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and John Link need to be there because they are the most knowledgeable and Chair Jacobs <br />has the most communication with schools. <br />Chair Jacobs said that he agrees with Commissioner Brown and Commissioner Halkiotis. He <br />thinks that the next steps would be to create the Educational Excellence Task Force, continue <br />with the collaboration work, and look at the school system operations from an efficiency and <br />business standpoint. <br />Chair Jacobs said that he supports a countywide supplemental tax in theory. He would not be <br />willing to endorse a tax before he knows if we need it. He thinks there is a general agreement <br />that this is the direction that the Board might go. He thinks that three County Commissioners <br />are not ready to go there now. <br />Chair Jacobs made reference to the work group and said that they have made progress on the <br />collaboration discussions, including identifying points of collaboration ideas in the past years. <br />They put the ideas on a grid and each school system and the County Commissioner <br />representatives put yes or no for each. The County Commissioners voted yes for each one. <br />There were only two that the school systems said no to. The school systems both said yes to <br />the idea of looking at operational efficiencies as a collaborative effort. He said that he got a <br />positive sense that this will work and it can be done with full cooperation. The other point that <br />was raised by the two school board chairs is that they bath felt that the superintendents should <br />be involved in the Educational Excellence Task Farce. He thinks this would be a good gesture <br />toward the school boards and improve the quality of the work to include the superintendents. <br />Commissioner Brown said that this is a Commissioner proposal and she would like to make <br />sure all of the County Commissioners' concerns are brought forward and any suggestions that <br />could be done by the school of education would be appropriate. <br />Commissioner Carey asked about the composition of this educational excellence work group. <br />He said that everybody agrees that we need to pursue education excellence, and he wants this <br />for all students of the County regardless of where they live. He said that there are some people <br />that feel that finances are not related to educational excellence and there are those that do. He <br />supports having a group of people looking at educational quality and what is meant by equal <br />opportunity in education. He has questions about the timeframe and composition of the work <br />group. He asked if questions about merger would be left on the table for the group to discuss. <br />Commissioner Brawn said that direct questions about merger are not appropriate to this <br />committee. She said that Mr. Dornan has been asked several times about merger and he notes <br />this. Commissioner Carey said that he knows that some of the people in the committee do not <br />want to talk about merger. <br />Commissioner Brown said that the questions that the Board of County Commissioners wants to <br />look at with this committee can be looked at. <br />Commissioner Carey asked how the issues of finance play into this. Commissioner Brawn <br />wants to make sure that they craft a good proposal and to propose this to the Public School <br />Forum. <br />Commissioner Halkiotis said that just within the last two years, they received the best report of <br />haw non-Orange County departmental funding organizations have been using money that <br />Orange County gives them. The total amount of money given to non-public departments and <br />