School Board sets Superintendent search timeline, discusses banning smart glasses

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the April 21 School Board of Alachua County meeting, the board set the timeline for the upcoming Superintendent search, discussed banning smart glasses, indicated they would like to discuss adding a seventh period to the school day, and addressed rumors about a celebration party after the rezoning vote in March.

“Ms. Certain was not at a party.”

During general public comment on non-agenda items, two speakers referred to a rumor that Superintendent Kamela Patton and three school board members (Chair Thomas Vu, Member Tina Certain, and Member Sarah Rockwell) attended a “party” after the district’s rezoning maps were approved on March 12.

Although School Board Members typically do not respond to the public’s comments, Certain asked to respond after Tina Days criticized her and the others for allegedly attending the party. Certain said, “Ms. Certain was not at a party.” She said she flew out of Gainesville to Louisville at 6 a.m. on March 13 for a Consortium of State School Boards Associations Conference and added that Vu had also gone to that conference. 

Rockwell said she did not go to the conference because she had to take her father to medical procedures, “but I was most certainly not at any party and never heard word of a party. So I have no idea where that rumor is coming from, but I will unequivocally say that it is completely false. I was with my parents that evening.”

Superintendent Patton: “I would have 1000% agreed, it’s not something to celebrate. It’s very difficult for teachers, for kids, for parents, and nobody would be celebrating that.”

Patton added, “There was absolutely no party that I know about, nor did I attend it, nor did I have any School Board Members around me at something like that. And I would have 1000% agreed, it’s not something to celebrate. It’s very difficult for teachers, for kids, for parents, and nobody would be celebrating that. So I would just urge people, when you hear something that doesn’t sound right or make sense, ask us… We’re very, very easy to get hold of. That was also spring break, when many of us were nowhere around.”

Jancie Vinson, who is running for a School Board seat, said she had heard the same rumor, “but I understood it was the night of [the rezoning vote], not after the fact.” She also asked the board to reconsider their public comment policy of requiring speakers to sign up before the meeting and asked them to keep Williams Elementary open instead of converting it to a K-8 at Lincoln. 

Patton responded, “Again, just to correct the record: whether it was the night of the School Board meeting or that Saturday, there was never a celebration, there was never a party, and there were never three Board Members sitting with the Superintendent, celebrating.”

Smart glasses

The board considered a list of changes to the Code of Student Conduct that includes the addition of AI glasses to the definition for Wireless Communications Devices. The summary states, “AI glasses is being included because they can record audio or video, live-stream or transmit classroom activities, capture student data or facial images, run AI tools to analyze people or objects, and record others without their knowledge, which are prohibited during instructional time. If these devices are considered an assistive technology device, then they would be allowable just like cell phones are for the purpose of monitoring a diabetic’s blood sugar.”

Certain made a motion to approve the changes on first reading, and Rockwell seconded the motion. 

Cell phone use for high school students

Rockwell said she has received feedback from high school teachers, asking that the district “not allow cell phones at all during the school day in high schools, because it is too hard to monitor their use — and the feedback I’ve gotten is that if one teacher is lenient, it impacts every other teacher in the building… It has a kind of rippling impact.” She suggested asking the teachers’ union to survey high school teachers to see how prevalent this is. She added, “I feel torn on it, because I know that some teachers are using their phones to do real-time assessment of students,… so there are benefits, but there are also drawbacks.” Later in the meeting, outgoing ACEA President Carmen Ward said the union would be happy to do the survey.

Board Attorney David Delaney clarified that students have a right to have a phone in their possession, but it must be turned off if required by district policy: “We’re not taking cell phones away from students. We’re still going to comply with the Florida law… I certainly haven’t done an exhaustive survey of our teachers, but I am confident that on the secondary level, very clear expectations are established in each class during syllabus week,… and I think it strains belief that students who are awake at all are unclear about what can and can’t be done.”

Vu said, “I don’t think we should have cell phone use, even in classrooms at the high school level,” and he said assessments can be done with the one-to-one devices. He said that different rules in different classrooms “creates this tension all year between students and teachers that feels needless… Beyond those comments,… smart glasses are now becoming more and more prevalent, and we’re already seeing school districts across the country outright ban them because they’re being misused… It’s a potential privacy issue… As someone who wears corrective lenses, I don’t need them to be smart.”

Patton said all of these issues would be discussed in end-of-year administrator meetings.

Rockwell said she would also support banning smart glasses: “The idea that a student could potentially violate another student’s privacy by using them in our bathrooms in our secondary schools is definitely a concern.”

The motion passed unanimously, with Member Leanetta McNealy participating virtually.

Delaney said, “I don’t want to leave out smart watches, which can be used for messaging and things like that.”

Certain suggested leaning on NEOLA, which the district uses for model policies, for recommended policy language, and Vu asked Patton to work with staff “to see if they can come up with language that they can issue.”

Adding a seventh period to the school day

During a discussion about the staffing allocation manual, multiple board members expressed support for having a discussion about adding a seventh period to the school day, but Delaney warned that they were getting off-topic and that the discussion could stray into collective bargaining issues. Vu said, however, that he would like to bring the topic up again in a future discussion, perhaps in a workshop.

Timeline for Superintendent search

Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Debbie Terry reviewed the timeline for the Superintendent search. She said the first step is to release a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a search firm, which she said would happen on April 22; the last day for search firms to ask questions is May 6, and proposals are due by June 2. The proposal will be reviewed for conformity by June 4, and on June 5, the Proposal Evaluation Committee will go over the process before independently evaluating the proposals. On July 14, there will be a Sunshine meeting to tabulate the scores from the committee, and a short list of vendors will be presented to the School Board on August 4. On August 5, a contract start date will be negotiated with the selected vendor, and on September 2 (later changed to August 19), the School Board will finalize the search timeline at a workshop.

McNealy, speaking remotely, said the district will be “in a pickle” if it takes that long to select a firm; she and Certain both supported hiring the Florida School Board Association instead of going through the RFP process, although Certain seconded Vu’s motion to go through the RFP process last November and also voted for the motion. 

McNealy said the timeline was “unbelievable,” given the amount of time it will take to complete the search and get community input after the vendor starts the search. 

Member Janine Plavac went through a timeline of the various decisions to delay the search since Patton was first hired, and she asked what conversations were had with staff after the board voted last November to proceed with the RFP process: “Our direction at that board meeting — that passed 5-0 — was to go forward with it and submit it to the board. So my question to you is: What conversations were had with staff after that board meeting regarding the postponement or adjusting the RFP timeline, which is now not until April?”

Patton said her understanding was that in November, the board was concerned that districts that were hiring superintendents would have already picked the top people by January, so the board decided to extend her contract “so that this year we would be ahead of it and be able to be sure that we’re the people in December and early January… at the beginning of that pipeline.”

Vu said he had asked a lot of questions about the best “season” for hiring a Superintendent, and “ultimately, we’re still ahead of the season, and I didn’t want to have this on top of rezoning.”

Delaney said the board’s motion in November did not include a specific start date or directive as to when the RFP needed to be issued.

Rockwell said she supported the timeline because after the fall elections, the board will have at least one new member because Certain is not running for reelection, but it could have as many as three: “I believe that whoever is on this dais should be the people choosing the Superintendent.”

After establishing that the workshop to finalize the search timeline will be on August 19, Vu moved on to the next agenda item, which was Board Member and Superintendent Requests.

Rescheduling meeting dates and times

Vu said the County Commission had asked the School Board to change one of its budget meetings (scheduled for September 8) because that Tuesday is a normal County Commission meeting date, and they wanted to have their budget meeting on that date. Vu suggested moving the School Board’s budget meeting to 5:01 p.m. on September 15, and nobody objected. They also moved the July 23 meeting to 4 p.m. on July 22 because the original date conflicts with the Teacher of the Year and Principal of the Year state gala, and they changed the time of their May 6 workshop from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Plavac’s request.