School Board Workshop: March 22, 2021

001good morning everyone it is happy monday march 22nd 2021 today we are gathered here for a workshop and the purpose of the workshop is legal issues and best practices lgbtq plus it's approximately three hours and then we have good of the order and an adjournment and if if you will please introduce yourself as you go for the record and thank you all for being here and whoever would like to start all right good morning and i think i'll take this actually i think that's a great way to start is by introducing each of the members up here and i guess i'll start with crystal my name is crystal torres nunez i'm the diversity inclusion coach from lee county school district good morning and welcome everyone good morning good morning i'm chuck bradley i'm director of

002positive prevention and serve as the student equity coordinator for the district and good morning again i'm brian williams i'm the chief staff attorney for the school district good morning my name is christine schroed and i'm a staff attorney under academic services good morning my name is ryan hudak i'm the coordinator of the office of civil rights and equity for the district thank you all right and we'll jump right in and i think right now we just want to show you an overview of what we're going to present here today and talk about some of the issues that will be coming up essentially every student has a right the right to learn in a safe and accepting school environment this includes lgbtq plus students schools must respect the rights of lgbtq students as well as the

003rights of other students and parents with regard to their freedom of religion and expression that is a balancing act that requires a case-by-case analysis and you're going to hear that a lot today right there's a case-by-case analysis i think oftentimes when it comes to law we want to make things black and white and sometimes there's a little gray in there and it requires an interpretation as well as the assistance of the staff and legal department as well as the parents and students in terms of getting to the right solution the laws are new and involving the majority of emerging case law supports the rights of lgbtq plus students lcsd follows current case law trends and best practices in formulating processes with respect to lgbtq plus students in the school setting excuse me madam chair can

004i ask you all to please move your microphones closer to your mouse so that i can not miss a word thank you no worries just had them turn it up also thank you so first we wanted to start off with an overview of the federal laws as it relates to the issues that we'll be discussing today and here we have the united states constitution and first up we have the first amendment which protects the rights of students to free speech and freedom of expression this would include sexual orientation gender identity and gender expression then we have the 14th amendment equal protection which protects the students rights to due process and equal protection and imposes a duty on schools to protect lgbtq plus students from bullying and harassment just as it would protect other students on

005the same basis continuing with the federal laws we have title vii of the 1964 civil rights act which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and has been further extended to include transgender status this is you're going to hear about this today's presentation the bostek case first clayton county which was a recently decided supreme court case which furthers the rights of transgender students as it relates to these issues title vii case law is now being applied to title ix discrimination against lgbtq plus students such as restroom usage and again you'll hear more about that in our presentation but we felt that it was important to share with you the way in which title vii is being applied to these issues title nine of the education amendments act of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of

006sex in any education program or activity that receives federal funds of note title ix does prohibit gender-based harassment such as harassment on the basis of a student's failure to conform to stereotyped notions of masculinity and femininity often times you're going to see these issues come up with the office of civil rights and against a topic that we'll be discussing later on today then you have ferpa the family and educational rights and privacy act which protects the privacy of student records moving into our state laws we have the florida constitution i'm going to read article 9 which the education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the state of florida is therefore a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders i

007underline all because it's taking into consideration all of our students and all of the categories that they fall into adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform efficient safe secure and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education again article one discusses the rights of privacy which we will get into in our presentation later on and then i wanted to include the florida anti-discrimination law as well as jeffrey johnson stand up for all students act these are laws which specifically address discrimination as well as bullying that fault typically fall into a lot of issues that we see as it relates to our lgbtq plus community next slide again here we are with the florida principles of professional conduct for the education profession i'm not going

008to go in and read this whole thing here but essentially the common theme is that we obligation to the students requires that individuals shall not harass or discriminate against any student on the basis of race color religion sex age national or ethnic origin political beliefs marital status handicap handicapping conditions sexual orientation or social and family background and shall make reasonable efforts to assure that each student is protected from harassment or discrimination so again consistent with the theme throughout here we have several proposed state legislations including the parent sprites bill house but died in the senate we have the hb 935 which criminalizes medical services provided to transgender minors and prohibits transgender girls from participation in girls sports and then sb 2012 promoting equality of athletic opportunity we're going to get into some of these specific

009topics later on in the presentation we felt it pertinent for you to have this information so you could have the context of the issues that we're discussing last but not least we have lcsd's board policies as you know we recently updated our non-discrimination and bullying harassment policies that now protect students and employees based on sex sexual orientation gender identity and gender expression that's critical because here we have federal law state law and now local law in terms of our board policy all which goes towards preventing discrimination with respect to our lgbtq plus community and that being said i was going to go over the policies these were policies were in place prior but they have been revised and updated since the inception of the office of civil rights and equity they were recently updated to

010encompass wider protection of protected classes as well as transparency for individuals that may belong to that protected class both of these policies were approved in 2020 the first one on the slide now is policy 1.27 which was expanded to include not only sex and sexual orientation as it did prior but also includes now gender identity and gender expression it also included other update updates of the retina and anti-semitism but relative to lgbtq plus gender identity and gender expression would be the main changes or revisions of the non-discrimination policy this policy is available online as well as how to file a complaint if any staff or student feels they are discrimination discriminated based on these protected classes it's also posted in all classrooms throughout the district as well as all departments throughout the district in english

011spanish and creole this policy was approved in june of 2020. the next policy is 4.14 which is the bullying harassment policy this is required by the jeffrey johnson stand up for all students act it is required per statute to be revised every three years per statute 1006.147 during this revision the statute requires that it needs input from various community members and groups before being approved office civil rights and equity did reach out to various community organizations as well as student student organizations and parent organizations inquiring about the policy and giving the chance to review any updates that being said there weren't many significant changes the policy as the florida department of education does have a template with pro criteria that is required for this and you can see throughout the state many districts use the

012same boilerplate policy with their own individual inclusions in it the main distinction for this presentation for lgbtq plus individuals is that the district included or mirrored the language for the non-discrimination policy as you can see here bullet point number eight that includes gender identity and gender expression this policy was approved in october of 2020. the next slide goes over the office of civil rights and equity there was a dear colleague letter in 2016 issued that gave guidance on transgender students within the schools this guidance came because of there was many questions from different parents principals in school districts to ocr inquiring what the rights of transgender individuals are so this dear colleague letter provided information stating primarily based stating that they could not force the transgender student to use a bathroom they did not identify

013with as well as they did not have to provide medical documentation for a student's transgender status this guidance was rescinded in there was no replacement for this guidance under the trump administration that being said this guidance does not have the effect of law but again it was just guidance for individuals and questions were arising in this topic in 2021 since president biden was elected there have been a couple executive orders regarding the transgender rights and lgbtq plus rights of individuals these executive orders are here the first one is 13988 this one enforced the bostock decision where the supreme court held title vii's prohibition on discrimination because of sex covers discrimination on the basis of gender identity as well as sexual orientation the order also states that laws that prohibit sex discrimination including title ix prohibit

014discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation so long as the laws do not contain sufficient indications to the contrary the most recent executive order was passed the beginning of march that is executive order one four zero two one this gives the secretary of education a hundred days to review the regulations and orders and guidance regarding discrimination on the basis of sex which would be title ix the devos administration did make significant changes to title ix process for sexual harassment that were implemented in august of 2020 and this was under scrutiny so i don't want to speculate but they have 100 days to review and revise anything in title ix or discrimination on the basis of sex to determine if anything needs rescinded or revised in these policies and currently i just want

015to say that title ix does not explicitly say sexual orientation or gender identity nor does it say biological sex all right and next up we're going to get in jump right into student privacy issues now this is probably one of the biggest elephants in the room so i'm going to just jump right in and address it i think that when discussing student privacy issues we have to take into consideration multiple issues including the privacy interests of the student as an individual as well as the privacy issues related to the parents involved and i think that one of the first places to start with respect to this is student records and student information that may be contained in those records as we discussed earlier we have ferpa and as it applies a parent is entitled to

016any information that is contained in that student's records educational records i think that's well established i don't think our district is taking any position to the contrary to that and so if there's information including information relative to the transgender status of that student that if that is contained in the educational record the parent has a right to access to that information that being said if it is not contained in the student record then we have a different analysis and i want to be very clear that individual student does have a privacy right to information that is not contained in their student record in this instance their transgender status or sexual orientation and i think this is one of those situations where our schools often struggle in terms of understanding what information can be shared and

017what information cannot be shared and again as you get to this topic our district is taking an approach similar to a lot of districts statewide that this is a opportunity to engage all parties involved i think it's easy to look at a create a bright line and say either you disclose or you don't disclose our goal here is to do what's in the best interest of the student while also following the law and that involves trying to take a proactive approach and engaging both the student as well as the parent and trying to share this information to the extent that we legally can i want to also make it clear that there are exceptions to the privacy rights of that student and that can be if there's a potential for safety and welfare or harm

018to the student or to someone else that is an exception where the school can absolutely tell the parent if necessary another considering factor is the age of the student we have students coming out transgender in elementary school these days and so their the age of the student can dictate whether or not the school has a right to share that information with the parents and ultimately we get to you know what's on the side with whether or not a compelling interest exists such that the school should notify the parents and again that's a case-by-case analysis there's not a bright line it's either this or that and i think our schools and our and our staff are taking the approach that we are looking at those issues and trying to get to the right solution in light

019of the information that is presented again as it relates to student privacy issues this is a very difficult topic that i know is difficult for folks to understand on both sides of the issue but we're taking into consideration not only the parents rights but again the rights of that student i'm going to go right to the student privacy issues could which again here are some of the requirements of when you would disclose that information including the duty to ensure student safety principles of professional conduct for the education profession in florida as well as the ethical standards for mental health professionals i anticipate some questions on this later but i really just wanted to kind of throw that one right out there and again we will be more than welcome to answer questions a little bit

020later okay and there's a lot of talk about transgender students that is emerging as mr williams said first off a lot of discussion about how you refer to transgender students per the grim case students should be called the names and pronouns that they prefer if they so request it should also be included in the online record system i know crystal will be talking about gsas there is a case out of florida that discussed that the school district there passed a rule that restricted middle school clubs to curricular themed thereby denying the gsa club in their school and the court said that any public secondary school that receives federal financial assistance and permits non-curricular student groups to use school facilities must provide that equal access to other groups it also held notably that since middle school

021offered high school programs it qualified under the secondary as a secondary school under florida law so that also permitted them to have that gsa club in the school setting this is obviously another very hot topic i can say with certainty that the vast vast majority of cases right now support allowing the transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of the gender with which they identify it's still evolving and emerging oh sorry thank you we have the grim case which we referred to before and in this case a transgender male sued the school district when they enacted a policy that prevented him from using the bathroom consistent with his gender identity it went back and forth it was eventually remanded back to the appellate court or the circuit court and they found that it

022was a violation of the student's 14th amendment right and title ix so in that case they were interpreting title ix similar to how bostok interpreted title vii so you know again that is further supporting the rights of transgender students to use the restrooms of their choice here in florida we have the adams case this was in the middle district of florida and the same issue transgender male student was using the male bathroom another student complained the transgender student actually had obtained an amended birth certificate and driver's license in this case indicating that he was male the court found that the student identified as male is identified by others as male and is legally deemed by the state of florida to be male and is otherwise treated as male except for the school district not allowing

023him to use the restroom of his choice the current state of this case is the school board appealed to the 11th circuit in 2020 and the lower court decision was affirmed holding that a public school may not punish its students for gender non-conformity and neither may a public school harm transgender students by establishing arbitrary separate rules for their bathroom use so again it further held that the students or the school's bathroom policy constituted discrimination on the basis of sex so again we're seeing that title nine applied in in the same way as title vii and it's cited to that bostock decision so it's still pending the school district there has requested an on bank hearing in front of the supreme court and the request remains pending as of today another topic that i know a

024lot of people are following is transgender students and athletic participation we are part of the florida high school athletic association and therefore we follow their policy i'm not going to read the policy it's quite long but that is how we handle those issues at this time there as mr williams stated there is pending proposed legislation trying to kind of reverse this policy and prohibit girls for participating or transgender females from participating in girls sports but again it's kind of kind of unclear right now okay so i believe mr bradley has the next slide this goes into how this looks in the school district good morning so at this time we just wanted to talk about where we are in terms of supporting our lgbtq plus students and responding to questions that we've received both from

025the community and from the board in terms of what we're doing so we want to reiterate that at this time there is no lgbt plus q curriculum we as a school district teach the florida next generation sunshine state standards and all of our accredited courses and coursework in in the district or related coursework such as ib ap etc we do address issues that arise on an individual case-by-case basis and so as students express concerns we are addressing those concerns and helping our students to support them so that they can remain engaged in their academics and that is the primary purpose of our support for them so we do provide supports to all students as well this is not targeted specifically to just lgbtq plus but to all students who need support we do encourage and

026provide that support we do follow our board policies in prohibiting harassment and discrimination and that is on all fronts so all students are protected under our non-discrimination policy and we ensure that our policies and the policies of the school district are enacted fairly for all students so i'm just going to speak to you briefly about our support for our student-led organizations or our gsas so of course our student-led organizations are voluntary student-led organizations or clubs that build community and organize around issues that may be faced by our students in their schools and communities some of our gsas are identified as equality unity or identity clubs outside of just the traditional name for gsa of course our student-led organizations all follow the same guidelines that our district has for all other clubs and organizations so the

027students approach with an interest of starting a club or an organization and then from there they seek out a sponsor with a faculty member once they've identified a faculty member as a sponsor they will then go on and have the conversation with administration about their interest of having that specific club or organization on campus and then they will consult with any school-based activities that club or organization may participate in currently in our high schools we have established seven gsas so half of our high schools currently have a gsa some of those gsas have been long standing for five plus years we actually have one school that has reached out and they're interested in and we're in progress of working with them on establishing the gsa at their high school currently in our middle schools we

028have four middle schools with established gsas that have been going two of those middle schools one of those middle schools has been going for a couple years now one is newer and then we have one middle school that is interested in starting and working on establishing a gsa because students have approached with an interest for it we also provide some level of training and professional development for our district level staff as well as school-based leadership and staff so these are just some of the trainings and professional development opportunities that we work in conjunction with diversity and inclusion as well as positive prevention and our civil rights and equity department to ensure that there's a level of understanding compliance our non-discrimination policies and the protected classes title ix and our bullying harassment we do provide this

029on an annual basis to our equity coordinators and any other school-based staff that will be working directly and ensuring that we have equitable practices going on in the school and i'm going to pass it back over to chuck all right so at this time we'd just like to share with you the current title ix processes and mr hudak referred to our policy our nondiscrimination policy previously so discrimination falls under various title support from the federal government title ix covers sex and sexual harassment including sexual orientation sexual identity and so we use a combined complaint process that and this form is available online so if a student is or staff member is experiencing sexual harassment or discrimination based on sex they can file this complaint form and it does come to mr hudak and myself and

030depending on whether it's for student or for or adult student or staff which goes to mr hudak they also have the right to file complaints to the office of civil rights and the eeoc in terms of seeking relief for their complaint the complaint process is found on our website it's under our non-discrimination policy those complaint forms are available there at that site as well as there is a second page for specifically for title ix and a third one for section 504 the title nine page includes the supports that we put in place for title ix and this was in response to the device administration requirements to improve our complaint and complaint resolution processes specifically on this page you'll find these the training videos that or powerpoints that were provided to those who are required to

031respond to title nine complaints for a school-based title ix complaint the complaint is forwarded to the equity coordinator and from there the equity coordinator receives and triages the complaint at that point the complaint is either dismissed or investigated by a school-based investigator it's a thorough investigation we're taking responses from all witnesses as well as the reporter and the responder and determining if all facts have been presented once that is concluded then it goes to the decision maker of the school to make a final decision of whether it's substantiated or unsubstantiated so the devos administration really divided these roles out and requires a thorough treatment of that title ix complaint all of that is specified here on our page in our code of conduct for students this past year we did put information about title ix

032and what all students need to know about title ix particularly about discrimination based on sex or sexual harassment and this page then serves as information on how to seek relief as well we also put in place documents for best practices and action steps many of those which were outlined in the presentation from the legal portion of this presentation in terms of the inclusion of our lgbtq students in activities at school athletics the way that they dress according to our as long as it's within our code of conduct for our dress code that they have the right to address according to their gender identity use of restrooms privacy of their information participation in activities etc a copy of the non-discrimination policy is also included on the poster as well as some brief definitions and access to

033information for students who may need support outside of the school district who may be in crisis or need that mental health support we've also included our a local version of safe space stickers this is nothing new to the school district of lee county safe space stickers have been used here for the better part of a decade but this is in particular the first school district of lee county branded sticker and particularly it was it was created because the other speaker the other stickers were just too expensive to purchase any longer but they do indicate a safe space in which lgbtq plus students and all students can find access to a caring adult who can help them and help them gain access to resources or to support that they may need to continue their schooling this

034year we also had a number of students that have come forward and have have said that they want to be addressed by their gender affirming name these are our mostly our transgender students who have made this request and many at the support of their parents and so this year we have worked particularly with the coven 19 and with the use of distance learning it became difficult to find ways to make sure that these students were supported in their classrooms and so this year we put in place a simple process in which a student who is making this assertion that they want to be addressed by their gender affirming name meet with a counselor and to create what we what is known as a gender support plan basically the gender support plan just talks through all

035of the situations that can occur on a campus or during their schooling and ensuring that the student also meets somewhat of a standard in terms of their assertion that it's insistent consistent and persistent and when that standard is met and when that information is collected by the counselor then that student can get supports on campus in terms of supporting their gender identity and that includes having their pronouns used their gender affirming name used as well as having that populate within certain district applications that do not require a legal name to show up in that application this last year mr hudak and i also worked on creating several procedural guides and putting together the title ix procedural guide that included all the processes previously described as well as we revised our bullying and harassment reporting and

036investigation manual to mirror the same and so currently all of our bullying and harassment reporting tools are located in focus for our practitioners to use at the school-based level at this time i'll turn it over to this okay i think we're going to open it up for questions okay may i have a hands of who would like who has any questions regarding the presentation thus far ms vaughn please hi okay i realize we excuse me i realize we don't have lgbtq per se however we do have health education and i would like to know if these kinds of issues are dealt with in our health education curriculum in the sexuality portion and i'm not personally prepared to provide a response to that miss lisa roy would be the person yes and i'm sorry i can't

037barely hear you yeah miss roy is here so she's just coming out that we call her she's the expert on health education i thought it might be a good idea for me to show up thank you for being here she's the ancient expert on all of these health education matters thanks lisa so as far as the health education curriculum i didn't turn off i talked earlier as far as like the curriculum maps and what is actually in those there is not a an identified section for that but i promise you any prudent health education teacher is going to be prepared because even if they were not bringing them it up as part of the curriculum it gets brought up whether it's the sex education section bullying prevention and it's not just at the high school

038i mean it's down i've got teachers contacting me at the elementary level when when you know third grader says what does this mean you know usually you just give them the answer here's the definition for sexual orientation they're like okay and they move on there is not at this point guidance in statute but i can assure you that the office of healthy schools this is a big push that again not using opinions not you know just hear the facts this is what this means and again it's not just in the area of sex education it also plays in the role bullying prevention healthy relationships respect character yeah and this has been a huge issue with many constituents that i've had to address a couple times what so there's no if it is taught and i

039heard what you said that it isn't part of the sexuality education unit what grades might this be appropriate to teach it in because we're sure what you mean as far as well in in other words where would it fit in the best or if we expand our curriculum maps to include this as a topic what grade levels would be most appropriate to include this and we've discussed this with the board for many years waiting until they're much older they may have completely incorrect information up to that point so at minimum you would want to start this at early early middle school i absolutely think that you know if an elementary child asks the question what does gender identity mean and simply giving them hey that's what this means and if they don't get that information

040from us they're going to get that from elsewhere and that information may not be correct it may be very biased yeah and i agree 100 with with what you're saying but it is it is a huge issue in in this county and not only among parents but also other very conservative constituents so i just wanted to kind of put it out there that we are not because i think some people have the mistaken belief that when a question like that is answered that we are encouraging something or promoting something and i'm glad you said it the way you did because that's a very mistaken belief and of course don't the parents still have the right that if they are uncomfortable with a particular unit that they can have their child opt out sex education and

041the disease prevention they do have that option again this may come up in bullying prevention i can tell you that avoidance you know 28 years in now avoidance of these questions from kids tends to cause it ramps up their their curiosity so you know if it's handled just like anything else i mean if you ask me what a heterosexual is no one would question that so i think if we can make sure that our staff is educated to make sure they keep their own personal biases out you know i can't see it as being anything but a positive yeah and again i totally agree but i wanted to be sure to put it out there because of many misconceptions that i have heard from constituents and again not just parents but other interested parties in

042in lee county so thank you for explaining that's it ms patricka i have a lot of questions so please stop me and move on to others and then come back to me as you find appropriate because i do have a lot of questions and mostly it's helping me to understand because i've talked to a lot of people in the community about this issue and i've told them i'm waiting for this workshop so that i can understand how we're dealing with it in our schools before i form an opinion as a board member and as a parent as to my level of comfort so there's there is a lot that i don't understand and i'm sort of going through this slide by slide on slide four we talk about a lot of cases is has the

043supreme court ruled on this specific issue with regard to how we treat these issues in public schools i can speak as far as you know the use of bathrooms no it's like i said the grim i believe the st john's case they're appealing the supreme court has rejected in the past these cases that have come before them they've decided not to take them in my opinion i feel like it would be more beneficial for a lot of school districts who are struggling with this issue for them to provide guidance once and for all but like i said the vast majority of federal case law supports the use of transgen transgender students using the bathroom of the gender they identify with so that's why we are following that trend at this point it could change so

044that's where we are right now what what i didn't see in those cases i mean i see the comparison between title v and title ix but title vii is an employment law dealing with adults and title ix deals with children under the age of 18 and when we're talking about children under the age of 18 the parental rights issue is present and that's not an issue that's present under title vii and i haven't seen that addressed in any of the analysis when we're trying to bring title vii case law into our anticipated interpretation of title ix case law and that's where i have the biggest issue with all of this is parents rights where are the parents rights to direct these conversations and to be part of decision making and all of that so that's

045that's my concern when we say this is the trend well i would think that the supreme court would also look at the fact that we're dealing with children and parents have a right to be a part of this decision making in these conversations right does that make sense sure it makes a lot of sense and in my previous district we did have some guidance from the seventh circuit it was decided on this issue in that court it was whitaker case it did apply title ix in the same way as title seven in in determining that sex discrimination applies to sexual orientation gender identity all of that so there are several cases across the country that have interpreted title ix that way there are some cases a couple of cases that have not but like i

046said i believe the overwhelming majority are interpreting it that way even if that wasn't the original intent and i think the other distinction between the two as well is again a title seven employment law title nine specifically contemplates and addresses these intimate settings like locker rooms and restrooms making sure that there's equality there between girls facilities boys facilities women's facilities men's facilities and so because the law specifically addresses that i would think you would need a change in the law in order to change how those facilities are used as opposed to an interpretation based on title vii that includes no mention of those things whatsoever am i making sense yeah i mean i understand the need for actual more specific guidance i think i completely understand that and i think a lot of school districts

047are struggling with this as well unfortunately all we have to go on is you know our guidance from ocr executive orders and federal case law at this point interpreting title ix in title vii similarly sort of can i keep going you have two more questions okay i've got a bunch more after that but the i know that i've had this conversation with at least some of you when the original guidance came out under president obama regarding restrooms and locker rooms my daughter i think was in middle school at the time and she would get off the bus i would pick her up from the bus and i would bring her to fgcu for swim practice and she would change in the locker room at fgcu and in order to put on your swimsuit you have

048to strip down completely and the level of discomfort that i had knowing that my daughter could be exposed to you know another sex in in the locker room was huge and i wondered where are my rights as a parent to protect my daughter from that and i think that's the concern of a lot of the parents that i'm talking to here is these intimate settings that involve significant privacy rights as far as i can tell are at issue here and i'm not sure how we how we walk through that without violating on the one hand the transgender students rights or on the other hand violating the student who feels uncomfortable in that setting and that is right am i making sense can i respond real quick sure so one thing miss patricka that we do

049have in our guidance and this is in our best practices document as well is that all students have the right to use the restroom with the of which of the gender with which they identify or seek an accommodation for a gender neutral restroom that applies to all students not just lgbtq so if a cisgendered student is uncomfortable going into a restroom where they know a transgender student is they also have that right to seek out a gender-neutral restroom so my daughter would have to seek out a different restroom they have the right to use either as well she felt uncomfortable changing around and miss patrick i can expand on how other school districts have handled this issue and i mean this is kind of looking forward but i know where i came from they were

050starting to outfit schools with individual stalls changing stalls so that all students can have that privacy when they're getting changed and in that intimate setting so that is definitely something that could be addressed okay you can come back to me okay anyone else miss mary so i don't have any questions but i'd like to ask permission to read a very short elementary book and i just want to say as a an elementary school counselor for 30 some odd years none of this is new to me and so i have dealt with these issues many times over the years my own children and grandchildren have grown up in a house with boys and girls and they all we all use the same bathroom i recently went to a public place and when i went to use

051the restroom it's no gender identification it's just the restroom so i think that we're moving more in that direction but i came upon this little book and i just thought it really puts it all into a very simple explanation regarding those issues regarding restrooms and changing rooms so this is called jacob's room to choose and the reason i picked it up is because i have a great grandson named jacob and i really didn't know what it was about when i started to read it is written by the parents of a transgender student the carpet was warm the bunnies were funny jacob and so sophie loved library time and i didn't may i please okay okay kids said mrs reeves we've got 10 minutes left does anyone need to use the bathroom before we head back

052to class jacob and sophie raised their hands and i'm not going to tell you which one is jacob and which one is sophie but this is the way kids look in school today so they stopped outside the bathroom doors do you think it's okay ask sophie i don't know said jacob sophie walked through one door jacob took a deep breath and walked through the other door two boys were at the sinks they stared at jacob standing in the doorway jacob knew what that look meant he turned and ran out jacob stood in the hall his heart pounding just then sophie ran out of her bathroom it was hard for jacob to talk did you get chased out sophie asked back at the library sophie sophie shifted from foot to foot i need to use the

053bathroom she said mrs reeves was confused didn't you and jacob just go to the bathroom sophie squeezed her eyes shut against the tears they wouldn't let her said jacob they said she had to use the boy's room mrs reeves looked inside the bathroom it was empty anybody in there there was no response she waited in the hall while sophie and jacob went in better asked mrs reeves yes said sophie has this happened before sophie and jacob glassed at each other usually i don't go at school said jacob sophie started to cry again it's not fair said sophie no agreed mrs reeves she gave them both a hug it isn't back in the classroom mrs reeves drew on the board what do these pictures mean boys and girls one has long hair and a little dress

054and the other has short hair and pants okay mrs reeves said but how do you know well the girl has long hair said emily and she's wearing a dress the boy is wearing shorts said noah and a t-shirt now i want each of you to stand near the picture that looks like you said mrs reeves jacob and sophie looked back at mrs reeves mrs reeves winked hold on noah you have long hair that sign shows short hair and emily you're wearing pants but the person on that sign is wearing a dress mrs reeves scratched her head why don't you switch places noah shrugged and walked to where mrs reeve pointed emily looked at the group of boys i don't want to stand there she said why not ask mrs reeves because i'm a girl mrs

055reed studied the kids again you know what a lot of you don't look like the signs let's try this look at the person next to you and help them stand next to the people who look like them arguing and giggling the kids shuffled and reshuffled until everyone found a place to stand mrs reeves pointed at the board are these pictures of what boys and girls really looked like yes and emily no said sophie sometimes said jacob i wonder if there's another way everyone has a right to use the bathroom right we should make our own bathroom signs said sophie and rule said jacob like if you're in the bathroom and you see a kid who doesn't look like you leave them alone or i have to pee so let me be said noah the giggling

056turned to tears great ideas said mrs reeves let's get to work the afternoon was filled with markers and laughter so all the kids worked on making signs for the bathroom new bathroom signs went up everybody uses the bathroom and has a sign of a girl and a boy on it leave kids alone in the bathroom be respectful be kind jacob and sophie stopped outside the bathroom doors they looked and said do you think it's okay asked jacob sophie smiled i think it will be and they went in because they worked it out themselves and these are you know obviously small children but i just wanted to read that because i thought it was appropriate for this workshop thank you thank you miss fisher are there any other questions right now miss juvenelli please i actually

057have questions but i would prefer miss patricka because i think a lot of her questions might be similar to mine so i would ask that she finished her questions i would like i'm very interested in her questions okay perfect miss patricka that's okay okay so slide seven to get to it because sometimes i didn't write what the content was that gave me the question i think i think i don't understand what the what the responsibility is for a school counselor a social worker a teacher whatever a student goes to one of those people what is the student's expectation with regard to confidentiality of information shared with a counselor in a school i did do some research on confidentiality for people under the age of 18 and it seems that the right to confidentiality is not

058is not absolute and that the parent has the right to direct that so i'm not clear on like how do we handle that in our schools i'll take that yeah i know we in previous we've had lori brooks up here but but one of the issues and i again i was trying to kind of carve this out a little bit there there are privacy issues that are related to where the parents are do have access to information and again there's a there's a balancing test there depending on the issue at hand so again to make it a kind of break it down into some issues if the information goes into a student record the parents have access to that student student record oftentimes what we're seeing in a school setting and it may not be

059the guidance counselor may not be a social worker or anyone at the school a we see a lot of situations where individuals at the school observe things you know or they hear things that regarding a student or a particular student or they believe things based on what they see related to that student and there's a difference between that those two types of information you have one one set of information that is not contained in a student record it's a you know it's based on observations or maybe even a conversation with that's particular student and then other information that's contained in a in a pub in a student educational record the difference being you're correct there is a little bit of a debate about what what is accessible what is not and there's actually a lawsuit

060i believe pending in the state of maryland right now regarding similar set of facts over a school district's these as it relates to privacy issues and in particular what could be disclosed and what can't and i think that again what happens with this is that they try to kind of people try to pigeonhole it into one area and then kind of apply it across the board and there are instances where some information can be disclosed and some information cannot but it's not absolute either way only with respect to records it is parents have access to that there's no denying that with respect to information shared by the student it becomes the student's interest which they can either agree to have disclosed or not have disclosed staff should also not share it amongst themselves unless it

061is directly related to that student's educational needs and so the confusion comes where there are instances where it can be provided and there are instances where it cannot and i think that you know we do our best to kind of educate our staff as to when those incidents occur and when they do not and i know chuck's trying to pull some information up but they answer your question it isn't always one way or another and i and again i i can go through a myriad of hypotheticals but it depends on what the exact factual scenario is as to whether that information can be disclosed and cannot and i think that a lot of people hear oh we don't have to disclose anything and that's not what we're saying and most times with the plans that

062we're putting together with the students we're trying to involve the parents we don't want to not involve the parents with respect to these issues or not share information i think sometimes parents hear that and that couldn't be further from the truth i think it's for the well-being of the student again we want to have all parties involved both within the school setting and at home and so there is a kind of universal approach to it while still respecting the rights of that individual student i get that i get that we want to include all of the parties i'm not i'm not questioning that i'm i'm i'm questioning the parents right to know here so it's my understanding that if i seek private counseling for my child i sit down with that counselor and we decide

063in the beginning of the relationship what's to be what's to be kept confidential what's not to be kept confidential obviously the younger the child the more i'm going to be involved as a parent as that child ages up the discussions will continue and more and more will be held in confidence for the benefit of the child am i having those discussions with my child school counselor as well are we determining up front the nature of the relationship and the nature of of what is expressed on behalf of my child to the counselor that i agree to be kept confidential so that the child can have a meaningful counseling relationship going forward that's in line with my comfort and my rights as a parent am i making sense no you are is that an apt comparison

064to make a private counselor on the outside compared to a counselor in a public school setting this and you know say we don't it's for sure say okay she wants to answer yeah if i can just address that again from personal experience at all levels including high school so if a child would come to my office and they wanted to talk i would let them know that anything that they said and they said are you going to tell anybody and i had to say well and this is part of the training the ethics training for counselors social workers and nurses i had to say okay anything you say to me is confidential and i would explain what that meant if the child was young however if you are hurting yourself or someone else or someone

065is hurting you or you're in any danger we must talk to your parents and then in in developing a relationship with the child you get that level of trust and my end goal was always to include the parents at some point and so and encourage the kids now you told me this i think you really need to talk to your mom or dad about this and they were like well i'm nervous about that sometimes i would help with that and say okay let's you want to call your parent and invite them to come in and many times that worked so counselors will keep things confidential but it is a case-by-case basis and if there's any danger to the child or you know to the psyche of the child a concerted effort is always made and

066parents do have the opportunity to meet with their school counselor and if they're not comfortable with that then they can say no i don't want my child to see the school counsel so there is that in existence and has been for quite a while thank you miss fischer christine i'm sorry no i was just going to highlight the cases that mr williams discussed as well you know they're very clear that the right not to have intimate facts about one's life disclosed without their consent is a venerable right whose constitutional significance is recognized that was the sterling case and then you have the what side is that would be probably seven or eight it's right there it's it's up there right now it's seven or eight yeah and then the next case as well you know

067recognizes the right to a student's privacy that involved a student whose pregnancy status was disclosed but you know it said you've gotta weigh those so as miss fisher stated we've got away every situation on a case-by-case basis so the comparison of the outside private counseling relationship to the public school counseling relationship that's not an apt comparison a counselor in a school can keep things confidential from me as a parent that a counselor on the outside doesn't agree to keep confidential do you understand the question i do not try and be competitive i'm really trying to understand i really i really am trying to understand and i think unfortunately ms brooks had a scheduling conflict she explains this quite well and i think the role yeah and chuck can elaborate to the role of the counselor

068is to work with the child as ms fisher stated and it's not to actively hide information it's to ensure that the student is safe and then involve other parties when necessary this is actually the statement that ms brooks provided previously and it simply says as schools work with the unique needs of lgbtq plus students it is with most care that staff works to balance the support and confidentiality of each student with their parents or guardian's inherent rights to be the guiding voice in their child's life school counselors working with children and adolescents in any setting any setting often find it challenging to balance their obligations to keep private the information disclosed and confidence to them with others rights to know the american school counselors association states it is the school counselor's responsibility to fully respect

069the right to privacy of those with whom they enter a counseling relationship and to provide an atmosphere of trust and confidence asca position paper on the school counselor and confidentiality counseling relationship between students and their school counselor requires an atmosphere of trust and confidence students must trust their school counselor to be able to enter into a meaningful and honest dialogue with the school counselor however school counselors must also inform students that exceptions to confidentiality exist in which school counselors must inform others of information they obtain in the counseling relationship the basic thresholds for a breach and confidentiality are set forth in law in addition to mandatory reporting of suspected abuse statute requires disclosure of breach of confidentiality when there exists a danger to self or danger to others which can also be defined in a

070serious and foreseeable harm students should be informed when situations rise in which school counselors have a responsibility to disclose information obtained in counseling relationships to others to protect students themselves or other individuals after the basic threshold set forth in statute regarding required disclosure professional ethics become the guiding principle for school counselors social workers school psychologists and licensed mental health professionals as they work with students limits of confidentiality are explained in to students in an ongoing manner students need to be well aware of these limits and reminded of them throughout their work with school counselor or other school-based mental health professional confidentiality ensures that school counselors will not share students disclosures with others except when the student authorizes it or when the aforementioned required threshold for disclosures are met in addition to the trust and trusting

071and confidential nature of the student counselor's relationship with students the school counselor's relationship with students another consideration is central to their work that consideration is the parent or guardian's right to be the guiding voice in their children's lives the american american school counseling association states school counselors recognize their primary obligation regarding confidentiality is to the student but balance that obligation with the understanding of the family or guardians legal and inherent rights to the guiding voice of their children to be the guiding voice of their children's lives for this reason as school counselors and other school mental health professionals we engage with students on any sensitive topic not only are the limits of confidentiality discussed in an ongoing manner the involvement of the students parents and guardians in that student situation is a significant part of

072those discussions school counselors work with students to find ways to support them in sharing sensitive information with their parents and encouraging them throughout these discussions to do so if the student has not already disclosed or shared with their parent guardian on these sensitive topics in addition to helping students work through their thoughts and feelings on sensitive issues the role of the school counselor is also to help students find the tools and means to talk with their parents guardians about these topics in a supportive environment school counselors also provide parents with resources and tools to support their child in navigating these these important developmental milestones for additional reading on this topic there are two american school counselor association position papers that board members maybe may find helpful to read and she said okay so i'm much

073better at reading could you send that to me so that i can to all of us so that i can read it mr trica i'm gonna let i wanted to clarify something that might help ms patrick's questions we need to look at the reality of school counselors in 2021 first of all a school counselor what ms fisher described to me that's extremely accurate except for the fact that a school counselor doesn't is not a therapist okay is not typically a clinical psychologist who would deal with these things the reality is that in today's school settings and i'm thinking about high school now the counselor is a becomes a test administrator the counselor often is especially imagined with the code with covid absences might become an emergency substitute a school counselor often is on lunch duty

074okay there's i've heard many of my friends one and when i was teaching at a star high school who were who are counselors actually they're both retired now but complain about the fact that it was really difficult to find any quality time to deal with students and these kinds of issues because they had so many administrative things that they had to do so many things that were out of the realm of counseling so certainly if it's an emergency situation certainly as the counselor can fit in issues with a student that is having difficulties and but i'm just being realistic here we do have school psychologists but the last that i heard on on this we don't have enough of them we don't have enough school psychologists and counselors to deal with the myriad of mental

075health issues that hundreds of students in a school so to look at a school counselor beyond someone that can provide emergency help temporary help and give the student other avenues to explore you know somebody here correct me if i'm wrong but i just don't think a school counselor has time to deal on a weekly basis like an hour a week with one particular student the way a therapist or a clinical psychologist would have that time so if anybody here mr bradley or anybody if you have something different to say on this please correct correct me did anyone have any comments thank you miss vaughn and we're off topic yeah i don't think that's off topic because it was brought up about the role of the school counselor it's not off topic at all if we're

076thank you miss vine well no if we're talking about this it's not off topic i'm sorry it's not mr bradley or anyone down there did you have a comment to that because i'm going to ask miss patricka to continue the questions and i don't i don't have a specific response to it i do think that's a that's a great question and certainly i was just asking if it's legitimate or not but i thought it might clarify what miss patrick is asking about okay mr chicken will you take that clarification so let's say we're dealing with a counselor or a school psychologist my child or any child approaches and brings up concerns of of any nature what i just heard you read in my mind there's a difference between hipaa laws where the parents right to

077know is primary and the parent negotiates with the psychologist or the counselor the extent to which that confidentiality will be in place and the extent to which the parent will give up their right to know versus the school counseling guidance where the child's right to confidentiality is placed at a higher premium than the parents right to know is that's what i heard you say did i interpret that incorrectly i wouldn't say i wouldn't care i wouldn't characterize it the way you said it i wouldn't say that it's at a higher premium i think that it's just acknowledging that there is an interest in that student's rights to that information and who that info and who that information is disclosed to and i think the difference is again and you know and to ms vaughn's point

078as well the topic as it relates to counselors and our psychologists i think we're all struggling on how to answer that because the person most suited to answering that isn't here but it becomes a topic of it of its own with respect to how that situation is handled because it is a very delicate situation and it should be handled in a very delicate manner but to your point of where that information goes it's it's not that we're you know the schools are not acknowledging the rights of the parent it's just that there is a a a legal right to that information for the student and and there are limited circumstances where that you know that can exist but it still exists i know there is mud i'm not i'm not comfortable i'll tell you as

079a parent i'm not comfortable knowing that my school's my child's school counselor or psychologist can keep things from me that my child's private counselor or psychologist cannot keep from me that that brings about a level of discomfort for me as a parent and in terms of directing my child's education and welfare and me being able to sort of direct these conversations and it's not just in this area mr williams you indicated that we go through a bunch of hypotheticals and i actually have a bunch of questions in here about hypotheticals so that i can really understand in a broad way what we're talking about is it fair to ask to go through some of that i mean you can what i would say to hypotheticals and the reason i said that is you know you

080can create a hypothetical but without we would have to assess a lot of information regarding hypothetical and you can write a hypothetical but again i'm going to just ask you more questions about it and we can keep going back and forth about what the answers to those questions would be but my point is that when these issues come it's important that the district's legal department as well as our school psychologists and social workers and as well as the school site itself and district staff work together in assessing these issues and they're not and they're they're not made in a vacuum we bring in a bunch of people to look at each of the issues because there's different perspectives as it relates to those issues so giving me a hypothetical i would say let me you

081know give me 10 minutes each time you ask the question for me to go in the room with all of the people involved to answer that question and i think that would be fair as opposed to a hypothetical where we have to respond where again there's limited information about what the context of that hypothetical is and can i and i also wanted to to share something because i know i keep hearing the question was what counselors can keep from you within the school versus outside if if a child is going to counseling on the outside they are entrusted with the same value as far as that privacy with the child and i and i know that firsthand because i have had some of my kids have gone through that and they're not gonna have that

082conversation with you what they have been talking to them about because that is their privacy and that's their space to to speak now if there's something that as mrs fisher had said that was alarming to them or that they felt that was going to hurt them then they would share that but as far as them being able to go in there and have conversation with their counselors outside private ones it is private to them so i just wanted to share that with you because my understanding of hipaa and how hipaa directs well i'm i'm telling you firsthand knowledge of my experience with them just so i can i just wanted to share put that out there and miss patricka i think it is a conversation that we can have with lori brooks you know if

083there are parents who are comfortable with that relationship and want to define it from the start it would be something that we could definitely discuss with miss brooks moving forward and maybe we could have her come in and share that with us miss kittens i'm just i was good morning i'm sorry i was late i had a previous engagement and thank you all for the presentation i did listen on my way in so excellent job of explaining and the comment i wanted to make is and no offense to miss patricka but and i know she's like representing the some parents views so my question is are there opportunities in the i keep going back to community forums and open conversations if we have those opportunities for parents to partake in those i mean here on

084this board we hear from you know one current parent we hear from a grandparent but the majority the plethora of people involved are out there and they have questions and they have concerns and to sit in a forum to hear what you have to say to answer their questions would would cover you know a multitude of parental situations i mean i mean i just think we really need to have parental involvement to understand and i don't know if it's a big group or a smaller group and you know so that it's a little more controllable because in a big group people kind of you know get out there and do their thing maybe smaller groups and by invitation or something if they want to do that but we're not going to solve it for every

085parent in lee county on this board i just don't we don't represent every single parent and so i'm just saying how can we do that can we superintendent ask for these types of group settings where parents can sit comfortably with counselors from their schools to talk about what their day is like what they do and the last thing i want to say about it too being a teacher it's not always just the counselor i have had on many occasions students lgbtq students coming into my classroom at the end of the day or early in the morning closing the door and me having to say just you know kids are coming to just go into the storage room and get yourself together for a minute and i'll come in and talk to you so it's not

086just the counselors i agree with miss vaughn the counselors are super busy being test givers and i don't know how old everybody else is but when i was in school counselors did what you're talking about and today they don't have the time to do that children gravitate to who they feel comfortable with they might even miss patrick have this conversation with the janitor and have that conversation with a coach so we have to look at where you know confidentiality and do we take away from them the ability to talk to someone that at that moment they feel comfortable talking to and that moment that maintenance person or that coach or that you know assistant coach might keep them off of the list of a tragedy good point miss kittens did you have did you wonder

087miss givenelli i know that you i'll just jump in just a little bit because what i'm not hearing so we're we're policymakers we're we're governance right so i feel like some of this is a little bit overreaching a little bit because i need to know i want the data that tells me how many students are dealing with this in lee county how what is our numbers i don't have any of that information i would have loved to have been briefed by experts in this field that has gender studies and public policy brief brief us i don't i'm sorry but i don't feel like that the school district needs to be educating children all children there's no if ends about all means all so that's that's what the whole thing is about is children so it

088doesn't matter who who the children are it's their children that's it i mean there's not there's no it doesn't it's there's no gender issues with that so i i want to see what's the number of transgender students that we have in lee county that's my notes i was writing here and how how many of them how many complaints do we have presently that we have that by not having a policy in place governing this what is what is our numbers with that because i mean there's a lot of issues that we could take on as in lee county i mean we have homeless issues we have kids have eating disorders are we gonna are we gonna start categorizing and making policy on that so i think we have to i think we have to the

089constitution allows parents to have parental rights we can never take that away so i'm agreeing with miss patrick's questions so i mean some there's information that we weren't given and you know i just what's the data on on br you know and give me the cases on both sides of it affecting children either way so that's what my that's where i'm going with you know my thoughts are because and then i had a couple questions what lgbt plus what does the plus mean in in that meaning exactly and then there was a the 12.27 policy i was he mr hudak said that it was posted in classrooms where is that posted at i've been in several classrooms i've never seen it posted so i was just curious about that and then the fsaa ruling we

090belong that and they're ruling regarding sports that's we just should stay in line with what they may what they their decision is on that let the professionals handle some of these issues that you're talking about i think training is great for our staff and handling but at this point if it's out of our realm we don't want to be held liable for not getting proper medical treatment if something's needed so we have to it needs to go to the parents so i just don't see confidential that could be a problem at some point if we're not telling parents what's happening to their children ms civinelli i think that the reason for today's workshop is we ask them to come and share with us on what we are doing here in the district that's why they're

091here and not not experts there and then also can do you want them to answer which you want them to answer all these questions so that way as far as where are they located where are they located and they because i know you went through a whole bunch of them where are they located in the classroom i know we're not given medical we're not doing anything medical for children what was the i was trying to write down what you were saying okay so where are they posted in the classroom and then 1.27 is what you were talking about correct you mentioned at the beginning okay right so they should be posted it's up to the administrator the building should you ensure that they're generally just like a piece of paper printed they give and generally

092there's posted on a bulletin board i know mr bradley and i did an audit of the of the central office building that each department has it but the administrators at each building site should be ensuring that each teacher has those posted in their classrooms and it's not like a big bulletin board it's just a printed piece of paper and they're generally posted somewhere in the class okay and then you had what was your other question prior to what's the what does the plus mean sorry just to add on to what mr hudak said to finish that question it's also posted in our student code of conduct in both editions the plus identifies all of those who do not identify as heterosexual or homosexual bisexual transgender lesbian it includes those that may identify as gender fluid

093those who identify as pansexual those who identify as something other than the other the other initials okay thank you also miss juvenelli just to give you we don't have exact figures here in the district we don't have a tool an instrument that collects the data locally in terms of our the number of our students that identify as lgbtq plus but we do have state figures and currently 18.2 percent of students in the state of florida identify somewhere as not heterosexual so that includes lgbtq plus and then 1.5 percent of those identify as transgender and that was as of 2019. okay and then she also had and i guess mr budak how many com how many complaints regarding what title nine perhaps that we have received from my end for employment for employees i have zero

094complaints regarding title ix at this time i'm sorry i couldn't understand employees i have zero at this time regarding title ix zero for employees do we have any re for students since the beginning of the school year i we've had about at least a dozen cases that have been closed i have two active cases i'm currently working with okay thank you and was there something else that i missed there was one point she made about fhsaa and owlette oh thank you mr kind of fill that in but i think she was trying to be very clear that we are following the state guidelines as it relates to athletics we're not deviating we're not going out on you know a whim or assumption we're following the guidelines from the state and we're keeping abreast of what's

095currently going on at the state level including current legislation before our governing bodies perfect so that leads me so to be clear then we're not we're not deciding to make a policy on this or anything like that right correct okay that's what i think needs to be clear as well okay this is just information purposes yes through the chair one one last thing to miss kittens point you know there are two sides to this i think you know there's a lot of focus on the parental side and the exposure and all and what you know there is exposure on the other end as well if information there's a reason that students not sharing that information with their parents and that information and again without going into hypotheticals because you could create one that ends any

096way you want but again there are concerns and liability and exposure legally if information is disclosed to that parent and that parent does some harm to that student then that's on us as well because again if we're saying that information is a privacy interest of that student and there's a reason and we have to evaluate all of those things and again this is where it's a case-by-case analysis if we believe there's harm potential harm to that student we may have to report that and so there are a lot of moving parts here where the result of sharing that information can have an ultimate negative impact on that student and it's it's difficult it's difficult that schools are put in these situations and this happens in numerous instances whether it be child custody or or this

097issue where the school is put in the middle of two different interests and having to navigate these waters so i don't want to give the perception that these decisions are made you know just on a whim but they're made with careful thought hence why i said that we would likely have to get a few people in the room to have this conversation depending on what issue was brought to to our attention so thank you miss kittens two things first thing mr bradley the data that you gave the 18.2 and the 1.5 is there a further breakdown of that by age or by grade level we could get those figures i would appreciate that behavior survey yeah i'd appreciate that because and maybe i'm off line with this but i think more parents are concerned about

098the younger age groups and as students get older it's like we almost kind of feel they can make their own decisions and that therein lies that you know the rub and kind of back to what miss giovanelli was saying i thought the purpose of us having a workshop began in october of last year when we were faced with the decision of a resolution and i had asked i know i had asked several times when are we going to well it was put off and said we want a workshop at first that's what we were told and it kept getting put off and put off and i you know i was concerned we were getting so far away from the purpose of even doing this and in my mind eventually we're going to have to decide

099what events we will observe and we will not observe so gathering this information should help us to do that but june is coming we had october and we discussed june and the different events and we have not as a governance team decided anything yet we've just kicked the can down the road and i know it's a difficult decision and question but as we're gathering information we have to keep in mind we will have to decide what we're going to do it unless something is already on the books that we're doing that was the reason for all of this miss kittens we as a board already approved a certain date for a resolution so that's already that was done i think it was two months ago maybe three months i i apologize i don't have that

100exact date when we did that but it was when we listed everything was listed together we talked about all the items that were on there and that was already voted for so this is definitely information that we have been getting so people have an understanding of what is what we are doing as a district what is out there as far as that we're not teaching children any of this but that's what the main thing was for this and i agree with that because that's the main thing that calls that i get you know you're teaching our children this and that and that's the main thing when i go back to having those parent groups to show them curriculum and tell them what we're doing and what we're not doing and i recall now you know

101choosing which resolutions and all of that can you remind me though did we decide either june or october because i don't think in my head i cannot i don't recall the mr pre bruno yes madam chair you decided that in october you were going to celebrate it in october thank you thank you thank you thank you because i know there was two and we decided on one okay thank you mr patricka slide 13 please i'm not clear if you could help me understand how grunky is that how you say that the case name grumpy sounds good how that's even relevant here because this specific piece of the court quote that you gave to us arises out of a fourth amendment search and seizure issue there are no lgbt issues involved in this case at all

102and i'm not clear on how we how we make how that even applies here i'll i'll take that one when you get into privacy rights of students you've got multiple topics pregnancy search and seizure lgbt instances like this and i think when you're looking at the guidance you have to look at all the case law as it relates to it and this grunky case actually sets a standard for when information can be disclosed that despite the privacy interest right and again i would highlight the legitimate or compelling interest in notifying parents and i think that brightline standard is kind of cited throughout cases following that as a means by which information can be communicated to the parents despite the privacy interests that that student may have and again that goes back to my point that

103there are instances this is not a bright line rule where the student tells something to the school and we don't have to share it there are numerous instances where that information must be shared and again you know whenever you get a legitimate or compelling interest notifying that's that could be very as broad as you like to make it or try to make it or you know as narrow as you'd like to make it so i think in a lot of instances there are school districts that are relying on that that provision for purposes of actually disclosing so the bullet point below that recommend that if there's not a legitimate compelling interest is that your recommendation as legal staff is that a recommendation that came out of that case i'm not clear on where that recommendation

104came from because i read the quote from that case much differently than the way you have interpreted it to me this quote means parents write the parents right is the most important consideration and information can be withheld from the parent only if there's a compelling interest by this and that's and that's correct and no you're correct in that assessment but again that's an that is an analysis that is that is made when we get these types of issues that you know whether or not there is a compelling reason for example the parent has threatened to kill the student if you know there could be a multitude of reasons why there would be an interest in not sharing and again a lot of times that will have to do with usually a health and safety or

105welfare of of someone involved in the particular situation so then we err on the side of of sharing information with parents that's that's what i'm getting here i mean i get if the child comes to you and says my parents gonna kill me obviously you're not gonna share that with the parent you're gonna go to the appropriate authorities and handle it that way but in just a regular conversation where the child's safety and well-being is not at issue the parent's right to know is supreme and you can only keep that information from the parent if there's a compelling reason to do so is that i mean that's no and i i would agree that is the way that a lot of districts are interpreting that that position without the way we're interpreting that i think

106we're interpreting it to to honoring the right of the parent to know while taking into consideration on the rights of the student i think again it's it's i want to say for the most part information is being shared with with parents and i think that we try to get there regardless of where the student is on the issue so if because these are very and i think we've said it these are very sensitive topics and these students are trying to navigate them with assistance from you know in some cases a school counselor and so we absolutely want to involve the parents to the extent that we can because it's important that these issues are addressed not only at the school but at home i mean we can have our own discussions and then send the

107student home and they're left to fend for themselves and i don't think we're trying to put any student in that situation and we also i mean i think we also all understand how hurtful that must be for a parent to find out that their child doesn't want to share information with them i mean i can only imagine and so you know it again to your point yes we are sharing information absent something that would suggest that we it would be inappropriate to do so i think for that case i told you about in maryland i think that's what where that one's headed so okay can i keep going so slide 15 i think i asked this question before do we have to open gsas to pre-k 8 students because algebra is offered in a pre-k8

108educational environment that is what the carver case found and that is the 11th circuit so that was a middle school though that wasn't a pre-k 8. it wasn't a pre-k-8 i think that would have to be specifically analyzed based on the school is it open to all k-8 students or is it just the upper grade students i think you'd need to carve out some parameters for that and then when it comes to this is sort of jumping ahead a little bit high school just in general when our students graduate with the regalia and the robes and the ropes and all of the stuff that they put around their necks do we recognize anything other than academic achievement in that regalia like do we recognize athletic achievement do we recognize gsa involvement do we recognize student

109government do we recognize anything that's not academic i have the answer to that if you don't mind i was i was senior class represent sponsor for a couple of years and there are certain academic like cords and all that and i can recall i know he's coming up because i can recall there was a time that different clubs wanted to be you know recognized and it had to be a vote and a decision as to which courts would be used and most of the time it was academic though so dr spyro you missed kittens it is a school-by-school decision so the schools determine how students will be recognized through the chords that you're specifically referring to okay so if a school decided to they could recognize every football player with a with football beads around

110their neck or something schools would determine that usually they work to their leadership team inside of their building and there's a very clear criteria on what type of cords are recognized at graduations now i will general i'll stereotype now and say generally across the board most of it are academically focused most of them are honor societies but i cannot stand here and look at you and say there aren't other groups that are recognized by wearing a cord as well and the reason why i ask is because i can't a parent came to me upset that her daughter couldn't wear rainbow cords at graduation and i don't recall being at a graduation where anything other than academic achievements were recognized visually at a graduation but you're saying that a gsa club could go to the principal

111and have that conversation and perhaps graduate with rainbow chords provided by the school that's a school by school decision yes and they would make that determination by their school thank you slide 17. i think that what makes me the most comfortable with this policy and this policy was enacted before i got on that board is the use of the word consistent before gender identity i think that there's significant concern on on my own behalf about gender fluidity and bathroom and locker room use based on a child's gender fluid identity but the consistent gender identity brings me a greater sense of comfort knowing that we're talking about gender dysphoria which has been recognized from what i understand by the american pediatrics association whereas gender fluidity has not so i'd can i can i be confident that

112any decisions we're making regarding accommodations are being made based on consistent gender identity and not gender fluidity absolutely yes and again we use a standard of consistent persistent and insistent so we're looking for all three all right and then i see mr larosa in the back are we actively training our coaches and our athletic directors on this so that there are no missteps if a child comes to a coach or goes to a coach and has this conversation yes every year at the beginning of the school year we have meetings with all of our coaches this year we had to do it via zoom but in our in our presentations to them all these types of items are discussed with them yet thank you and we are following the guidelines of the fhsa in regards

113to all of this that makes sense go ahead okay slide 20 how do the rainbow signs meet any of the requirements or goals stated on 20. i have to tell you that the rainbow in particular bothers me it is the most recognized political symbol in the world and as in a political body and as a public systems public school system that's not supposed to be political i think that political symbol in our schools is inappropriate and so i'm not clear on on how the rainbow portion of the sign accomplishes any of the goals on 20 because i believe those goals can be completed or met without using a political symbol to advertise what we're doing anybody have an answer to that's just a statement don't you know i think there could be debate on whether

114or not it's a political symbol i know mr bradley has some information about the history of how that symbol came to be and i know our previous stickers also utilized something that has been associated i think it was the inverted triangle with a rainbow so i'm going to defer to him i think the legal piece though is debatable so without venturing too far into the comic because that is somewhat inflammatory the symbol of the rainbow it was created specifically to remove the disparaging symbol that was used for gay people in particular which was an inverted paint triangle which has its origin in nazi germany and it was used to identify homosexual prisoners in the concentration camps it was used directorially for many decades to identify and disparage homosexuals during the civil rights movement after stonewall

115the pride flag was created as a symbol to provide hope for those that i don't identify or were marginalized at that time it has been politicized it was never a political symbol it was not of or pertaining to a political party as a matter of fact it represents people from a broad spectrum of political backgrounds including extreme conservatives and extreme liberals and everything in between so it is a symbol that is recognized in terms of our students who we're trying to message to that they matter they're included we care about them and there are people here that will help them regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation thank you and it's just it's a symbol of pride yeah i was just gonna add that it's a symbol of pride much like the red black

116and green flag you know as a symbol of pride for african americans during black history month i put that on my door so if that's political i apologize but the you know i don't think it i don't think you know again i to miss charlotte's point i think that's debatable and i think it depends on what side of the issue you fall on but to my knowledge it's a source of pride and and you know like for for those reasons i don't think it necessarily kind of meets the context of what we were previously discussing okay well i disagree i think it's political and i think that i think that where do we stop do i start to hang pro-life symbols in front of my name because i'm strongly pro-life and i'm raising my children

117that way and if i'm a teacher can i can i hang the pro-life symbol in my classroom in order to promote that with i think that there's a way to accomplish this to let students know that they're safe and that whatever issue they're having that's causing them difficulty or they're feeling the target of bullying or they're feeling the target of harassment whether it be sexual orientation sexual identity or it's you know the fact that they have red hair and people make fun of them for their red hair there's a way for us to reach our students and let them know that that kind of behavior is not tolerated in our schools regardless of the issue and i think the other thing that's important to understand is my perspective as a as a parent this is

118the issues that we're talking about here are incredibly intimate and incredibly private and the level of discomfort i have as as an adult walking through the school district of lee county with these signs hanging throughout the district to me that's an invitation to discuss issues that are intimate and private and should be discussed at home and the environment that it creates for me is one of extreme discomfort and i know that there are children that share that sense as well they go to school without an expectation that issues surrounding sexuality sexual identity have to be discussed yet they're being encouraged to discuss it with the presence of these signs am i making am i making sense like that's when we talk about all kids we do we really do talk about all kids and that's

119a perspective that i think is not taken into consideration in this you're making sense obviously there's a lot to unpack there there's a lot of different issues that you brought up as it relates to i mean clearly there's there's freedom of expression issues involved and freedom of speech issues involved in in some of that context in terms of what is permissible and what is not and again there are legal analysis with respect to various different things in that regard as far as you know the discussions that come up as a result you know i think depending on who you talk to they'll say those conversations come up regardless of whether there's a sticker on the wall so you know to kind of pinpoint that as the basis for it without again without knowing it could

120it could be the reason i don't know but i think we have to as a local governmental agency balance you know first amendment freedom of expression rights against the impact that it has on the educational setting i think when you talk to most people they'll tell you that i know staff will say that they've gotten a very positive response to those stickers both from students and staff so it goes both ways and i don't i'm not disregarding your perspective i think it's important that we have these types of conversations so that we understand all of the perspectives that are out there because you are a parent we have other parents that share similar views and we have to understand all perspectives as we as a district navigate these these waters in terms of implementing processes

121and identifying issues that are important both to our parents and our to our students so is it age appropriate in elementaries ordering she was asking questions because miss juvenelli asked that she continued so miss bonnie can you join by miss vaughn miss vaughn are we do you have a question please we're good do you have a question please all right fine it's your turn do you have a question i had my hand raised no i know you did but i thought miss vaughn had her hand up first so that's why i called on her well we've we've been on this on on this one path of miss patrick's opinion and honestly i would like to see what the rest of the board that's what i think about it and i'm was also asking if we're

122going by time yes i'm the individual yes miss kittens okay well two things first of all a procedural issue i believe in robert's rules of order when someone does call for point of order it is imperative that we do stop and recognize that and find out what their issue is and mr p bruno would you please address the fact that when a board member says point of order because i know i have several times said that and been ignored and i think we are breaking robert jewels of order and then i have a further question could you please address that so when a point of order is made the chair needs to stop and make a ruling on the point of order allow the person to explain their position and then make a rolling on

123it and you can move forward from that point thank you stop the conversation and ask ms vaughn to speak so please miss kittens okay and kind of in the same vein i go back to asking about presenting this information to all parents i feel that we're being and allowing so much time for one person to speak it's been almost an hour and i got here late so i think we're overstepping our own rules and it is coming across with the eyes and the eyes and the knees and the eyes that it's not representative of all of our constituents so i am asking that if miss patrick has many more personal concerns and questions that she get her answers offline so that we can make this at least seem like it's two-sided if you're watching this

124it seems like it's one-sided and i don't think that's fair to the rest of the constituents in lake county and that was her miss javanelli had requested that she continue asking the questions miss fisher do you have something that you wanted to share not right now okay i miss javanelli well and i just was going to just back you up i did ask miss patrick because i am interested in what she has to say because i'm agreeing with most of it so i'm sorry but and i think it's something that the community needs to hear and i'm sorry i'm not talking to my mic so i you know i think it's valid i but i have to go back to my question because i asked about the number of transgender students and you're telling me

125there's 20 percent in lee county because that was the question those states state state do not identify as as strictly heterosexual so okay that's different question though 1.5 percent identify as transgender 1.5 in the state state right thank you so that i mean so it's minimal even in lee county right so i mean we need to think about that i mean the data it's all about the data right thank you thank you did you mr patricka could you just like round it up we've got three hours set aside exactly i meant to say that too thank you i know we're on time so yeah my next question is slide 20 excuse me madam chair the only thing that i would recommend to the chair is that every board member has an opportunity to speak and

126provide their opinion and one board member cannot you know basically monopolize the conversation so i would advise the chair if there are any other board members that they'd be allowed to speak and if there are none then you can go back to miss patricka thank you and that's exactly what i'm doing i'm making sure that everybody has an opportunity to speak and then i go back to ms patricka thank you oh my goodness so slide 24 i remember seeing in a report that we had to send up to the state and i can't remember the name of the report but i know you're going to remember it there it was about the training for our equity coordinators i believe in schools and it said something about if a student has not outed themselves to the

127parents then we will keep that information confidential and i was just looking for some explanation on that what that meant i try not to draw conclusions based on you know a couple words on a slide because i know that was part of a larger training so what are we training our school personnel with regard to that it follows along with everything we've said here today which we do train our people that they require the consent they require the consent of the student to share that private information so they're not they are prohibited from sharing that information without the students knowledge and consent i think what was notably absent from that previous report it was just the exceptions of when we do right so i think that there was this the takeaway i got from that

128when there was responses was that they never share this information i think that that's what we're at least trying to clarify here today that there are exceptions in in no notable instances when that information would be shared it just wasn't spelled out and i think in that presentation slide next question slide 26. nevermind that one's we've already gone over slide 29 that's more of an opinion so i'll get to that at the end slide 30. is the gender spectrum form currently in use it is one tool that is provided to our schools it is not officially adopted but it is one that is available if a licensed practitioner in our district has others that they want to use they're certainly welcome to so we use that without parental consent it's in it includes working with

129the student and parent i understand that but when i read it i didn't see any place on there for parental signature either on the gender spectrum one or on the school district of lee county one so a child a student could approach a school employee and engage in this process and change their gender identity from an outward perspective the way you know the pronouns that are used the name that's used without parental consent i'm going to defer to our attorneys on that but primarily if a student comes in and if they exercise their constitutional right to freedom of expression we will recognize them but that's not on their legal paperwork that is not other legal paperwork so this wouldn't be part of the student's record correct so this is something we would keep from parents

130we're not we're not keeping anything from parents it is simply a process of collecting information working through with the student it's a it's a counselor tool and that this might be ignorance this might be a lack of understanding my understanding is that gender dysphoria is a consistent gender identity issue and typically it's directed by the parent and the child of the case law i've read the parent has been involved with the child and on behalf of the child as they pursue legal remedies i don't understand how this fits into that i don't understand how we can do this without parental consent i read these and i was like oh my gosh why is there no line for my signature so i can sort of address that you know there is a section for parent guardian

131involvement it gauges if the parent is aware of the issues and then how are we going to account for that and plan for that and get to the point where they are sharing it in my legal opinion this would be a student record that a parent could request if we feel that the student is in danger after the parent requested this information then we would obviously take actions to protect the student but yes this would be a student record it has a student's name on it was created in school so that would be my legal take on it and let me there's a student record yeah and let me draw this distinction to you there's a difference between the student record and information you would be disclosing to the parent so the parent could make

132a request for this information but you're not going to go out and say hey by the way here's a document that you know your student didn't tell you about the other thing with respect to lawsuits where they've been filed on behalf of the students typically the student if they're a minor would have require the parental involvement in order to file a lawsuit so they're under 18 they wouldn't be able to do it without the parent or guardian as the actual plaintiff so it's usually the parent on behalf of the minor child okay and then ms patrick you were speaking of 29 that's part of our code of conduct that went through edac and multiple conversations before that was put in and voted on so that is part of our code of conduct number 29. okay

133i don't have sorry miss skins my question for miss patricka is are we trying to identify what our policies are what we do daily or are we questioning title ix ocr the overarching types of things and that's what i'm asking you i will just remind board members to make sure they go through the chair and not through personal questions thank you and i believe may i ask that question to ms patricka please jordan miss patrick i'm trying to gain a general understanding of what it is the school district does at each grade level or at each level of education i'm trying to figure out what our legal liability is with what we're doing versus what we're not doing and i'm trying to address the concerns that have been brought to me by many people in

134the community surrounding this issue thank you are there any other questions regarding this information that we have been given today mr evanelli and i'm gonna back ms patrick on that i mean i think this is information that's very knowledgeable for parents because people have these questions and this is the time to do it this is what three hours is set for so i'm gonna i'm gonna i would like to hear her to continue thank you thank you miss vaughn please earlier when i called point of order i also was asking the question of since this is a workshop a discussion and we should exchange everybody's ideas not just one or two people going back to the rainbow decal sticker i'd like to call just for either consensus or hear in a few words which board

135members are opposed to having the rainbow sticker safe place in our classrooms and which ones are good with it okay mr pre bruno is that something that we need to do because it's already there i mean this is something that we have in our schools i think the board member is asking for clarification by her board members in terms of their position on this particular symbol and i don't think it's inappropriate for her to ask that question if the board is inclined to answer it's up to the board members well if you all would like to answer who is if you are for this please continuation yeah i'm just going to comment i i have no problem with the revised version because the political identification was taken out of it so but my comment generally

136is i haven't commented because i'm absolutely enjoying this conversation it's i came to learn about this issue and i came to learn about the background of our power the legal background of our policies and how it's being implemented so i don't want anybody to think because i'm not asking questions that i'm not interested or i don't have questions people who are far more intimately involved with this as a parent as a family or have been involved as teachers are you know frankly asking questions that i wouldn't have asked so i just want to be absolutely clear that i think this presentation has been very helpful and i think the questions being asked have been clarifying and supportive of the whole workshop idea so those are my comments no thank you and i am trying to

137make sure that everybody does have the opportunity to speak if they have something to say and if we could get back to what ms vaughn had asked as far as the rainbow is everyone okay with the continuing of this or they have no issues with it and obviously please put your hand up i am and i don't see that it's a political symbol especially with the branding from our school district you are for that keep it for keeping it and i really like i don't see it as political and especially because now we have the school district branding on it thank you miss kittens mr pre-bruno are we is it within our purview to make the decision whether it stays or goes just she's just no i understand where she's at okay i know i'm

138just trying to get this what miss i just wanted clarification but that's okay i am fine with it and you may go on thank you and i think you did clarify that because she had the right to ask that question i am perfectly fine with that i do not see any political side to that as well miss fisher yes and i like it because it says that this space is diverse inclusive accepting and welcoming and that it applies to all all students genders included along with abilities cultures and backgrounds so and i don't see it as a political statement and i think we all agreed on this when it was presented to us months back that is correct miss patricka hey you know how i feel about it makes me feel very uncomfortable i think

139it's age inappropriate for elementary school students and i also think the words safe space have political connotations today i mean the world is not a safe space and so are we preparing students for the reality of the world which is difficult things happen sometimes and we need to we need to figure out how to deal with those difficult things i believe that there's a way to be inclusive of all students without using what i consider to be a political symbol that carves out a niche for specific students mr evans i just want to read what the colors stand for because i i did a little googling it says here that it was it was the design was by a drag queen baker and he saw the rainbow as a national flag from the sky so

140he adopted eight colors for the stripes each color with its own meaning hot pink for sex red for life orange for healing yellow for sunlight green for nature turquoise for art indigo for harmony and violet for spirit i think that unicorn and rainbows are wonderful thank you thank you okay are there any other questions regarding the presentation anybody on the side miss fisher yeah i just want to say thank you for the presentation and i feel like it cemented the fact that what we are doing here is working to me be sure that all of our groups are included and specifically naming at this point the lgbtq plus population which admittedly is small but represents a group that has been bullied and i had the opportunity to work in tallahassee and washington when we had

141the jeffrey johnston stand-up parole students act passed and i recall that some members of that group were with us students and staff alike and community members so i think that what we want to do is ensure that the suicide rate and the rate of self-harm and isolation that this small group feels is diminished by including that group along with every other group black people asian people handicapped people all of those people who we need to take some special care to respect and include thank you thank you miss kittens yeah i just before the record wanted to say i was not against this workshop or any of the questions or comments i was just wanting to voice that all sides of the story were asked as well as you know one particular view that was why

142i stated what i did and thank you and thank you all for the presentation thank you and again i i will say everyone has had an opportunity this morning to ask any questions regarding these issues and the presentation if they chose to do so to make sure that we had all sides to or just so that everybody did have that opportunity and mr pree bruno thank you madam chair i would also encourage board members to review board policy 1.27 on your own the non-discrimination policy as well as board policy 4.14 which is the bullying and harassment policies i think it will be a good idea for all board members just to review that and re-familiarize yourself with the language within those policies thank you miss kittens yes i had suggested earlier about having some type

143of community or parent involvement regarding this topic and i am asking the superintendent what is the possibility of doing that rather than just it my suggestion going off into oblivion i would really like to see or maybe hear from the panel how they feel about doing something like that or the feasibility of it and of course we could bring that also we will hear from them and then we will also bring that to our workshop so that we can have conversation on that isn't that what this workshop is about not today is not today is for this as far as doing extra stuff that will come to the workshop when we have we have a workshop that is just geared for board members to speak on mr bruno no this is i was just going

144to sorry mr bruno i was just going to add to what miss jordan was saying the board has decided that when there is something that they would like to discuss or get further information or have planning that they have a special workshop that is for them so you can have a discussion on it and then form a consensus as to whether or not you want to direct the superintendent to move forward with any particular topic okay and that is this is the workshop go ahead please this is the workshop on lgbtq so you are saying that we have to schedule another workshop on lgbtq to ask for a consensus to ask the superintendent if we can look into having parental meetings no ma'am that's not what i'm saying i'm saying that the board in the

145past has made a decision that any topics that it would like to move forward for further discussion you do need to have board consensus and you have a special time that is scheduled for that every month and you have your list of priorities so this will be added to the list of priorities for the board to discuss to figure out whether or not it does want to move forward with that and direct the superintendent to have that discussion in that workshop via consensus and i'm sorry but i totally disagree with that we are in the workshop that was scheduled to discuss this topic so what i would be requesting is some type of a consensus from the board in this workshop with this topic that we asked the superintendent to get with staff to look

146into possibly having some parental workshops that's all i'm simply asking thank you miss morgan yes so ms brooks isn't here and i think she's the one who really should be talking about how it is that we communicate with parents the most effective ways to provide parents with information about policy and process in the district and then frankly maybe that would be an opportunity to hear from her generally about how parents are informed as part of just the broader community about things whether it's in a sac or or whatever so i would welcome the opportunity to hear how exceptional student education provides parents the community with information about the services that we provide and and this topic in general so that would be my response thank you miss morgan miss kittens well wouldn't that be within

147the superintendent's purview to decide whether he would how he would handle that to have miss brooks come in or whatever i just don't think this is a very timely topic it's a and especially after today it's going to be very much discussed in the community and still is discussed very much in the community and i cringe to think that we put it on a list and three four months down the road we're talking about how we're going to get this information to the community that did not watch this or did not participate in this i have a concern over that there are students at stake at the end of all of this so thank you ms kittens i'm going to ask mrs fisher and then i'm going to ask dr atkins to speak yes so

148this is recorded correct and people can access it on youtube i think a lot of interested people are tuning in today and there will be further discussion i know that mr edie and crystal do a lot of public appearances and training not only in our own local area but around the state and mr bradley there's so much professional development many of our teachers our parents and i think that the parent involvement thing is probably the primary challenge that we have had over many years getting parents to come to forums because the parents who usually come are the parents who have the time and the wherewithal and they're already interested and they're already informed and they do come but to reach the broad population i think that we can take advantage of our social media our

149website and that i think is the way we can communicate best with people now and invite people who have specific questions to contact us and contact our very professional team who are informed so i like that suggestion and i think that we need to look at the ways that we can implement that without necessarily identifying a location and then you know inviting people to come physically because i know that this in this day and age that is another part of the challenge but again i think that we have a lot of information out there the non-discrimination policy and the information about best practices or in the code of conduct are on the website and why can't we make an additional effort to post it out on our social media facebooks etc so that people get

150answers to their questions and include with that the invitation please for more information contact us thank you good point mrs fisher dr atkins did you have any comments on this matter well my first comment would be you know prior to to going out and doing any type of forums it's something i really would want to discuss with staff sometimes we put these together we get out there we don't have a lot of participation and there's there's a pretty heavy workload already if this something the board would like to see i'm you know of course we will we will do that you know miss brooks is not able to be here today they're involved in in training and which is why she isn't here and i didn't feel it necessary to pull her out for this

151particular workshop because it did deal with the legal issues and best practices surrounding what we're doing around this issue so you have the folks here but before i respond anymore she's certainly somebody i'd want to just check in on so we know how we are communicating i do say that i do believe our school principals and counselors and staff do handle these matters very well every single day our kids are pretty resilient and you know i think they probably a lot more comfortable with these issues than a lot of us so you know anyway that's that's all my comments at this time thank you thank you miss kittens yes i wasn't referring to necessarily just a typical you know put out a flyer and on you know social media and have people come i understand

152the issues in getting people to come but i also understand still we are a you know majority minority district and the digital divide still remains and there are not going to be a plethora of people that sit down and watch this video i just don't see that they're going to do that look at the numbers so i was not saying just put something out on social media this is a topic that is so important to the students involved in all of our students that just like getting academics out there we need to look at a way to communicate with the people that are you know potentially involved in this we one you know just being very candid and you guys can correct me if i'm wrong but a lot with us being a majority minority

153district the cultures of our majority minorities are very opposed to this conversation just because of the culture which puts a lot of pressure on our students on 60 of our students and maybe it's a small number involved but it puts a lot of pressure on them and with the mental things that are going on because of covid and students going through all that and this added i just think folks it's an important topic that we have to find some way besides you know training in the district or whatever we've i know of a group right now that i could get you 20 people together tomorrow that would like to discuss it that need to be educated on not just one angle of it but to see clearly this is what it's about people are grabbing

154at chunks of this topic and not seeing the whole picture which is why i was saying even having smaller groups where you can actually sit there and eyeball the eyeball and explain what is going on it's look at the suicide rate that's all i have to say and i'm done thank you thank you and we can we will have that on the list as well so it will come back up during our workshop miss patricka yeah i just wanted to say in conclusion thank you i really hope that it didn't come across as combative that wasn't the intention the intention really was to gather as much information as possible i don't feel comfortable as a parent or as a board member that we're protected on all sides i don't know that there is a way

155to be protected on all sides and i also don't feel comfortable that the district is putting my rights as a parents as a parent to have free access to my child's information as the premium so i think that you know further conversations perhaps with lori brooks will help me get there i do appreciate you being here and i do appreciate the work that you put into this and the work that you put into our kids every single day i'm just still left a little confused and a little uncomfortable so thank you okay did you have anything else this year i just want to say thank you very much for sharing all this information i think it's it's really good and thank you miss fisher for stating that it is recorded and that people are welcome

156to go on there and watch and listen and learn as well as we have and then of course if they do have questions they can always contact you know the board we can get further information if need be but i truly want to say thank you very much for being here and supporting our students our staff and making sure that we are all learning what we don't know so if there is i'm sorry miss giovannelli so i just want you to piggyback off that you know thank you very much for the presentation i think it's important a topic to talk about because that's part of moving forward is always talking about it and we the bottom line is all children need to be safe and we want to make sure that they're safe because then

157they're learning and we're here to educate children so i think that to make that safe environment you know we have to make sure that all children feel safe and so i just want to just reiterate that so thank you for what you do and you know as long as all children are safe and we're doing it with then the law of our constitution i think we'll be okay thank you thank you and thank you very much appreciate you being here today thank thank you next is going to be good of the order but before we start that i'm going to ask if we could take a break for a 10-minute break because i have two items that will be brought up for good of the order and i have a special attorney who will be

158helping us out for this afternoon so if we could all be back here at 11 35 that would be great thank you jason some information as to how this is gonna go very good good afternoon we are back from our 10-minute break and we are moving on to the good of the order at this time i would like to say that mr prix bruno will be stepping down and i have for these two good over the orders and i will have mr john quick will be sitting in as the attorney for us regarding these two matters also to facilitate this part of the meeting i will be doing a maxim with robert's rules of order i'll be doing a maximum of five minutes each and we will have if we need to go into a

159second round we will and this is not a debate this will be a conversation so the first thing for good of the order is we have received two complaints the first one is the lighthouse complaint we've all had an opportunity to review that with our attorney mr pre bruno if you had the opportunity it was there for us to look at we are and having this conversation we will be speaking about issues we will please refrain from using names that are listed on any of these and we are here to have a conversation on how to proceed with the new information is there a motion on how we would that we're going to handle this if anything so with that oh let me rephrase let me take that motion back we need to have conversation

160on the new information that we just received from lighthouse is there anyone who would like to start the conversation is there anyone who we need to know how we want to proceed with this issue we get spoken about this clarified there is no nation i don't either the lighthouse complaint the information as of could you give us a date not just new information i haven't gotten anything i haven't either the past couple days we had a conversation regarding the 219 issue okay okay we spoke about that at our last at one of our meetings prior since then we have received from lighthouse a new complaint and that complaint the complaint was sent to our attorney our board attorney which had that in her office for anyone to go and read if they chose to do

161so and i sent that out to you as well the board attorney sent that out so it was sent out numerous times so you all would have an opportunity to go and read it if you wish to do so based on the information that was received from lighthouse we need to have a conversation about that so what is it that we as a board are looking if anything to do with that complaint ms vaughn okay first of all first of all i just wanted clarification because when you said new complaint i thought perhaps there was something that had come in that i wasn't privy to that's why i asked you to clarify that secondly because of a possib because of conflict of interest i want to say that i am not going to participate in

162the discussion of anything related solely to lighthouse i'm not going to participate in a consensus and if it comes up to any kind of a vote i will also abstain from that so i'll be recusing myself from discussion on this one topic and thank you for participating in any consensus or votes and you have the right to do so or to participate if you chose to do so as well right right so i just wanted to announce the reason that you will hear me not say anything specifically on this one lighthouse issue is because it's a conflict of interest for me i'm recruiting recusing myself and i will be abstaining from any either consensus or possible votes on an action meeting thank you miss kittens so in that light man ask our and hello mr

163quick thank you for being with us today how if there is a consensus vote which i'll talk about that later but if there is a consensus vote how is that going to be affected as far as a consensus hi thank you for having me back again thank you i would say there's there's two steps one is the board needs to determine whether or not they would like to investigate this under your policies at least i'm speaking with regard to what's being commonly referred to as the lighthouse complaint the language in there is not mandatory but the board in its inherent power has the authority to do it and if it does investigate then if the board does choose to investigate it would need to be handled by an external investigator because the district does not

164have according to your policies the district does not have the authority to investigate and that's under policy five point three one one sub six so those i guess would be would be the two steps that the first step decide whether it wants to second step then it would need to refer to an external investigator okay thank you and i'm just for the sake of policy 5.311 regarding to this particular one i'm just going to read that really quick external investigators shall be used only when conflict of interest exists or upon referral by the superintendent external invest investigators shall possess appropriate credentials and shall be selected based upon knowledge of the subject to the investigation and then a which mr quickhead referred to only external investigator investigators may be utilized for allegations against direct school board

165employees to include superintendent school board attorney or internal audit auditors only a majority of the school board may initiate an external investigation on superintendent school board attorney or internal auditor also on b it states that federal state and local government agencies excluding district staff have the authority to investigate a school board member which prohibits which allows us as a school board we could decide what we would like to do and have that investigation can you please read that last part again yes the federal state and local government agencies excluding the district have the authority to investigate a school board member so miss patricka first of all ms jordan thank you for having attorney quick here i was really concerned about first of all i felt like you were probably a woman on an island for

166quite some time wondering where to go for legal advice i'm very grateful that attorney quick is here because i would not have felt comfortable having this conversation without legal advice so thank you for that you know my position hasn't changed i would like a broad-based investigation not just based on on the complaint that came in but broad-based to include the entire leadership team on this issue okay and if i may what i would like to ask to if if we were to decide to do this and i have i have been up at oh yeah i haven't slept for like a couple days on this one but just today in itself but what i put on here with the lighthouse i would be asking for a bro a broad scope as possibly starting with the

167219 texts who knew about it before the text was sent out what is the involvement and who are the law enforcements that are involved who shared the text if any any retaliation if any and the claims attached to this all information related to this matter everything including witness tampering so it would be very broad what i would be asking for and looking for so we have the whole scope miss morgan yeah i would like to make a motion to that effect so that and then if there's a second we can have a discussion about it thank you do i have a second i'll second it thank you this is a workshop so obviously oh that's right we don't do that it's a workshop okay i apologize all right well then i would like to make

168that the topic of a conversation amongst this board for one round of five minutes thank you is that possible absolutely yes okay thank you all right so may i start with you miss morgan yeah and and i agree that's what we should be doing that's why i've put it out there i think we need a broad scope investigation beginning 219 into conduct of of this board okay miss kittens well my question is yet again we had consensus we decided and now you're saying that because something else has come in there that we have to just abandon the consensus that we had before and the discussion not to have outside investigation my other thought on this is and that i find a bit skeptical the other thing when you read the statute and we have been

169through this it seems like each year we have an anniversary of going through investigating one of us and each time we do we come back to the fact that just like with the water marking that only the governor and the attorney general should be investigating board members and i thought that was pretty clear and here we are again doing the same thing we continue to go over the same stuff about investigating each other and each time we say we don't want to investigate each other and each time we state the statute that says only the governor and the and the attorney general so my stance is going to be that if there is an appetite to do this investigation and i am outvoted then i will be presenting information and i will place a complaint

170with the governor and the attorney general's office as to all the things that continue to happen so thank you okay and if i may as well chapter 101001 florida statute enforcement of laws and rules requires that all laws and rules of the state board of education or of the district school board are probably in force we make all these processes and procedures and we make sure that we put them in place however we choose only to apply those to others and i think that's really important that we make sure that we are adhering and then we need to make sure also and that's in policy 5.331 we also have on here it says neither the school board superintendent department heads nor principals nor any employees shall take or recommend to the school board or take

171adverse personal personal actions against any employee or disclose information pursuant to the provision of this policy so we have things in place in our policies that we wrote that we agreed on that we voted on so i hear what you're saying and i and i thank you but i'm just trying to make sure that all the information is in front of you based on the policies and can i just say the last part of that though when does our policy that we write override statutes from federal and i'm just looking at federal so i mean at state so i'm just saying that's what i will be doing miss fisher based on the comments of my colleagues i'm just going to wait in advance because i do think contrary to what i said at the last

172meeting we discussed this at is that we do need a broad investigation with an independent external investigator thank you and did you i'm sorry and did you read a part that said state and local government can assist in that they are the that they have the authority to investigate the school board okay yes they do yeah i just asked a question on what she just no right now i'm sorry we cannot because i'm going down making sure that everybody has their opportunity thank you miss kittens may ask a question through the chair to ms morgan to clarify what we're discussing okay what we are discussing is the lighthouse and the broad scope of what i had read what i would be asking for and again it's not about an individual member it is about it's

173the scope of everything that has taken place including everything the 219 texts who knew about it before it came to us who knew about it before it was sent out who was involved in all this who are the law enforcement agencies that are involved in this excuse me point of order i was going to ask a question and you allowed miss patrick i asked the question no i said may i ask a question on what she said she says can i ask a question and you allowed her to ask it in your voice she's i'm referring to what i what it was that i spoke on thank you miss kittens any retaliation if any were if there were any claims attached to this all information related to this matter everything including witness tempering so everything

174so we can have a clear understanding of what actually took place and be done with it i'm right there with you i just miss morgan said the board i wanted to make sure it was inclusive of the entire leadership team and the board attorney and that's what i heard you say it's every everything yes thank you well i've read everything and it's like triple hearsay so what is the merit here that's what i'm trying to figure out what merit or do you want to have investigation on i don't believe anything that i've pretty much read actually so i'd like to know what merit because i mean we know that there's not an investigation now by law enforcement so now we already know that answer so i'm having a hard time understanding what we had several

175including the superintendent that mentioned law enforcement so i think that those questions need to be answered that can be should be answered right here at the table and then as far as i i don't understand merit i don't see any merit here all of it is hearsay and how do we do investigations on hearsay i mean when when do we not have use our intelligence and make determination based on in reading and based on based on that i mean because at that point i mean first of all i have a quote i do have one question too for the attorney define what is a whistleblower because i don't believe that the whistleblower that claims to be whistleblade is even it's that doesn't even have merit we have no control over employees so we don't there's

176no point in that so that's one question i have so but right now we're speaking on the lighthouse and then we'll go into that second one which will be that one complaints okay well the lighthouse then then hold that thought back what i said is that i just don't see the merit of of that at this point because it's hearsay i don't think you do investigations on hearsay you don't in the court of law so i don't know how you do it here so and i'll i guess i'll just leave it at that because because honestly if you were talking about the investigation if the regarding the lighthouse should go back to october because that individual was that was in a complaint back in october so it should go back to all the way to

177october and when this started so i would add that date then yeah and that's i'm trying to make sure that it encompasses all of it okay and miss getting you have something else to say i do but i mean i'm just i'm just floored that's the behavior of this board and of our leadership i really am and when you go back and watch the video of this meeting you will see that mrs fisher made a statement i asked a clarification you told me no ms patricka was not called on she asked for a clarification of something said earlier and you told her yes and you went on and did it so i just want to have that on the record part of this investigation investigative piece i mean i've told you all already the next

178step is going to be who who is going to do this investigation seemingly you've already made up your mind that you're going to do that and i think it's we are wasting when we talk about waste fraud and abuse we're wasting so much time away from children several you know people on the board from time to time what does that have to do with children what does this have to do with children and like miss melissa said it's so much of it is hearsay it's like apparently and maybe and all of that so if there is extremely it's extremely obvious that people involved in all of this every time there's too many questions or there's quote unquote badgering or getting out of line or getting out of your lane we suddenly have an investigation taxpayer

179money is being used will be used unless if you're going to do it have the state do it and have the state they will pay for it the government will pay for it i am not going to go along with anything that is a witch hunt and have the taxpayers of lee county pay for it just because someone doesn't like what someone else is saying i mean i could have the behavior that i have received in two and a half years i could have done all kinds of complaints but we don't have time for that we have children to educate and i just i just think this is a frivolous witch hunt and i base it too on our last discussion about this when ms patricka and the superintendent said well we need to get

180to the bottom of this finally get to the bottom of who is doing this and superintendent said the same thing we need to find an answer once and for all so it's a witch hunt so i will not be participating in it thank you and miss kittens this has been put onto my shoulders because of the fact of the this one and the next one because of the people that are involved in it so that's why i was then given this to do and that's why i called and i we have a different attorney here so that we can have clear eyes and we keep everything where it needs to be none of us have gone gone through this before so this is not a witch hunt this is something that we have to do

181to speak about and that's exactly what i'm bringing here to the board is to speak on this miss giovannelli so my question is why are we having an investigation what is the violation and the and then it i think you're going to say the violation is releasing that text but that text was a blanket response that the that you yourself miss jordan has given to the to the public so if that is a violation then you would have an ethics validation against you because you gave that very same same blanket statement about someone under investigation while there was an investigation so what's what's the violation okay mrs g valley let me clarify that for you before i speak to anyone i always call to make sure what we are able to say and not say

182first of all i always follow up with that and as well as nowhere did i ever mention a person school or anything never ever all i said was there was yes we did yes we recognized there was something and yes we will do investigate just like we do anything else that is a blanket statement does not put anybody into anything and as far as hearsay witch hunt and i'm sorry that you know people are i actually read information so i'm not sure where the hearsay came into play it's what i read and it is my job as the chair to bring this before you all and i felt like i needed to do that and so that is why we're here we do not have to do anything at all nothing if that's what we

183choose to do we can do absolutely nothing just like okay whatever we do is fine and we just go on and live happily ever after that's not gonna happen but what i need to say is we have that option or do we investigate you know and get this all cleared and out of the way so we can get back to what we really need to be doing as miss getting so you know kindly spoke about so we do have things that we have to do and we are wasting a lot of time on things it seems like every meeting we have but we need to get focused and bring it back to why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing so that's why i'm bringing this up and we would definitely have to

184i would recommend an outside investigation no one from within here so that there's no ties and then it's done it's over we're it's just we're finished so that is what i'm asking today do we have a consensus that we move forward with this and i can speak to and have this conducted with an external investigation investigator to to take care of this we're done miss kittens are you saying then if we move forward that you as the chair will select the investigator i am suggesting that you allow me to to speak to them to select the investigator do you select the company to do this i'll never agree to that miss fisher so in regard to mrs giovannelli's comments and your questions about who was aware before the text was sent and what exactly is

185the involvement of law enforcement since february 19th what were any communications between board members and staff and what was the outcome of that and then has there been any retaliation so if we spend maybe fifty thousand dollars with that company an external investigation when potentially we could get the answers to these questions here and now i mean so i guess that was a good point that she made so is that something that could be requested and get it resolved at this point or should we use the state investigators i'm just looking at both suggestions and have the entire situation and all of the details that are mentioned in the lighthouse complaint investigated by the governor's office and i would caution us having a lot of conversation up here regarding because i don't want anybody's names

186to come out or things that could potentially come back to the against the board as well so mr quick could you no one's saying any names could you please respond to that as far as being able to get the information pertaining to this claim this potential claim would would you advise us to have that conversation sitting right up here about that you know i would i would not advise to do that as a as a public discussion if if you were going to do something like that i would probably have ask the superintendent or somebody or even an external investigator maybe have that be his or her first step to inquire and then if if that's unsuccessful to the board's liking then you can decide how to proceed whether it's proceed with investigation not proceed

187or you know refer it to another agency which was also mentioned okay so you have heard the attorney's recommendation miss kittens okay in all that i have read there are individuals within this organization that have all the answers to the questions that you have stated and they have even said that they have it so again i'm asking why are we spending time and energy why cannot why can't we just make a consensus that we be shown and shared the answers and the information that is out there with no cost to the taxpayers and then decide okay if from that point if we want to investigate or move something along with one of the people on the board it was specifically stated that one or more so there are people that know all the answers why

188are we spending time and money to find the answers that we already have we can provide all of the information to each of us and then be able to make a decision do we want to take this any further to prosecute anyone but i think well let me clarify something we're not trying to prosecute anyone that's not at all what was said so what's the outcome we're not it do we want to do we want to go through this and yes we do need to find out what the outcome will be what is what is the outcome is the outcome just to say okay now we have all the information it has been cleared and we move on so that it's it's not a hearsay or we're not thinking that we're reading something that we

189that we're misreading that we have somebody who who has no attachment that can actually look at and say okay no this is a bunch of whatever malarkey you know this is what we need to do because and again it's going to come back to us again what is it that we're going to do with this it's going to come back to us we're not wasting our time because somebody else will be doing this but if i have all the information that is alluded to that is out there i don't need a third party to give me something to read i can read so i'm just asking for the board to allow all of us to read all of the information so that we are privy to what's going on mr quick man i'm trying to

190say i mean the board does have to imp you know has employees in the superintendent or the board attorney that to the extent that he or she has that information and the board can can direct that to be shared with the board that is something should the board choose they could or obviously if if they could get it or has acts have access to it that's something they could do the board could ask for obviously the if the if this gets referred out to an investigator the investigator would be presenting this information as well as well as obviously interviewing and things like that so you do have two employees that should you wish to direct you could okay so hearing what mr quick has said and again we have had the opportunity to read so

191i guess my question is we have the opportunity to get information from the superintendents or the attorneys however we actually read something that came through our hotline that we created for the purpose of getting information and we've read that but the way that we read it is interp we each interpreted it differently so how do we interpret what will be given to us the next time then we come back and have the same conversation again so that's where i'm trying to put this together said there was that complaint said there was it reported to law enforcement we have to let law enforcement do their job if that's in fact that case i mean that's what i said two weeks ago i'm gonna say it again i mean and but we know that's not true because

192we've got information since then that says there's no law enforcement involved with anything so i think that we have to use our own brains and figure this out a little bit and i don't think we spend taxpayer dollars i would agree we can let the tallahassee do it the officer the oig or whatever we can kick it to them and they'll do it at no cost or we wait for our local law enforcement if that's what's happening deal with that and let that so the harness marsh case they were instructed to not have to do any investigation this district was not and they couldn't until law enforcement finished their investigation and that is the way it works so that we should not be getting involved in anything if law enforcement is involved period and once

193that's resolved then we can we can move forward and make some kind of decision on the outcome of that i think we need all the information and we do not have all the information we have part of it we have what's been selected to give us and and that's biased at that so let's get the information from an unbiased party at this point and i will gladly wait on that and i will gladly make a decision once we have the real information okay so base miss morgan so following up on what ms giovannelli said unbiased is what we need this is a board that doesn't trust one another this is a board that has expressed lack of trust in staff so for us to proceed trying to pursue this internally is going to lead us

194right back where we are now i just believe that we have developed a culture of action and engagement that works against our ability to work on behalf of kids and i think the only thing that is going to help us get back on track is an independent investigation that says there is something here or it says there is nothing here and then we can move on so that's where i am okay is there any other comments yes for the comments i would like to request as per what mr quick said earlier that we as a board direct the superintendent to direct his staff to give us every bit of information regarding both situations and the 219 so then we will have in our and not an interpretation and i really disagree when you have things

195with words like apparently and maybe and you know i assume i want to see the whole investigation i do feel that we are intelligent enough to read not just selected information as ms juninelli said but all of the information and then we can make a decision i do not think that we have been given all the information and after that then we can make an educated decision on what you want to do from there and i agree that if we do move forward it has to be done through tallahassee and mr quick can you please i know like in 5.31 it states that about the superintendent not interfering with investigations i'm assuming that school boards cannot interfere with investigations as well number one could you answer that one that would be correct okay you're going

196to be investigating it will be i mean obviously given what's being discussed i assume the investigator will want to speak with many of staff and board members that would not be considered interfering but yes you would not be there would be no interference thank you and then on our and i also want to remind everybody too regarding our the our hotline and lighthouse it says that once a complaint is received by the hotline it will be directed to the appropriate department either the internal auditor or human resources legal services will also be involved in directing the complaints to the appropriate departments and help determine legal sufficiency so this first one that i'm speaking about it came through the hotline it's again it's our hotline it's our something that we put together for this for cases

197like this so how do we as a board say we have a hotline but we're only going to use it for certain things how do we do that's that's my concern mr valley this point complaint just came in on the eighth not when we were we had this same very discussion and so this came in on the eighth we don't have that information from when we had the discussion on the eighth prior to that was the same information same topic so it wasn't the lighthouse but it was the same topic same same players so an individual so i think that we need that information to even make the determination of this information so well to your point how do we know i have no i had no knowledge of the people in the lighthouse i

198had no idea about that none whatsoever when we were having our conversation because how would i have known that was not discussed we didn't we didn't have names or anything about that so in reading that's when i received information complaint actually says that we were talking about her that's why so that's my point we were and we were the same thing came up before we even had all the information that's my point we didn't have the information we had this conversation already how silly we're being silly tax dollars again on something that in grand grandstanding and wasting time when we can be doing the business of the district and teaching and educating children this is all about children what we're doing right here is not about children it's about a dysfunctional board that wants to

199continue these activities and all to get their own way it's all to get their own way and you know what a board is not about getting our own way it's about working for the best interest of children and this is not thank you miss morgan yeah so i'm reluctant to say this but we put a question out we were to poll all of the board members once we have have we got an agreement amongst the majority of the board members to pursue that action if yes that we've answered the question if no we continue the conversation other options have been raised i just don't know where to go with this but you know we're all over the place and we're not getting anywhere and we're going to continue this conversation for another hour and run

200into our next meeting thank you i would like to see a way to put things out there that we can say yes or no and then move on to the next step okay miss kittens i'm gonna let you finish and then i'll okay all i am asking for is i want to see all of the documentation that's that's all i cannot when you talk about you know a report to lighthouse lighthouse is just a receptacle someone calls in and says what they think feel and believe at this point in time then that information is looked into as to whether it has credibility or legs to walk or whatever and if we are basing all of this you know how many times do we get even i looked at the report from lighthouse and i think

201there was something like 74 complaints that went into hr and 73 of them were investigated and it was compared to or was it osceola or somewhere they had 62 complaints but it didn't say how many were investigated lighthouse is the receptacle for people saying i've been hurt i've been damaged in my interpretation it is the start of deciding is that actually true and we're jumping over taking what someone said and going to this leap of spending 50 000 or whatever it is to investigate it is a lighthouse complaint it has not been verified and i haven't seen all of the information i want to see what is alluded to in all of the complaints okay thank you for that so based on the conversations that i'm hearing no one's wanting to spend money so do

202we have an appetite to send it to the state for investigation excuse me excuse me i'm not i think we need to take a consensus on the first question before we talk about sending it to the state and everybody's had multiple opportunities to speak may i please i think that the difference between what we're talking about here the complaint that came in versus another complaint that would come in through lighthouses this one is specifically directed at the board staff can't investigate and determine the legal sufficiency of something that comes in through lighthouse when it's directed to the board and that is why an outside determination needs to be made with regard to that and i just i fear the round and round and us never really emerging from the hole that we're in if we

203don't take this step as a as a team together okay so thank you can i thank you so can i order on that one that is incorrect okay we have an internal mayor finish please we have an internal auditor that if something comes into lighthouse it is either waste fraud or abuse if it falls into that category it goes to our internal auditor to investigate that look at the policies that's what they are supposed to do we're not supposed to jump over them correct miss kittens they i've spoken with rsm as well and that is something that they can investigate but because it is a board they have an issue with that as well so i'm going to go back to everyone did have an opportunity to speak so i'm going to go back to

204the question on would how many would like to see proceed to have an internal investigation whether it's rsm someone do this so we can be done once and for all and everything will be clear and it's it would be everybody no i thought we said external i'm sorry external okay did i say internal yeah i apologize independent external independent external chosen by the chair i will send the recommendations to you all or or i can come back and share that with you at the next meeting would you be working with attorney quick i would work with attorney quick for that yes and he has i yes we've already spoken about that if if that was okay with everybody there were already suggestions that were presented by okay but i'm gonna miss i'm gonna go back

205to the first the one that was on the table that we no no i'm talking about the external mr williams submitted some possible names of ones are those the ones that you're going to i haven't seen those and again i would be willing to work with mr quick on this so do we have an appetite for having an external investigate investigation to resolve this so we are and what is the budget how much are you willing to spend as little as possible we need something on the record there must be a limit or something if you're going to do this what what amount would you would you like miss kittens i think zero because we can do it through the state if it's a must if we cannot get the information we're asking for to

206look at on our own and then make this decision then it has to be a zero i do not want to spend miss morgan yeah so mr quick what in your experience would a an investigation of this sort and i'm not going to hold to the dollar amount i just like to have some general idea we're talking 5 000 hundred thousand and thank you for not holding me to it because when i look at this in just with the number of potential people that need to be interviewed my guess would be somewhere between 20 and 40 000 that would be my guess my best estimate and then following up on that i would say that in order to regain the trust and confidence of the community and staff i would be willing to expend something

207in that neighborhood thank you okay so could miss could we please then have a consensus on allowing this to move forward and with with the scope and if there's a broader scope i will definitely keep everybody informed of what that is to make sure that everything is covered in that scope and can i just note that we weren't willing to spend 25 000 to regain the confidence of the community on another issue thank you thank you miss kittens so may i please have a consensus on moving this forward is giving ellie no okay it passes so mr quick i'll work with you on that and may i ask mr quick a question sorry ms kittens could you please regarding the vote and i will be more than i ready to call on you thank you

208how we a year ago started talking about not doing so many consensus votes because they're not hard votes and we're moving more and more and more into consensus a consensus vote is not a hard vote and when we're talking about spending taxpayer money we're talking about all of the people that will be involved i mean we've got the superintendent various staff members all of us that will be taking time away from children and we're doing this with a thumbs up consensus vote how does that can you weigh in about consensus votes versus a hard vote yeah i mean i mean i don't want to i don't i haven't been following over the past year to see how the how much you all have been utilizing consensus votes to make certain decisions so i don't want

209to step on anybody's toes in terms of you know current current or past practices but obviously a hard vote at an action meeting is finding on the board and you are subject to that and you know the only way you could go back on that would be you know certain certain ways to rescind or reconsider motions and there are limits as to how that could happen so there is a different character it's a different character when you have a motion second and vote at an action meeting if that's what you're asking me it is and miss jordan can you please then just reiterate since you said did you say it passed i'm sorry did you say that it passed yes i did okay so would you please reiterate specifics as to what it is we

210have consensus that we move forward with an external investigator to review the lighthouse complaints with a broad scope as broadscope as possible starting with and b4 219 text who knew about it before the text was sent what involvement what is the involvement who are the law enforcement that are involved who shared the text if any any retaliation if any claims attached to this all information related to this matter everything including witness tampering can we say independent external evaluation because we don't want somebody who has prior connections with the district can we use you mentioned ours i'm sorry i'm raising my hand please miss kittens okay you mentioned rsm and they are our internal auditor so perhaps if they are not willing to do it they could possibly provide examples of people that could yes and

211they will they will have some but is that your first step for you yes i will speak with attorney quick as well as rsm thank you thank you and the next one is regarding a whistleblower complaint under policy three point i'm sorry 5.331 let's see there are certain things under there that we must do we must do an external investigation under that policy the key words from that policy too are will promptly occur and shall acknowledge and based on that is something that we would need to to make sure that we are taking care of that and then because of the fact it says that any retaliation against a school board member she'll be given external investigation for review so or that involves a superintendent an attorney we have to remove them and i that's

212how i wind up in this sorry are you on policy five i'm on the next five point three three one there's there's two policies at play here five point three three one sub 12. yeah he talks about the mandatory nature where it says any complaint of adverse personnel action or retaliation will be promptly investigated and then the other policy is the one that we're looking at before 5.311 which is the one that talks about that the investigation needs to be done by external investigators and that's under sub six which specifies the reasoning behind why that would have to take place right miss patricka this is the one that i really needed help with from i trained quick may i yep so what's your recommendation here for the board to be in compliance with law and

213policy i think you i think you have to investigate it and i think you have to investigate it through an external auditor for external investigators would you be in a position to provide recommendations for the chair to work with you to determine who should do that yes i can i can speak with with the chair about you know external investigators yes okay so i'd like to make the suggestion that we do a round of discussion regarding do you have it written down or do you want me to say it no i we have based on policy 5.331 any complaints of adverse personal action or retaliation will which will is mandatory for us be properly investigated and a receipt of the same shell be acknowledged within five business days if the employees allegation of adverse personal

214action or retaliation are substantial appropriate corrective measures shall be taken by the superintendent and or the school board so is today appropriate acknowledgement is this meeting acknowledgement within five days the i believe it was acknowledged by upon receipt already but i will double check to see i have it here i can tell you if today would would also be it's it's beyond the five days but i believe it was the requirement of acknowledgement yes i believe it's my understanding that has taken place it has a round of discussion regarding sending this to an external auditor and relying on the chair to work with attorney quick to determine which external investigator should handle this perfect thank you miss miss kittens okay in my estimation and my lack of legal knowledge both complaints both issues all have

215to do with february 19th am i correct yes that's my reading that they all stem from number one stem from february 19th they are separate complaints separate and distinct complaints but they do all stem from the same underlying facts yes so if the board has already decided to investigate why would we not have one purse one investigation of the february 19th issue which would include all of this i don't understand because the whole thing is the validity of the february 19th text that's the bottom line to both complaints and if there is no validity to that or if it's not proven then we don't need to spend the money the time the energy on two separate issues when that's the crux can you explain because it's too totally separate yeah i think they're going to

216be they need to be done as two separate investigations i think i understand what you're saying miss kittens which is why not use the same person for both and i think for financial reasons that would probably make sense but when you're talking about like the whistleblower issue and this is to get to miss juvenelli's a point that she'd asked before a whistleblower and whistleblower retaliation have different elements or additional elements to it and you're talking about for a whistleblower you have an employee who disclosed protected information and then had some sort of adverse employment action and there's a causal connection between those two so protected information means you know potential violation of the law malfeasance gross mismanagement things like that adverse employment action is you know what what you i think you imagine you know

217terminated demoted you know any a number of things and then there's a causal connection so that's why they're separate investigations they are they're linked because everything kind of started with the 219 issue but they are separate complaints and separate different ways to deal with them okay i get that so with the whistleblower one is the litmus test adverse employment action that would be one element that would need to be required for there to be whistleblower retaliation under under florida statute which is adopted within your board policy as well so yes and see in my estimation no one's lost a job no one's been demoted no one's had a letter put in their file no one's had anything done wait miss kittens we i'm not i'm just i'm yeah i just want to make sure i'm

218careful no i'm not asking you to stop speaking i'm just waiting i'm not going to say anything i understand thank you that i am not supposed to be specific thank you i just felt like when we were reaching into what has not happened to a person we don't know any of that so we should not be speaking on that but if the if the if moving forward on an issue has to do with adverse action and no adverse action has occurred then what is the what's the issue well and ultimately that will be for the investigator so there has at least been an allegation of whistleblower and retaliation whether that's sufficient if you want to liken it to to like a complaint in the court case any somebody can file a complaint but at the

219end of the day you have to prove it in order to to to prevail so there has been an allegation it does need to be investigated under the policy whether the facts and i don't want i'm not going to discuss the merits of it because there's there would be a lot for an investigator to do but ultimately the facts would need to establish everything for a whistleblower retaliation so may i put it on the table then to do a consensus that if we're going to have an investigator for the other complaint that the same investigator do both and perhaps we can save some money thank you attorney quick with that do you have your thoughts on that i mean i think you can have a con i mean the consensus would be number one to

220proceed which as i've said in my opinion i think you have to right and then the the other consensus would be to utilize the same investigator so as to not duplicate efforts and try to maximize time and cost perfect thank you thank you miss kittens miss morgan i support it miss miss bond i support it thank you miss fisher yes i support it thank you i ask a question of attorney quick yes i'll be quick what if you don't see any issues with the same investigator handling both i don't i mean as long as they treat them as separate and distinct complaints and investigations i don't okay miss chivanelli i support it but i asked i have to ask the question so once this is resolved and there's no been no whistleblower retaliation what are

221we going to do as a board to deal with this situation that this complaint came up i think it's really important that we have an expectation we just can't drop it like we and pretend like it didn't happen or that we didn't do this investigation we have to have an outcome so and and that's really important because there's been so many complaints that's come through here including whistleblowers that's never been addressed ever so now we're setting the tone and president that one matters because of it coming from a certain department so i think that we need to really i'm not like i'm not against it because i think we're we're forced at this point but this is going to continue to happen just like this has become a pattern and it's continuing to happen and

222so when how long do we not hold anybody accountable for that and we know who we have to hold accountable thank you okay and we again we need to be very careful when we're speaking up here that we're not insinuating anything either so what i will say once this is completed then we will be bringing it back here and at that time a conversation could will certainly take place for sure and this is something as i stated it isn't it isn't our policy so this is something that is we have to do this especially did you have women i just regarding being careful when we're speaking here this is our place to speak this is this is the diocese this is in the public and in the sunshine this is the place where we can

223speak and get information out on the table because we can't do it else elsewhere and otherwise and i apologize i'm not saying that i don't want anybody to speak i'm just saying when we are speaking we just have to make sure that as individuals i mean you're you're welcome to say anything you want to but i'm just saying as individuals you might think about you know the adverse effects that it could have on one or all of us that's the only thing that i'm sharing i'm putting that out there but again you as an individual or whomever can speak and say whichever they like right because the public that's transparent yes ma'am this is a reminder i think also part of the being careful it's what i understood from the chair was in terms of

224utilizing specific names and identifying you know not just names but other ways of identifying you know the people that may be under investigation or the people who may be claiming whistleblower protection so i think that's just to keep that in mind as well thank you thank you attorney quick and i also agree i'm going to finish with the agree so this will take did you have something to add to this the vote or the consensus please ms von i agree with what miss giovannelli said that once and that you said i just want to reiterate that once we have the information but in in the interest of time what i would like to see is a definitive action from from us or a directive from us with the idea that once we have all the

225information then we will be able to judge what would be appropriate to do with that information and just wanted to reiterate that thank you miss fondant i totally agree with you and i think that's something that we absolutely must make sure that we do so mr valley and then we're going to close this is actually for a question for mr quick what's a reasonable amount of time that would this would take because we have to have some kind of expectation if this is going to take longer than let's see if it's gonna take longer than three months we there's a lot of things that happens in three months so we'll need to postpone those things until this is resolved and so that's another thing that i would like to recommend that no actions taken and

226we make no decisions on any evaluations until this is this is complete this investigation is complete okay this is off of our board policy dictates to us when we have to do evaluations well your board policy dictates evaluations and your board policy also sets out time frames for investigations i believe it says 60 days yeah although it can be extended depending on for certain circumstances number witnesses complication but you're looking roughly i think that probably your idea would be looking for three times in yeah two to three months okay so i will i'll make a motion tonight at the table that this that no evaluations will be done until these two investigations are completed and we've made a determination on that so i'll let you know that right now so i'll be making that motion

227tonight tomorrow night tomorrow night tomorrow thank you yes party and i have a thank you for mr quick of her name please me huh well okay in the conclusion of the whistleblower i know that the board cannot direct the superintendent to do anything with staff that is his you know thing to do how would that work after the investigation is it still up to the superintendent depending on whichever way it goes to make a determination how he's going to handle it yeah so yes your role you still control the superintendent your employees superintendent the board attorney things but the superintendent in his office makes determinations on personnel actions i will also mention that under your board policy somebody claiming whistleblower protection is entitled to certain or it's claiming whistleblower is entitled to certain protections this

228is under 5.3 and sub 13. so there are if there may if they make a good faith recording they are entitled to some to certain protections under your own policies obviously anything would have to comply with the policy as well even after the investigation yes so the way it reads is that if if you make a protected disclosure that it the policy says the policy does not immunize an employee volunteer or student from the consequences of his or her own actions which actions do not constitute reasonable and good faith disclosure of the type of information described here and so if it's a good faith disclosure they're protected from i guess employment impacts of their decision if it's not a reasonable good faith and that's the term from your policy if it's not a reasonable and

229good faith disclosure then that provision as i read it would not apply would not apply and in the past when we have received whistleblower requests and we did not act on them according to 5.331 were we out of compliance with our policies at that time this policy was enacted in october from what i can tell from your board policies so if it predated october you would not october 6th you if it predated october 6 you would this policy would not have been in place if it was after october 6 and it's an employee whistleblower claim and it should if it's important to say that it does this does talk about employee whistleblowers then that's you would have to and would have had to done it so it predates then no okay thank you and it

230specifically states that there are certain people involved in it we have to do this so thank you very much for allowing me to speak on this today and miss giovanelli so are we receiving so are we receiving all whistleblower complaints straight to the board now on if it's on board members and we've received today we've received every one how do we know this are we re are we receiving all the all of them because this is the first complaint this was one of the that was i was it was important to note that the board of attorney mentioned that she received only one this is the first complaint she's ever received a lighthouse complaint and that was this one so i'm concerned that we're not receiving the whistleblower all are all complaints or that we're

231supposed to that ones that are supposed to come to us that would be under our purview is what i guess so i need to remember based on our policy it says that and this is a conversation that i had with rsm as well i was going to share it later but based on our policy lighthouse is supposed to be sending us every 30 days an update like a list of calls so we are supposed to be receiving those and we have not at this time because i have not seen them right i don't believe anybody has so and light and rsm has not so i definitely had spoken to dr atkins about this as well to get permission to speak to make sure that i spoke to dr pruitt so that way we can make

232sure that lighthouse is sending all that information to rsm mr pre bruno and for us to have that information the report so they will be coming to us and also just to follow up in terms of specific complaints there are certain depending on who is involved in the in the whistleblower complaint is whether it comes to the chair or whether it goes to the superintendent so or the board attorney said there's the legal legal team or whatever she will be receiving them yeah our attorney will receive that correct that well that's my point is the attorney stated this was the very first complaint she's a leg lighthouse complaint she's ever received so that calls me for pause and a little bit of alarm and that this board needs to have this conversation because i think

233we have we have a little bit of a disconnect and i mentioned this a couple weeks ago because i've already had complaints about the lighthouse process so obviously there has to be some issues going on with that and i don't know where that is at where it lies if it lies out at the communication aspect or if it isn't the in the house but we need to know and we need to get that resolved and we don't we can't sit up here and not get and not get some answers and do some directives no thank you and as i said i read this whole policy several times over the weekend so yes we are supposed to be receiving that i did bring that information to rsm regarding the language issues that you had stated so

234they are very much aware of that as well and so we will be that is going to be mainstreamed and we will be getting that information rsm will be receiving that miss debris bruno will be receiving that so and then we will have like a list like we do for public records just of how many so that way we are kept aware of what is actually taking place miss kittens and just for the record several months ago i did request that and nothing was done and then recently we just recently got a list that has everything in it when i asked about it last fall we got one list and it only had some things on it was not a complete list but i will say that the last one we received i just looked

235at it and it does have everything on it thank you yeah so we are definitely working on that and one more question then we're going to question and i'm sorry but we're getting we received the two lists i think january and february and they're coming in our updates and i understand but there's a lot of information that's in updates and that gets overlooked and i think that this is very important and that this should come separately and that's another recommendation that i would like to have but we can say that i hear you i like your conversation because i'm hungry okay well now that you're hungry we're gonna close this meeting out but we have another meeting which starts in nine minutes one o'clock we have another food so i've got to get something to

236eat okay we'll be late yeah so this meeting is adjourned can we make it stay tuned for the next one i want to say it was nice seeing you all and thank you again thank you so much you