guys talking to
• 1:44:33
  you know, the kids about this, Because that's that's the next step after
• 1:44:36
  this. We got to know where we're going. And so we also then
• 1:44:40
  articulate we talk to the middle schools and we talk to our elementary schools.
• 1:44:44
  You got to start weaving in those concepts so this is not something new.
• 1:44:46
  When they go off, they've been built. They've been prepared for that.
• 1:44:49
  That feet of paths got to be as strong as it can be. In
• 1:44:53
  closing, what's the web web address? Where can people learn more? So
• 1:44:57
  it's elect Joe Burgess dot com. Elect Joe Burgens dot com and on there
• 1:45:02
  you will see my Facebook a link from my Facebook page or Instagram. I
• 1:45:09
  think ex is on it too. You're not going to see your name until
• 1:45:12
  the general election. That is correct, because you're running as an independent.
• 1:45:15
  I'm an independent. I've always been an independent, so I know sometimes people
• 1:45:16
  ask that question, but I've always been I've been an independen since I was
• 1:45:19
  eighteen. And I think you and I we talked about this years ago,
• 1:45:23
  but I've read the uh so. I was moved by the second inaugural address
• 1:45:29
  of George Washington and his farewell address his second you know, from his from
• 1:45:33
  his second term, and from that, I just believed in being an independent.
• 1:45:40
  You know, I appreciate people who are in particular parties. I think
• 1:45:43
  you be where your heart is. Like for me, though I like to
• 1:45:46
  research, I don't want anybody telling me how to think, you know.
• 1:45:51
  I think people have fought, you know, too hard to give me opportunities
• 1:45:56
  that maybe I wouldn't have had years before, for me to just give my
• 1:45:59
  thoughts way. Which is why I love having the chance to come in and
• 1:46:02
  dialogue with you. Because there are things sitting here to them saying, you
• 1:46:06
  know, you really made me think about some things. That is what I
• 1:46:10
  love like, that is what we should be doing. We should never be
• 1:46:12
  afraid of this. We have events like the longest table you sit down,
• 1:46:15
  sit down with somebody else who may be so different from you you'd be surprised.
• 1:46:19
  You might learn something, or you may find out you got a lot
• 1:46:21
  in common, you know, or they're dead wrong. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:46:27
  Sometimes you gotta put your foot down, say man, I'm sorry. I'm
• 1:46:30
  not coming off of this too. Thanks for coming in, yes, thank
• 1:46:36
  you for having me.