Andrea Messina and Danielle Thomas FSBA - Risky Benefits Podcast S5 E9

In this episode of Risky Benefits, we speak with Andrea Messina and Danielle Thomas from the Florida School Boards Association. Andrea and Danielle provide insights on the outcomes of the 2025 legislative session, emphasizing important changes in school start times and school safety measures. They discuss the implementation challenges and financial implications for school districts. Additionally, they address the increasing need for schools to adapt to emerging technologies and the importance of building relationships with legislators. The discussion also touches on strategies for efficiently managing school resources amid evolving educational landscapes, including the role of benefits and support for staff in school districts.

To listen in and subscribe to more episodes, visit our website: fbmc.com/podcast.

Transcript

0:03

Hey, thank you for listening in to Risky Benefits, a podcast that informs you on all things benefits. We've got a saying around here, benefits isn't your main business. It's ours.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 0:16

Well good morning everyone. Thank you so much for listening to Risky Benefits and welcome to this week's episode. Today's episode is one that school leaders won't wanna miss. Our guests today are Andrea Messina and Danielle Thomas with the Florida School Board Association. Andrea has been a relentless advocate for Florida's public education system, and today she's here to walk us through the outcomes for the 2025 legislative session and what that means for school districts across the state. So welcome and thank you both for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. So before we get started, can you guys introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 0:50

Thank you. For sure. I'll start. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of the Florida School Boards Association, and it's really important that Dr. Danielle Thomas be with us here today since we're talking about the legislative session, and she is wholly charged with all of that responsibility in the association and on our behalf. So, as I was mentioning earlier, if something changed last night, I might not know, but Danielle certainly would. So just as a little background for some of your listeners, I'm a former high school English teacher, and then I served as a school board member in Charlotte. Then I association first as. Now as the Chief Executive Officer, and one of my great strengths is hiring is really smart people. Yeah. I, I wanna introduce Dr. Danielle Thomas and she can tell you a little bit about her background, which also goes into the schools. It does, it does. So thank you both so much for having us today. As Andrea mentioned, I'm Dr. Danielle Thomas director of Advocacy and Legislative services for the Florida School Boards Association. I spent almost 14 years with Volusia County Schools, mostly as an ESE teacher, fourth and fifth grade self-contained for the most part. Wow. So spent a lot of time there and then in the ESE department providing teachers. A child advocate through some volunteer work with Florida PTA. And that's what eventually led me into the legislative process and to this position with the Florida School Boards Association. So, it's been a little bit of a different journey, but absolutely ended up where I'm supposed to be. Very good.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 2:29

That's really good. Well, thank you both so much. And actually let's introduce Ray also. Ray has, I thought everybody knew Ray. So Ray, why don't you tell everyone who you're okay. I work with Fbmc. I'm a program manager, meaning that I work in a certain area. My focus is in the educational field, whether it's been in the colleges for about seven years and now in the k12, uh, arena, probably five or six years I think I've been attending all the F SBA conferences, executive board meetings, everything for a number of years Now. My background is actually banking for 25 years, but it was small town banking, which means I was involved in a lot of things including the school system. My wife is a career teacher with almost 40 years. Go all the way back to my dad. He was a school bus driver in Jefferson County. As the educational field has been something that's been very important to myself and. And before I came to Fbmc, I spent four years as the CFO of the Madison County School District. So I really got immersed there with all the relationships. I actually met Andrea back years ago in that capacity. But since I've been at FBMC and they're given me the opportunity to expand this work a lot with the school districts and try and figure out better models of their benefits, you know, both for medical and voluntary, how to mesh all that stuff together and really just kind of focus on them because the, I know from experience, the CFOs, HR directors, they do not have time in their daily schedule wearing many hats to really understand and focus on benefits and how it can so the consultants like us, myself, we need to come in to be able to bring them up to speed, keep up to date. I keep up with the legislative sessions, I keep up with everything going on there as much as I can in education. And as a CFO nerd, I guess you'd say? I'd say I actually keep up, yeah. I actually keep up with the FPS for the districts that I'm involved with and look at that, the not easiest part-time. So that does, when I, when I have a chance to meet with the school districts, that brings in a different perspective. The school board members are, have never encountered that before. Somebody that understands where their money's going or not going and how it has to be spent and what little bit of resources they have to actually put into the benefits and how it's a puzzle. You have to be creative and figure out how you can move this piece around, this piece to give the employees what they really need and deserve. Because that's one of the attractions of the school districts in my opinion, are the benefits and what that in addition to the pay, because the pay we know is at the whims of the legislative session and what they. And that is like a rollercoaster. And so they never know from year to year what they're gonna have to spend. And this is one area that they can hopefully glean some revenue from and rearrange as they need it.

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 5:33

Well, and as you know, the percent of the budget that goes to employees is the greatest single line item. So it's the one that we have to really bird, dog, and watch closely. We do, yeah. Very important.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 5:46

And it takes not only the school board members and staff, it takes the people in community and. So thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be here. Thanks. So let's start at the top Session has been packed with bills affecting everything from education funding to parental rights and school staffing. So what were some of the biggest headlines for the school districts this year?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 6:14

so a, a few big ones, especially for us and for that were really the, the key ones that our school districts were really focused on. The number one was middle school, high school start times. Yeah. Two years ago it was the priority of then house, speaker, renter. He understood and had gotten up to date on how important teen sleep is. And how our school district start times for our schools don't necessarily help teens in that sleep pattern. And so with his leadership, the legislature passed a school start times bill that what is due to be implemented July, 2026. So they gave us a three year glide path that says middle schools can start no later than 8:00 AM by July, 2026. And high schools can start no earlier than 8:30 AM So no earlier than eight for middle schools, no earlier than eight 30 for high schools. And so as our districts have been preparing for this implementation and taking a deep dive into this, they very quickly realized for a large variety of reasons that this was not gonna work for many of our districts. For our large urban districts, it is the expense of additional school buses, school bus drivers, which we already have a tremendous problem finding and a huge shortage of the impli, um, implications of traffic and the lack of infrastructure that's available for that increased traffic. When it comes to our small and rural districts, it's things like pushing the school start time back means school sports start later. Now we need to have lighting on the fields that we haven't needed to have lights for. So in a variety of different ways, no matter the size, shape, location of the district, we were seeing that there was gonna be a tremendous fiscal impact to the district for this implementation. Nevermind, we have a lot of families that were starting to really push back on this idea also. It was gonna be very difficult for some of them. Some of them it becomes then a childcare issue, other situations to where it just wasn't working. So it was one of our platform priorities for FSBA this year to ask for flexibility in the implementation of school start times. So the legislature has passed and we are currently as of today awaiting the governor's signature. He does have the bill currently needs to sign it by this coming Friday on this day that we record this. But it is to provide that flexibility to the district. So what the bill says is, we want you to implement this by July, 2026. If not, districts need to have public meetings in which information is shared with family and community members about the importance of late of sleep for teens and late start times. The impacts that that can have positively for our students. And really talk through and share that information as well as share proposals of what it would look like and the potential fiscal impact, as well as other impacts to the district. They can then submit all of that on a written report to the Department of Education. And as long as the Department of Education receives that report by July 1st, 2026, they're in compliance. Okay. Which is a huge win for our districts. In, in many ways. The other big piece of legislation that we followed very closely was also on our platform was around school safety. We've obviously done a tremendous amount around school safety here in the state of Florida over the last seven years or so. Understandably so, after the tragedy of Ary Stoneman Douglas and it sometimes some of the. New pieces that we put into legislation, then when we actually go to implement them, doesn't quite implement in the same way that it was intended. Right? Yeah. And so sometimes we have to come back and ask the legislature, Hey can we make some adjustments here? And so that was really our focus this year. We had a big school safety package from last session from the 2024 session. And part of that was every single door had to be locked, every single gate had to be locked or manned. It, there wasn't really a clarification on the time of that. It just kind of said while students were present which can mean a lot of different things. And all of our schools already have single point of entry. They already, like, it's already you know, only one way to be able to get onto campus. You have to be approved to get on campus and. This was now causing great angst for many of our districts. And for a lot of our schools just in the daily running of things because now everything was locked, everything had to be managed. There's obviously an expense with that, but there's also just flow of the school day was just really not working in a lot of ways. And so many of our members came to us and said, we, we need some, some changes Toand. Our schools to be as safe as possible, but this is really difficult to implement the way that it's, so we asked for some changes, asked for some clarification, some flexibility with that. And we have seen that in, in the school safety package that passed the legislature this year as well, again, awaiting the governor's signature. But hearing that that's gonna happen any day now. So we're just, we're thrilled to have seen that. We've continued to ask for continued flexibility when it comes to some things. Deregulation was a big topic of conversation last year in 2024. Uh, it was part of the agreement that the legislature came to the previous year on when we expanded school choice. Part of it was, we'll then we're also gonna take a deep dive at looking at deregulating our traditional public schools. The way President Pomo, who was a huge champion for this, put it was, if we're gonna increase competition, then we also need to untie the hands of our traditional public schools to allow them to be able to compete with the other options. And Senator Simon in the Senate wanted to continue that momentum this year and we were asking for continued momentum in that area and continue to work on some of those deregulation items. So, we supported administrative efficiency for public schools this year. Unfortunately didn't get it across the finish line. Sent Senate, it got it all the way across the finish line, but it did not get any traction in the house this year, unfortunately. But I know that it is something that we're gonna continue to see work on. We're gonna continue to see, I think Senator Simon is still looking to spearhead that continued movement in that direction of providing school districts with as much opportunity as possible to be able to compete amongst all of the other choices that we now have. Wow. Sounds like you guys have been very busy. Yeah, very busy. This is a very busy query, very busy and still very busy since we are waiting on a budget it's been a very unusual session in that way. Session should have ended May 2nd. Today's, you know, we're toward the end of May right now and we still have no budget. We are an extended session, which also changes some dynamics of some things, any bills that the governor gets. Right now, he only has one week to sign instead of the typical two weeks. But we're just, we're continuing to wait. They're continuing negotiations, so. We'll see, and every, every day we find out new little pieces. There's been a new salvo from one side or the other, so we're monitoring, but, but that piece, that budget piece is really the crux of what the districts are waiting on because they can't they're having to build some contingency budgets right now, not knowing what the final numbers are going to be. And the chambers are, not necessarily closely aligned as much as we would hope so. So not knowing what it's going to look like and trying to prepare for some of the contingencies is, is, is part of what these district professionals have to be thinking through right now?

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 15:05

Yeah. You all of that stuff flow. I mean, there's always been like. Writing to the union too.

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 15:34

Well, and you mentioned communication with your communities. Mm-hmm. Earlier. And that's one of the key elements, especially in this budget. We've seen a lot of activity from communities advocating for certain levels of funding in certain sort of academic areas. There there's been conversations that you've probably seen or heard on social media or even within the chambers related to funding with advanced courses, some additional bonus monies and things like that where the communities themselves have been advocating as much as the school districts. And so how that turns out is gonna have to also then be communicated back to the communities.'cause it could certainly affect some of the offerings that districts have. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we do still have two proposed budgets out there that did pass each chamber back in April as part of the regular budgeting process. And because they chose to extend session. Those two proposed budgets from each chamber are the budgets that are still in play for an easy way to put it. So those are the two budgets that we are kind of working off of, and that's what they are using currently. As leadership, really the senate president and the house speaker continue to negotiate what that final structure of a package looks like. Meaning what is the big budget number and what is the tax package that's gonna go along with that. And that really seems to be the hold up at this point is really the agreement on the tax package.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 17:06

What, uh, what things have you seen that has changed the. The scholarship money that's going out there, because I know every time that a district's only giving given certain amount of money, either from the state or from where they generate locally. And every time there's someone else that pulls outta that pie, it affects what the school districts. What else have you seen out there that is being impacted this year that's getting more money away from the district?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 17:39

Sure. Well, the scholarship piece does continue to be a big piece. Mostly because as a state, as a whole, we have still not really gotten to a point where we're super, super accurate with the with the numbers of students and where they're going. We're very accurate with our traditional public school numbers. Mm-hmm. And with obviously, charter school students, those are also public school students. We know those, but. The scholarship dollars can be there. There's still it's very difficult for them to be able to accurately project the number of students that are going to take scholarships. And part of that is because in the most recent expansion from a couple of years ago, we now obviously include homeschool students. So now they never have to come to us first before qualifying for a scholarship. That was a thing for a while. Yeah. And it allowed us to at least get an accurate count of a student. And then when they move from basically one pot to another, it's much easier for those dollars to follow the child. Right. Which we hear about all the time and is the goal of the state. But what has happened is. Children who are homeschooled now can get scholarship dollars. So they may have never stepped foot in our traditional public schools or in our system to be able to have been counted to start with. We also have students that have always been in private schools, but now can qualify for a scholarship if their school is accepting a scholarship. So again, they may have never been counted before either. And so part of the difference that we see in the two proposed budgets that are out there is what each chamber is proposing as far as how to get to a more accurate count, how to get to a more accurate number. So our financial projections on all fronts can be as accurate as possible, right. And it's everyone's goal to get there. It's just a matter of what that looks like and how we're gonna get there. The last couple of years to help us be, it was, uh, originally part of a senate proposal and, and it has been in the budget the last couple of years and continues to be in the Senate proposed budget, is to have what they refer to as a stabilization fund. So it's like a pot of money that is in our FEFP that literally does pretty much what it kind of sounds like. It does. It provides stabilization to our school districts. So if the projections end up being wheeled off for whatever reason, that then there's a pot of money to help to support the districts because. As many of us know, those counts come out mid-year. Yep. Right. Like we do a count in October, but we don't find out until January, sometimes February or March, what that actually looks like. And then we do another count in February and like we're still waiting to find out what that one looks like. So our schools are continuing to teach. We continue to have, teachers and all of those things that we have. We need to feed kids, we need to bus kids. We need to do all these things. And so that stabilization fund has really helped to kind of backfill some of the unexpected loss that some districts may have had along the way because the projections were not as accurate as maybe we had all hoped. But, but we don't expect that stabilization fund to last forever. We don't, yeah, we don't. But until some of the proposals that are in the house and the Senate proposal are actually, actually have a chance to be implemented and have a chance to see how much they help the accuracy of the count and the projections the Senate strongly believes that we should continue to have a stabilization fund. And we appreciate that thought process because we agree. It has been very helpful. It has been very much needed. And until we can see, you know, it's kind of like school safety. We thought these things sounded great on paper. We implement, we needed to make a few tweaks. Well, it could be the same thing here. We think this is going to work on paper. Let's go ahead and implement some of it. Make sure it works. Let's also have a stabilization fund to kind of help fill those gaps in case there are any. Yeah. And then if we find it super accurate, okay, sure. Maybe we don't need a stabilization fund in a few years going forward, but let's continue to have that as we go forward. The house is like, no, we, this is gonna work, so we're not gonna need that stabilization fund anymore. Right. So again, it's just, you know, different thoughts on what that's gonna look like, but it's all very much up in the air, which is giving everyone a growing angst as we get later and later. Yeah. Yeah. But Ray, you mentioned staffing formula. Yes. That's, I was, and so when we talk about the student counts and the projections and the staffing formulas, what's really important for districts to do is to monitor their student counts very, very closely. And when they see those counts change up or down. Have some ability to pivot with their staffing formulas. Right?'cause that's what'll get a district in trouble financially quicker than anything else is if they have a loss of student, you know, student, uh students. And then they don't adjust their staffing because then they would be considered by, for example, the house would certainly consider them overstaffed. Right? And then that would actually argue against the stabilization fund. Mm-hmm. So making sure that they are monitoring those student counts and making those adjustments when necessary as a district is really important as they bird dog this budget,'cause this budget coming up. I mean, I think you would agree, Danielle, or tell me if you don't, but. Districts are gonna have a, a, a fewer resources and have to stretch'em farther. Yeah. And in order to do that, they gotta be accurate on their numbers and they have to respond. If they're not accurate, they have to make an adjustment. They cannot just let it slide. And we're already starting to see that. I mean, earlier, just this week, just a couple of days ago, orange County Public Schools made the determination at their school board meeting to pull back on some proposed construction Yeah. Of a new school because they don't have the numbers to justify continuing to move forward. Yeah. You know, we, our, our districts have to do long-term planning when it comes to those things, but in that long-term planning, they didn't necessarily know that just two years ago we were gonna have such a large expansion of scholarships and what that was going to mean to those projections that they had made. So. Kudos to our districts that are really taking long and hard and difficult looks at some of the plans that they had made and saying, you know what? A lot of things have changed since we originally put some of this into motion. It's not too late for us to pull back, and it's probably the best thing for us to pull back right now and go back to your conversation about community. Because if you've got a community that thinks they're getting ready to have a school built somewhere or a wing or something like that, and like she said, districts have to do a five year construction plan, and anytime during that five year, the legislature can change the rules, change the plan. Anything can happen. It's very difficult. And if your community in their mind has been waiting to get into the five year plan, they finally get in the five year plan and now they have to get amended out. That's a conversation that districts need to be having with their communities. People have to understand. Like she said, the changes that, that are happening that are creating the need to have to adjust and edit along the way.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 25:46

Yeah. I mean, it's very difficult to nail it right on the head of how many kids you're gonna have to start the school year. I know back when charter schools first started coming out, it was a wild, wild west of how your numbers were gonna be because the charter school didn't even know exactly how many kids they were gonna have. Sure. And I watched several come into formation and they thought they were gonna have 200 kids and they ended up with 3 75 to four. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden the school district counted on those extra kids to be in the district and now they're gone. So they were overstaffed. Yeah. And the teachers. Yep. And I know one time when we were doing our count, we went all the way down and we contacted every single pre-K program in the county that had privately held pre-Ks. Got a headcount of how many of their kids would be gonna kindergarten. And we also got a headcount of how many they expected may go to a charter school or to a private school so that our headcounts into our kindergarten programs were more realistic. Right. And so we kind of did that part. And we also did some community. You know, where do you think your child's gonna go? Yeah. And something to give us a better way to estimate. Sure.

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 27:01

Well, and, and working with kindergartners upcoming is a whole lot easier than, as Danielle mentioned, we've got a bunch of students who've been in private schools their whole careers Exactly. Upcoming seventh grade or eighth grader that we didn't even have on the public school radar because they never went to public school. Yeah. That's why finding a way to accurately account for Yeah. Every student coming, going where they are, what they're doing, if they're getting scholarship money. Mm-hmm. You know, knowing where they are and having'em as part of the count because it's huge. The counts in the last two years have been much larger than the counts prior to that, because now we have students who here two four would never been in the counts. Exactly. So we have the same pot plus some extra kids that, that we didn't have in that pot before and we didn't have a way of counting them. Right, exactly. There wasn't, to be perfectly honest, there wasn't a need to count them. They were being, they were homeschooled, they were in private school. No problem. Everyone's doing their thing. But now that we public resources, now it's it's public dollars. And so we need to account for that. And so now we need to know who every single one of those students are. So it's just a matter of finding a system that's gonna work where we can get the most accurate accounts possible.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 28:21

Yeah. It's almost like once a child's bored, you gotta load them into a system. I know. It's almost like give them a number then it really, I know. It's kind of amazing. Yeah. You mentioned something earlier on the. Are there, are you seeing any of the private schools that are not gonna take the money restrictions?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 28:46

Yeah, we do. We actually have a couple here in Tallahassee that, that don't take, never took the scholarship, still don't take the scholarship. And that can be obviously for a variety of reasons and there are private schools they can choose to, to handle that however they would like to. So we do have, have some that are out there. Like I said, I, I know of a couple right here in Tallahassee that, that have not taken the scholarship and continue to not take the scholarship. Obviously we have schools that have private schools that have always taken the scholarship. We have new private schools popping up. Yes. Because of the scholarship opportunity. So it's, you know, there's, it's kind of all over the place. It's a management decision that it's, and they mail every year as they sit down. These schools, they're gonna look at their budgets and they may change their current decision. Some. Say they want take it for certain reasons, and some say they don't for other reasons, so. Mm-hmm.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 29:40

one other thing that I was, I've always been curious about when you're looking at all of these, the funds traveling, you know, to the private sector with the private schools and the home schools, but then a lot of the kids are eligible to participate in the extracurricular activities at the school system, especially in the high school. Yep. But the public school's not getting the money for that kid, but they're having to provide that service. Yeah. Have you seen any legislation to help balance that help pay for the coaches? Yeah, because right now, from what I've seen from my own experiences, the public school has buried the burden of the entire expense for all of those extra group.

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 30:19

They, they are, but in some cases, that's also either been a choice that they've made because they do have the ability and more and more of our districts are. Moving in this direction and figuring out how to move in this direction.'cause it's a completely different thought process. Yes. For our traditional public schools. Our schools have always been kid shows up, we give them whatever they need, right? Yeah. We teach them, we feed them, we educate them, we give them the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities. We give them additional services that they need, like whatever they need, they walk in the door. We give it to'em for as long as we have them. Mm-hmm. And so now it's almost like our districts are starting to look into, and some of them are already implementing this and some of them are, are on the path to, is almost looking at more of a business model in the sense of. We have students who are either in the private school, in homeschool, to your point, want to participate in an extracurricular activity, maybe a sport, or maybe it's even that they wanna take a particular course that is not available to them at a private school. Maybe it's an AP course, maybe it's a cape course, you know, for our career in technical ed. But there's something specific that they wanna take that the only option for them to be able to do that is at a traditional public school. So then it's a matter of setting up a process by which the student ha absolutely is allowed to come to the school for that particular course, that particular activity, whatever it is. And our districts are learning how to then. Charge. Okay. The parent, it's a business relationship. Yeah. From the scholarship to be able to charge the parent in order for the parent to use some of those scholarship dollars to be able to pay for that particular service, whether it be the course, whether it be the extracurricular, you know, whatever it is. So it's very much a mind shift and a, a huge shift in our approach as traditional public schools of how we look at our students and our families. But it's also a necessary change, and I think that's what a lot of our districts are coming to realize is that it's really a necessary change that needs to happen because otherwise, to your point, they're gonna continue to get drained of services and of resources. Because we are the only option for these extracurricular activities or some of these very specialized courses for these students, and we have never been one to turn away a kid for any reason. Sure. We are still not going to. Yeah. And, but now how do we make it work financially for our districts? And so we have districts out there that are already doing it, they're doing it quite well, they're doing it successfully. The scholarship programs that are out there are encouraging of working with districts to help them get this set up for this to be a process. We've actually had the opportunity to talk to both of the scholarship entities and both step up for students and aaa. And they are both willing, able and helpful to our districts in assisting them in. Know this new landscape of what that looks like.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 33:57

Yeah. I think a lot it's gonna be educating the parents too, because percent, why do I have to pay percent? I pay taxes. That's what I've heard before, that should cover it. Sure. And they don't understand the finances of a school district percent and how it's stretched. And you know that again, we go back to the money follows the kit. Yeah, yeah. And you've gotta be able to make arrangements to divvy it out, how Yeah. It needs to be spent for the services that child has received.

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 34:25

But, but the parent then is really in charge. I want my child to go here for this amount of time and I'll spend X amount of the scholarship here. I want my child here for y amount of time and I want that money there. And I could pick, you know what, whichever it, it's really, you talk about parent choice. Yeah.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 34:44

Yeah. It's out there and, and it's just being able to again, educate the parent of how. You. They're not gonna be able take that money, they're homeschooling and keep it and pay themselves to educate the child. It's to provide the services, whatever those look like. And if you want this one, this one, this one. There's a cost to each one of. So there's a lot of, it sounds like a lot of uncertainty and risks for dis districts right now. How, what advice would you give to superintendents and and leaders to help prep for this?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 35:13

Well, as what Danielle was just mentioning, I would say don't be opposed to some non-traditional considerations. For, for the way you currently operate. I just spoke with a superintendent on the phone yesterday who was asking me some questions about educating board members on AI use business use in the district to save some money over here, which I know it scares a lot of people, but it can save some money and put the resources where you need to put them. Yeah, I think it's just, you gotta have smart people in your business offices. You gotta support those smart people in your business offices and get them the professional development and the support that they need. And you have to be able to trust the people that, that are bringing you the data data and know that they too are trying to solve the same problem. So I, listen, even before COVID education Uncertainty is now a certainty, if I can say it like that. And and so it's just a constant reassessment, reevaluation, whatever you wanna call it. You, you have to have systems and processes in place that will continue to identify operational efficiencies. Yeah. As well as pivot opportunities as needed. Because the other piece is districts are more and more being asked to deliver for parents personalized programs for students. And if you've got a, a, I'll call it archaic structure that doesn't have certain flexibilities in it, your district will continue to lose students to more flexible structures. Yeah. So you've got to have conversations, you've got to have strategic planning that can, that can have and have built in flexibilities in your district because customer service and personalized education for students, that is what families. Are demanding, and if districts can't provide it, they will get traditional districts. They will find that somewhere else and districts will continue to lose students. I think it's just like the, it's very similar to the shift we've seen in just the business model overall. Right? I mean, when I think about. Just in, in my time of what my different jobs have looked like. You know, I started off in a classroom, very much in a traditional school setting, and then I had an actual office and then traveled to different schools. And then when I left the school district for about the next eight years or so of the work that I was doing, I didn't have an office. Like I worked from home and then traveled to where I needed to go and where I needed to be. And when I first started that it was. A little unheard of. I mean, people were doing it, it was 2014, people were doing it, but it was not commonplace. Sure. Right. And now when we think about all of the people who work from home all the time on a regular Right. That, that is their office, that is what they do. Whether they then travel to, you know, for part of the job or some people don't travel at all, that is just where they work. As our companies and businesses have shifted and shown some of those models, I mean, we've seen huge corporations give up all of their, peak downtown, real estate, middle of Manhattan, Boston, Chicago real estate. Because people don't work in the office. Yeah. And so I think in a similar way, our districts need to look at. How can we still best provide services to our children and still be the choice that parents make, but meet them where they are. And I, I think we see more and more of our districts realizing, especially our large and our medium districts that tend to have, tend more fluid movement of their families anyway.'cause that's another thing too, how many of our families, I mean, I know I can speak for myself, I was raised in the same one house. We had that house all the way up until, well, I, I was well into adulthood and had lived in Florida for many years. And it was a major thing for my mom when we had to sell that house and move her outta it because she had been there for decades. Yep. It was where she had raised. Her child and giving that up. But how many of our families, now that's not the case. They move for a variety of different reasons. They move multiple times in the time that a child is growing up just in their, k to 12 years. And so I think we're seeing more and more of our districts realizing that kind of the combination of those two pieces, that the typical expectation of a child's just going to come to school every day, five days a week, 180 days out of the year, is just not really what that looks like anymore. And I would say this so many times our districts and I understand why hear about legislation and it's immediately like the hesitancy the wall goes up. Like, what are they making us do? It's gonna be bad. There are times in which legislation is filed, and it might not even go anywhere. It may get heard, it might not where the purpose of the legislation was filed to start a conversation. Right. And I think that more of our districts need to sometimes pay attention to, and I've encouraged our districts to pay attention to some of the legislation that gets filed that maybe only gets one committee hearing, but it was, they will say it was filed as an opportunity to be able to start a conversation. I'll give you a perfect example, and it, and it brings up your point of using, finding ways to use AI in a positive way to possibly save money. We had a bill that was filed this year both in the House and the Senate that had to do with school transportation. And initially the bills were about changing the two mile walk zone to one and a half. And, changing bus routes and changing the definition of hazardous walking conditions. All things that we probably do need to talk about. They are important. I, I will give Rep Valdez a, a tremendous amount of accredit former school board member of ours. And now in her senior years of the, of serving in the Florida House. When this particular bill came up and she was in that committee said, as a former school board member, the safest way for us to get our kids to school is by bus. And we know that. But we as districts are not given the, all of the financial resources to be able to bus every single child to get them to school safely. Right. Right. So, but part of what came out of that conversation is in the house that bill was then changed to where it was going to be a pilot program for five districts. And the purpose of it was there are apparently companies out there that can help districts to utilize AI to analyze their current bus routes. Are they the most efficient? Are they the most efficient? Is there a more efficient way to, for those bus routes to, to go and to utilize the buses? This is a great opportunity for some of our districts to start to look into that themselves. Yes. Right. Without it being. Coming down from the legislature because they would have more flexibility to be able to decide what that could potentially look like. So I think sometimes there are ideas that are put out there that sometimes because they come from the legislature, there's a little bit of like, oh no, no trust. But if we really look at what is the core of what the conversation is and what they're trying to get to, there could be, it could open our eyes for some of our districts as to some potential resources that are out there that maybe we need to look at and utilize. But if we do it before the legislature does it, then we can have a little bit more control as districts as to how we wanna utilize that. And what one school board members with is looking at their schools and asking. Do your schools look any different today than they did when you were in school? Because there's a lot of things that look exactly the same. And so as Danielle describes the whole work environment, I mean, look at us here today, sitting here with the cameras and microphones in one room, in one floor. This never would've happened, 40 years ago or anything like that. But it's here today because of the ease with which all this stuff is available. Have we changed our schools in similar progressive fashions? And if not, what do we need to do to kind of get some of that change moving?

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 44:27

Absolutely. So for our listeners who are in HR and benefits Yes. Um, are there any specific takeaways that they can do to support their staff?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 44:39

I'll say this about staff and that is, uh, you said support their staff. Key words. Yeah, because what we find in the research continues to show year after year after year, is that employees leave not just because of money, and in fact money is not the number one reason. It has to support. And it has to do with finding out what benefits are important to them and offering those benefits and providing that support. We recognize that there's the negotiation piece that comes into play. Yes. And you, you know, there's a lot going on there, but what's really important is to listen to the employees. And you boards cannot do everything they want to do for employees. We talk to board members all day, every day and they really more than it, they would love to be able to give every employee the raise they wanna give them and that they know they, they could use as well as provide the benefits that they would love to have, but they have this limited pot of money as we described, and so how can they maximize that and supporting the employees, not just with benefits, although that is key and very important, but also with the leadership in the schools, the leadership in the district that are supportive of the work that the employees do.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 45:55

Yeah, absolutely. Things haven't changed a lot in some of the school districts. You know, it's the same building, the same everything. Like it was,

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 46:04

I didn't say it hasn't changed. I challenged them to ask themselves. You said that, right?

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 46:11

Well, things haven't changed and I have noticed some districts I've gone into where the. Don't. But their workload could be redistributed to better serve the district. For sure. Absolutely. For sure. And I was asked, do you see hesitations like that?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 46:45

Listen, I was a teacher in the classroom who had probably Danielle's much younger than me, so she probably was not a teacher in the classroom by the time, but I had the old school grade book. Oh yes. Right? Where you did the scores and you had to transpose them and make the whole line alphabetical, whatever. And I remember when we went from the paper grade book to the online grade book, and when you talk about some career educators who were not open to that shift, just that single shift of putting their grade book into this little computer program, I mean, to tell you it was like a five year implementation plan because some people just were not gonna do it. So to answer your question, absolutely we're seeing some challenges, but I gotta tell you, we're also seeing some teachers. Not necessarily just the young ones, but some older, more experienced teachers Totally embracing new technologies. Yeah. And we're actually trying to change some phraseology, not just talking about ai, because I will say AI does scare some people. It does. But emerging technologies is what we're trying to emphasize instead, because today it's ai, but it could be called something else in five years or whatever that might be. Sure. Absolutely. And so part of being a an education system that prepares students for the future and the future workforce is ensuring that the people teaching them understand emerging technologies, which is what these young people are gonna have when they get out in the world. So there, there is a lot of it, but we have to get over some of the fear because a lot of those more senior employees listen, and again, Danielle's younger than I am, but when I was a student teacher. Way back in the day I remember the teacher that was my supervising teacher. I was doing my student internship from college. She got the first computer in the school. Wow. Okay. Now I happen to have used a computer. Well, I started with a word process in her. Yeah. And then I got like the Tandy 1000, as you remember, back in the day. And she got the very first computer. Exactly. She got the very first computer on campus and did not know what to do with it. Okay. So I knew about the floppy disc. You stick in, you turn the little knob. She didn't know how to plug in the printer to the computer. Remember you had the, the paper with all the little dots on the edge. Oh yeah. Uh, the dot matrix printer. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember the first computer coming into a school that, that's how far back I go. And I don't think I'm as old as some people. No, definitely not. But it was a transition for a lot of people. And so you got teachers who were teaching then? Now, and just the change, the accelerated pace of change. It's, it's hard for us to keep up much less. We're not in the classroom all day with however many students. And so it, it's a new world. It really is a new world and many of them are embracing it because they wanna make sure that they're preparing their students for this new world. Others of them, you know, there are people even back in the day when I was in school that wanted the old slide rule, didn't like the calculator. So we remember those days. Not different now than it. Yeah. But most people do have this little device in their pocket and so they do, they have come a long way. Yeah. And they do know how to access an app or this or that. So there, there's a lot of, of warm embrace, but there's caution and I believe rightly so. Yeah. Which is why we have to talk about policy from time to time. Yes. Yeah. Let's make sure we have the guardrails. Well, and that's the thing too, is, you know, we're really, we're getting to that, that sweet spot time. Legislators are home right now, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, they hopefully need to come back at some point. So we do need a budget. And this is one of those short turnaround years, right? Because the legislative calendar changes based on whether we're in an odd year or an even year. Correct. So, session was, well supposed to end the beginning of May. Right. We're now extended, but they are home right now. But committee weeks for the next legislative session are going to start probably as early as late September. Mm-hmm. Definitely October, November. And then the new session will start the early portion of January. So during the summer months when legislators are home school board members and other school district employees have a little bit more time. Right. School's gonna be winding down. Even if you are a school board member or a 12 month employee, you have a little bit more time. Many times our districts go on four day work weeks during the summer. Yeah. So it at least leaves you on Friday, right? This is the time to reach out yes. To your legislator. Okay? This is the time to reach out to that legislative office. If you already have a relationship, great. Use it. Reach out. Uh, you know, ask if they have some time where you can either come by the office or maybe you meet them for a cup of coffee so it's a little bit more relaxed. Uh, invite them to end of year school things. Now, they might not be able to come right now because it's very difficult to be able to, you know, for them to set their schedules. But there would be beginning year a kid, you know, school year kickoff things too. Invite them to things. They want to see things. They want to see what's happening in their schools. They want to know what's going on. They want to meet students. So this is absolutely the time to do that. If you don't have a relationship with them yet, great. This is the time to build one, right? Reach out, send that extension email to introduce yourself, to tell them a little bit about what you do. Who you are and what you would like to talk to them about, and ask if you can have maybe 15 minutes to come by and have that conversation and just start to build that bridge. Start to build that relationship. If you get that first initial meeting, don't come at them with 20 things that you wanna fix. Okay? Especially if they have all money. Let know, especially if they involve money. Let's talk about one thing that's going really well at your schools. That one. That you see as being something that they could help you in adjusting, changing, but also try to come with not just the problem, but maybe a potential solution that you can talk through with them as well. They always appreciate when you come to them, not just with, this is wrong, you need to fix this. But also a, I think we could probably get there by trying this or by, you know, this is an option as to a way that it would work better. So this is absolutely the time to build those relationships there, especially with such a quick turnaround. They're gonna be looking at legislation again very quickly. Um, so this is the time to start to have those conversations. Because then once they finish session next in. Then they're gonna be campaigning. So then you kind of follow up with them again, right? And now they're really gonna wanna listen, right? Because now they're, they're campaigning either for reelection or potentially to run for a different, a different office. So start building those relationships. Now if you don't have them, and if you do have them, this is a great opportunity to reconnect to reach out. Sometimes something as simple as you notice it or you see a post that says that it's their birthday. Like most of them, not all of them, most of them. Really appreciate hearing a little something on that. I still do that kind of stuff and even not just with our state legislators, but I even do it with our congressional ones too. If I worked with them before and I know them. I just did it again the other day and it started this great conversation of just kind of checking in. How you doing? Yeah. Anything I can help you with. I hear things are, are, are a little up in the air in Tallahassee, like what's going on? You know, so, but it's just a great way to reconnect or continue that connection and that conversation. So this is actually, I know people are like, oh, but it's summer break, like last. You what? Take 15, 20 minutes. If you have the relationship, maybe you get more like an hour. Yeah. You know, over coffee or something. Take the time. It will be more than worth it in the long run. I'm gonna tell you one thing. That's the lowest hanging fruit we have out there that is underutilized and that is. Every legislator that has graduated from a Florida public high school should be invited to that high school graduation. Graduation Every year. Yes. Yeah. Front row, they stand. You recognize, here's an alumna from our school. Yeah. They should be there every year. Absolutely. And they don't get the invitation. But we should. We should remind people, here's somebody that graduated from this school. Low hanging fruit. Absolutely.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 55:50

There you go, guys. Graduations are happening. Invite our invite. Yes, absolutely. Well, I do wanna say that I have had the ability to be the proverbial fly on the wall. It's a lot of your meetings, executive boards, your new board members. Very interesting to, and I think you, you guys do a great job with FBA and educating and training the new board members. Thank you. Especially on the short turnaround you've got now. Yeah. But if any of our listeners out there are thinking about wanting to possibly become a board member in their county, what would you recommend that they do?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 56:32

Wow. If any of your listeners are interested in becoming a school board member, I, I would certainly recommend that they attend school board meetings and know what they're in for. One of our greatest challenges is we get people who want to be on the school board and they have a single issue that they want to solve. And being a school board member is not a single issue. Job. It might be why you ran, but odds are you may not even be able to get that issue in conversation for two or three years. That's a long time that you're looking at other things. So understand the big picture. Understand sort of the role of a school board member, which is very different from the role of a superintendent and senior staff. Board members focus on policy budget, you know, which is a policy document, but board members are not there for the daily operation of a school district. That's what the professionals are for. Board members are there to provide the policy guidance and parameters and strategic, foundation documents to help the district go in a certain direction that reflects the community priorities and so understand the role and recognize that it's not a single issue thing. I, I would also say it is not for the faint and heart no. When you are a school board member, and I speak from personal experience, I served three terms, there are some really difficult decisions that have to be made that. Districts have currently been making and are gonna continue to make. And when you have to make a difficult decision, it is hard. It is hard to know that you're affecting someone's livelihood. It's hard to know that you're affecting someone's school boundary. It is hard to affect families, it's hard to lay off teachers if you need to. But those decisions still have to be made because at the end of the day, it's a business operation providing a service that they're directed to provide through statutory or. You know, federal law and that's tax dollars. Exactly. So there are accountabilities that have to be there. It is not an easy task. There is not a lot of glory. You may get a parking space close, could be the best you're gonna get. I know in some cases there are, because sometimes I borrow those when I go into particular district, but it's not easy. And you'll sadly you and your family and your spouse and families work locations could get some criticism fairly or unfairly. I, most of it's unfair in my opinion. But you just have to be prepared for all that goes with it, because if you're not prepared, it can really be overwhelming. Yeah. But listen, we need really good people to do the job we do. So I strongly encourage Good, smart. Hardworking committee community focused people to run for school board. Mm-hmm. As you know, we have term limits now that will turn things over quicker than we've had before, but we need good people because, it, our school, our public schools in our country or the foundation of this country. That's right. And it's our job to help protect and defend them and ensure that they're focused on meeting the needs of the community. And we need good people to do that work. Absolutely.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 59:42

Well, I liked Tim Bryant's comment, president and somebody asked that the training, you know, when somebody stands up and. Yeah. He said, you cannot respond back because it's not gonna turn out well. Yeah. So, well, that was, I, that was a great question and be a way to wrap this, because I know we have, you know, timing. But is there anything else that you want our listeners to know?

andrea-messina_1_05-21-2025_101438: 1:00:14

I'll let you go first, Danielle. Oh, well, we'll get a budget eventually. Um, but no, really just I, I think my biggest thing for people is always to just keep in mind that in a lot of ways, what Andrea just said about our school board members and what we look for and hope to have our school board members, a lot of that is for our legislature as well. Right? We may not agree on their policies and how they go about forming these pieces of legislation, but they're still people too. And they're taking the hard votes too. There's a lot of political factors that are factoring into all of these things, many of which the vast majority of people have no idea good, bad, or indifferent. And so to just always remember that as frustrating as the budgeting process can be, as frustrating as some of the, you know, the legislation that we get can be I get frustrated by it too, but they really are. They're people, they're trying to do the best that they can. They're trying to fix things that people have come to them and said is a problem. It, it may not be the best solution, but just to, you know, understand that they're people, to treat them with kindness, treat them with respect, and if we need to go back and fix something, there's a way to do that. Right? Yeah. And we can, there's always ways to make legislation better. And I would just say, especially for your district staff, who, who I think are probably more likely to listen to this than school board members and some others, is, um, there are resources out there to help them during these difficult budget times. Absolutely. You guys, for example, FBMC, you are a great resource. If districts are struggling with certain things, they can contact you and you can kind of help them find solutions just as they can. They have their own professional associations. We have the fsbo, which is school, the Florida Association School Business Officers. We have just whichever group they belong to, there are professional associations that can help them. We happen to cater to the school board members because that's what we do, but their own associations and their professional support, like, like you all, uh, really can help them find solutions to to address whatever problems they're facing. They're, they're not alone. Yeah. They're.

kyla-heap_1_05-21-2025_101439: 1:02:36

We appreciate this very much. Thank you. Been thank, thank you so much and thank you for our listeners and if you have any questions, please contact us or reach out on our homepage at www. Thank you so much. Day.