The board advanced a staged review of hundreds of district policies proposed by NEOLA, a third‑party template provider, and clarified which edits will be board‑level decisions and which will be handled administratively.

Attorney Powers explained the workflow: NEOLA proposes revisions when state or federal laws change; district staff and counsel vet those drafts and recommend which edits require board selection. "Neola gives us a little bit of a shortcut in that they give us proposed policy revisions and reviews," Powers said, describing the vendor’s role in flagging statutory updates.

Staff and counsel told the board they will begin with the bylaws (the 0‑series), because those control board conduct and require direct board choices. The paperwork for each policy includes an edit code (1–6) indicating whether the change is mandatory, optional, requires further staff input, or is a technical correction. Where NEOLA supplied optional language (for example alternatives for public‑notice channels or committee rules), the board discussed local preferences and, where appropriate, directed staff to keep policy language broad and capture operational detail in administrative procedures.

Multiple board members and legal counsel flagged a small number of statutory changes that must be adopted (house bills and other statutes); those will be calendared for formal rulemaking as required by Florida law. Other changes that staff recommended for administrative handling—such as titles, internal office names, or procedural checkboxes—were identified for technical edits so the board does not need to reconvene to correct small organizational changes.

Board members noted the public‑facing consequences of the edits, including statements about meeting publication, committee appointments, and the district’s meeting‑notice practices. Ms. Terry Brown and Attorney Blackman explained that some NEOLA leave items in draft status that must still be formally rejected if the district chooses not to adopt them; Brown told the board that some policies appear in the board packet only because a 2022 transfer of documents did not carry earlier rejections to the new NEOLA instance.

Staff will return with specific policy language for the bylaws and with a schedule for subsequent series (1,000s, 2,000s, etc.). The board also asked staff to prepare a short summary of changes before any formal adoption hearing so members and the public can quickly see what is substantive and what is technical.