School Board Special Called Meeting 3/30/2022

001i'd like to make a motion that we approve the agenda as read uh matter chair discussion please madam chair we'll discuss we need we have a motion we need a second second a second okay all right thank you as stated in my email 25 march 2022 to each school board member i request the policy for the first read to be removed from the special meeting agenda in accordance with policy bdb revise on november 8 2019 it states business that does not come within the purposes set forth in a call of a meeting is not transacted at any special meeting of the board unless the members present unanimously agree to consider additional items of business madam chair this special meeting is to hear an appeal not to consider policy policy is part of the regular business

002of the school board and should be treated as such it must be considered during a regular course of business at a regular meeting where citizens will have the opportunity to comment on it during both the first read and after any changes the second read before it's voted on to deny the citizens these opportunities is wrong this proposed policy could impact parents abilities to appeal the very topics we are hearing and considering this evening it would be more appropriate to develop a klb policy based on the decision of the board this evening furthermore policy bdb explicitly states businesses does not come within the purposes set forth in a call to meeting is not transacted at any special meeting of the school board unless the members present unanimously agreed to consider additional items of the business madam

003chair since our policies require unanimous vote to add this proposed policy to the agenda i demand it be removed from tonight's agenda and consider during the next regular meeting where citizens will have the opportunity to comment a motion on the floor get a verbal from you mr collins yay okay emotional proof hey madam chair that one issue that i mentioned requires unanimous approval and it doesn't have that do you want me to take that yes you can so when the meeting was called the meeting was was called for student appeals um and the student appeals on the agenda and the policy for student appeal is on the agenda and it's been on the agenda since day one so it's not being added tonight so policy bdb does not apply that policy applies if you add

004it after the fact the meeting was called for these three purposes in in my reading of the policy uh that's being proposed tonight it'd be more appropriate to develop that policy after the board makes a determination because that policy is written in such a way that it could impact future appeals so unless there's been some type of attempt to influence the outcome before we hear the murder to this case i demanded this policy be held until next month and i disagree with the superintendent vehemently and i see no reason we can't hold it till next month so citizens can have the ability to comment on it next month and then during the second read thank you at this time i would like to welcome everybody that's here tonight today is wednesday march 30th 2022 is

005a special call school board meeting on white county school board and is located at a west side elementary school 800 west main street smithfield virginia alawite county is always preparing students for college career and life at this time we will be led to the pledge of allegiance by mrs dowd and after a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all now we'll take a moment of silence thank you it's time to move to item six on the agenda which is the business section and we were here this time discover education emed virginia mrs thank you i'm candace winter district um excuse me could you give your full name candace

006sandy break thank you windsor district thank you um i have some packets to pass out to the board members but also i wanted to bring up before we got started that i wanted to ask to reconsider allowing the powerpoint because i feel that it's very difficult to present material without the board being able to view the material that is on the ipads and it's also i think it's very difficult for the community that's watching to be able to see what i'm talking about because i have screenshots of stuff that's on my five-year-old's ipad um you know without being able to see it so that's just my comment on that i don't know if you could talk about it or if you could reconsider it that would be great but i think it would be very

007helpful for not only us but everybody in the audience to see what is on the powerpoint slides and i looked it up and i didn't see anything in any policy that says you can't this appeal is for the board mrs van der breit and you gave the board the package your appeal is to this board okay it's open to the public so they can hear and see what's going on but you are actually addressing the alawite county school board is here now you've given us a package and we will follow through with you with this package okay so everything you have in this package if you want us to open it up now and follow through with you we will okay yeah follow through that would be great correct man i'm sure i do have

008one question mr collick we are in the middle of this business session we have mrs vanderbilt here now and she has the floor who is denying the use of powerpoint in this i didn't see it in any policy whatsoever she wanted to show a powerpoint on the slide so it'd be easier to see who's denying that to her i certainly wasn't consulted on it we didn't vote on it during a meeting and no single board member has the authority to deny that when the in these situations in these cases when they appeal they bring what they need to us okay if she wants to show this powerpoint then she's going to have to have someone equipment to do it with i have a jump drive with me in my computer and it's on email so

009just stay informed this room is well equipped for that we see power points all the time at board meetings but those power points is alawite county school power points okay it's not it's not private power points we do not just put outside jump drives in our equipment because of security she could have easily emailed it but she received the letter saying she was not allowed my question we're going to go on with this meeting my question is our first amendment right i have a question excuse me this is a meeting for alawite county school board and this is vanderbilt this president thank you very much mrs vanderbilt mrs van der brake if everyone else here has guessed at this time we will not have any more outbursts if you continue to outburst in this meeting

010i will ask you to remove yourself to the fourth okay thank you thank you mrs vanderbilt continue please so you want it to be presented for everybody to see as far as the people that are watching because is there any difference between this that you gave us versus what's on the powerpoint no i think that the on those it's just super small to see the pictures and see their readings i am i have six pages to the side so mine is a little bit smaller um but also i do think that it is important if we wanted parental involvement and transparency that if i am talking to the board and it's live then for people to see that people could also understand what i was talking about well while you're talking they can hear you

011and pretty sure understand and you just said it's small so they're probably going to see it anyway madam chair yeah i'd love to make a point uh miss vanderbilt is appealing to the alloy county school board and she's not speaking for the citizens of iowa county she's speaking for her child and to ask for this to be removed from every child's device and from our system the public did not ask for her to make a presentation to the community she asked in through the appeal process which you set the guidelines for to have 30 minutes to appeal to the board she received a letter that said she could not use her powerpoint so she had plenty of time to prepare anything she had for tonight to present to the board it's not supposed to be

012a spectacle it's supposed to be an appeal to the school board thank you well so um i started this process um because i'm a parent of a five-year-old um that goes to windsor and i am a product of alawite county schools my father was a product of by white county schools my grandfather has been the preacher for alawite and smithfield and hopefully my kids kids might be products of alawite county school um when i was approached i started digging on you know what was on his ipad and his clever and there was two apps it was discovery and e-media applications and the areas of concern were family life education gender identity sexual preference vaccination status and law enforcement controversial discussions with community policing my objective in starting this kob process was actually not to completely

013wipe it out because the discussions that i've had with multiple people within the county was giving teachers access to control what the kids are seeing and not free for all for the kids to look on um the one objective that i have is to talk about the policy of alawite county curriculum alignment and psychosocial health which i believe are big pointers for why these apps should be given to the teachers we should develop policy that creates a checks and balances system with parental involvement for applications that are in the children's hands in your packets are a couple of policies from alawite county you have instructional materials supplemental materials textbook selection adoption and purchase and the character education policy and i know that the apps really haven't fallen into a certain um policy when i talked

014to you at the town hall meeting it was under instructional supplemental if you go to central office that's under supplemental so i just wanted to go through those policies for instructional materials it is the alawite county school board is responsible for the selection and use of instructional materials and the appropriate instructional materials are selected and provide an opportunity for the professional staff and community to participate and be informed on the selection and use of instructional materials under supplemental materials the main part is materials used by students under the guidance of teachers and they are to assist in teaching and the school board delegates the responsibility for the selection and use of supplemental materials to the individual schools teachers must carefully review material prior to use and exercise a high degree of professional judgment for the

015textbook selection and adoption purchase policy it says the school board may adopt textbooks including print or electronic media for student use that serve as the primary curriculum base for a grade level and then it has a series of the school board and how that is supposed to be vetted so my question was is out of these applications that are on the ipads of the chromebook have they been vetted according to the policy and under which policy are they going to fall under because the textbook selection and adoption purchase is actually the only one that includes print or electronic media for student use that doesn't involve you know putting it on the teachers to pull from it first and i think that that is really the way that it should be also the character education policy

016that i included i was just throwing that one in it says prior to use of any such material the parent of a child participating in such a program now this um is providing written notice for of the parent's review to right to review the material and the right to exercise excuse the child from participating in the part of such program so does anybody have any questions or everybody follow the policies or what i've printed out um what kind of policy the applications fall under doesn't mean any questions no no okay um the other part of it is curriculum alignment curriculum alignment is what i was told was the reason for the applications being on so that the teachers didn't have to google or youtube videos to um show in class and so what i did

017was i actually talked to the master of curriculum development and program evaluation professor from william mary chris geary's i believe it was his name i don't know um he was a resource that was sent out to me from the central office and i talked to him probably for about an hour and what he said is for curriculum alignment you have to meet a certain amount of criteria and are we using the application for the intended use how effective is the application and is there a way to monitor um what that is actually doing and to what degree is the applications aligned with the curriculum but the most important takeaway i got from that is from him he even said that curriculum alignment can only be obtained by direct teacher selection and involvement so that's the

018teacher pulling it out and being able to assign it to the lesson plans so and we were talking about are we using these apps for the best way intended for the students so also in your packet is the discovery education instructional support guide 2020 and 2021. and below you will find the instructional support options for the discovery application it includes grade level team meetings content area team meetings in classroom on-the-spot support which is demonstrating and co-teaching with the classroom teacher in classroom support where professional learning facilitators can co-teach a portion of the lesson plan in collaboration with the classroom teacher you have faculty meeting support or half day sessions for professional learning development but actually in the two little stars under in classroom on the spot support you will see where it says a professional

019learning facilitator cannot teach an entire class period without active participation of the classroom teacher for build a belt instruction as that would require a level of pre-planning with a specific teacher that is not addressed through this facilitation model so reading the instructional support guide i actually do not think that these applications were designed whatsoever for them to go on the ipads for students to just look around and play play around with and we'll get into actually what was found on them later so you can see how easily they're accessed um does anybody have any questions everybody's still with me okay all right so the last part is a psychosocial health um we talked about um there are some examples and some statistics that i got that i included in your packet i'll summarize my concerns

020so some material can challenge family dynamic dynamics fostering mindsets that could contribute to diminished family and religious values some material on the apps are inappropriate and it would not be allowed in some households across alawite be that due to mental maturity of the child or religious and family values these apps are also market driven that leads to content that are ever-changing to include current current and biased material and frankly there is no way to keep up with it most of the school's personnel were not aware that this material was on the applications because it it's impossible they're ever changing and even if you click on it every single day there's different stuff that pops up the apps are problematic as they present many challenges and are designed as one size fits all approach leaving no

021control for us as parents teachers or administrators teachers superintendents and school representatives are not qualified to give mental health advice to students and giving full access to health issues for students to explore themselves unguided by an adult to understand i think is just juvenile in itself most everyone i agreed to or everyone that i spoke to read the material was inappropriate which leaves me questioning why their the denials are all together so my final remark under this point is the lack of parental involvement i would say that most parents are not aware of the material the school has given our children access to nor does the school seem to care about the dangerous and sensitive material even when parents are challenging the material at the end of the day the school will not co-parent our

022children and the fact that most of the school personnel have never experienced the klb process and we have had multiple parents question this material and multiple kob files then should be enough for the removal in itself but yet we have appealed appealed and now we're appealing a third time following all of the guidelines and rules made up along the way in an attempt to better the school system for all children and protect our child's innocence innocence so there are a couple just statistics that i've that i pulled um the apps are problematic and open access to material which is potentially triggering or at least may require discussion and the material has not been prepped um and then we'll get into e-media va which is one of the apps that i have now if you search

023police and i'm under my my son or i was under my son's e-media and if i search police on there you would think as a five-year-old it would come up police are safe strangers or the sirens listen to the sirens of the police car or how to call 9-1-1 let's memorize your numbers but instead on page one that pops up when you type in please is police reform the militarization of police policing guns police shooting of louisiana man sparks outrage and i think that community policing the strategy of policing is that it focuses on developing relationships with the community members like sros being brought into the school i think is a great idea for community policing but market driven apps promote current topics with little to no oversight and counter and this is problematic and

024counter-intuitive according to iris publishers media's false narratives of events not only increase distrust but also are increasing criminal behavior i'm not saying it doesn't happen i'm just saying from a five-year-old standpoint if you log onto your school issue device me as a parent i would think that it would come up great things about how police officers are here to protect and serve i know that's my assault we bring donuts to the police department we you know we're very much involved or try to be and he loves going up and giving police officers high fives so it's just stuff that we we don't have any control over their algorithm of how things pop up so another thing that pops up is if you google or if you search in the immediate talent show so let's say

025you have a talent show coming up so you log on your ipad and you're googling emails do talent show let's get ideas so max and the talent show is on page one which is a story of a transgender student appropriate for kindergarten level and this is the quote from from the little movie that has like the author that's reading it and a cartoon is um trans he says transgender means that when you're born everyone looks at you and decides whether you're a boy or girl and when you're transgender you decide that what people said you were doesn't feel right to you maybe when you were born everyone thought you were a boy but you felt more like a girl or maybe everyone thought you were a girl but you felt more like a boy or

026maybe you don't feel like either to kind of try to get kids to relate to max and the transgender boy in the story but that's not correct it's not even a correct act you know i mean there's tomboys and you know i liked playing in the dirt when i was little so what does that mean me if i'm a kid reading it it's just very confusing um so more headlines from emedia va app for kindergarten pervert park lesson plan clips clergy and same-sex marriage religion and ethics weekly sex ed and community values and should teens be able to get a vaccine without parental consent also if you search family value page one for one wide angle it says learn about the influences of the communist values of organization discipline and collectivism so again the algorithm

027and we don't have any control over that and we're just giving it to our children um on disk on the discover app a couple of the topics that come up with sex gender identity and implicit bias hiv and aids staying safe the reproductive system male reproductive system female reproductive system identity intersectionality they go ned sex glands and you can see some of the um they're only like the back drop if you can see it but that's family life material and these are examples of materials that parents should be aware of and include sensitive information requiring adult guidance other discover headlines as transgender rights rally lgbt lgbtq rates it's not your fault follow the story of a girl named emily who is sexually abused by a family member it's not funny the introduction of sexual abuse

028by following a girl named hannah so these are just parts of searching into these apps or even looking in it's so easy to go from cell to sex reproduction like it's like one click away and then from there it just goes deeper and deeper and without having the correct filters on there i think to meet all the guidelines of curriculum alignment and keeping our kids safe i think it's the best thing is to take it off of all the ipads because i don't think that parents are really going through there and right a lot of those parents don't have the time we're working and then when they get home we're we're playing or baseball or homework and then it's time for bed so i think if parents were aware that all this was on there

029then i i would say that they wouldn't be very happy either so safe and effective all research and common sense points to giving applications for teacher use and or removing the data until a plan is developed policy local control over market driven material because this is not our material it's market driven material it's going to change parental rates curriculum alignment community development and the most important part that i want to talk that i want to say is mental health topics should be dealt with by care and professionals who know the child not by political or market driven commercial applications um the solutions i have some solutions that i was going through with along the process i've told everybody to remove applications until we can go through and filter material or create admin or user and

030teacher users so that teachers can give access to apps to be used for instruction for a certain time so like you could have like their student login you know how you have um your login and then you have a guest login you could have a student login and then you could have a teacher login where the teacher could come in and say okay we're gonna do small groups let me type in the one two three four password um you know or give teachers access and then they can take it and put it on a projector screen you know when they could use it um because me i think discovery education app does have neat videos about sharks and um snakes and stuff like that but it's it's how easily that the bad stuff is connected

031to the good stuff and that you could send your kid and say hey here go play with your school issue device in your room for 10 minutes and let me like cook dinner and then they say you know your son daughter could come out and be asking you sex questions and you're just not ready to deal with it at five years old you know or on a wednesday night where you worked a 12-hour shift um so and then for um there are several let's see we have email solutions and they've fallen on deaf ears my objective is to make the school system better for our kids and bridge this gap between all parents and the schools for all of our kids so that every kid gets what they need and they feel loved but i

032understand we jumped into digital quickly dr pereira brought in the ipads before thornton was here with wonderful advancements in the digital world that but the internet is still very dangerous place for our children and now it's your turn to catch up policies with the rest of the advancement it's up to you to represent what is good for our children and take these applications off of students ipads and develop a strategy to move forward safely does anybody have any kind of questions yes i have a question um have you requested to have these um well these resources removed from your child yes they're all okay all right um i don't know what rate is your child in canada okay well they haven't gotten to the great level yet where they're gonna go into the family the

033family life classes yeah because there is a policy there on the building level where you can just go to the principal or principal's destiny get the form and you can opt them out of family life as well if you were if you don't want these things as an individual parent but we we have over five thousand some art students in alawite county schools and you're requesting us to remove these items so you're what you're actually requesting that we remove all these items away from all of the devices from all of the students so you're representing all of the parents yes i mean i've been representing a number of parents but i will have what number of parents a large number what is this not what is the law i should probably say 75 of the

034community 75 of the community yeah i agree okay i think that and can you um give us something to show that you have questioned 75 percent of the parental community of alawite county is that if the school has it what is the purpose of the applications if you can use them for teachers to pull to use the good videos and stuff what is the purpose of having the applications on the ipads was that a question yes what is the person what is the purpose of having the applications on the school issue devices well actually it's an app and when this when the student goes into the app that's when they can retrieve these things but as a parent when that child is at home with you you're responsible for what they retreat on their school

035issue device but that's right but when they're in school the teachers control it within the classroom on that same school issue device we uh the teachers are not going home with the students that's your responsibility as a parent if you are afraid that your child may enter into this zone where you don't want them to be then maybe as a parent you take your time and sit down with them while they're doing their instructional homework and at the end of that you take the device from them give it back to them when they come to school the teachers have it under control so right now what you're trying to tell me the parents 75 percent of the parents that you spoke to say so if they accidentally get onto it for at school or at

036home because they are playing or having free time at the school then is the school going to take responsibility for any kind of mental health or challenges that that child may develop off of getting inappropriate material from their school issue device we have not had anyone to come forth not even a teacher not a parent other than you tonight with that concern i made it different because i know a lot of people that i i said they have not come to us okay how about you the first one to come to us with this okay i'm the first one me and i are the first ones to do the camera i'm talking to mrs right right now you are the first you're the first tonight so you're the first case we have had this boy

037okay so i'm just assuming the other five thousand and some are parents that are out there maybe not that many because they got several kids in school but the other parents out there maybe they don't have a concern if you have a concern we have removed you requested to have it remove these uh applications or apps from your child's devices that's what we did okay i would still like to know the purpose of the applications the purpose of the application is for instructional use everything we use in alawite county schools on these apps is for instructional use known as 21st century instructions that the teachers can pull from teachers years ago the same information most of it that you see today that you just spoke to us tonight in your package the teachers had that

038available but they went into the library pull this books off the shelf open it up there it is for them but now it's a little easier the teachers can pull it up as he's talking about that's a great idea i think the teacher should be able to pull it up but i think that's what i think that's the misunderstanding is i'm not i think that the teacher should be able to have the discovery education and they should be able to pull videos up for snakes or reptiles or whatever that they're learning that day i don't think that giving the application to students because they do have free time during school or and um they bring their chromebooks or ipads to lunch and they have free time and they go on it that i don't think

039that that is necessary i think there's a lot of cool apps on there like khan academy abc mouse i think that the discovery and um some of the other well discovery is really the only one um emedia va and but they're all of my sons but i wouldn't know about it unless i was approached by other parents and teachers and citizens in the school i was i was approached by people which is why i even got on and started looking around i haven't looked around it otherwise i mean to be honest approach us this is what about you approach us but those parents have not approached us and we can't just take your word for that we don't know whether they approach you or not and we can say yes you did but we can't

040say all the other parents out there have approached us and if they do have a concern they can do the same thing that you did go to the office that their child is in ask the principal for the form to have those items removed from their devices and this is the policy at this time if any any parent can do that well what policy is the applications on ipads under and did it go through the correct vetting process for that yes it did how do you know y'all didn't even actually the instructional things come with teachers and it's normally a committee and they get together there's distraction behind you mrs vandenberg and i'm just waiting again i'm gonna make this announcement and i hate making this announcement when we have an adult audience um we

041expect our students when they come to school to behave appropriately in our classroom and i expect adults to behave appropriately and setting this meeting setting when you come and if you can't do that you can excuse yourself and i'm not talking to all of you but the individuals that i'm talking to they know exactly who i'm talking to if you have a problem and you cannot sit there without being a distraction you can remove yourself from the meeting thank you continue mrs van impe uh do any of the other board members have anything to say yes i do thank you i'm sat here and i've listened back and forth and um first of all it's not a breaking deal wonderful job this presentation there's a lot of information here uh it's good information here there

042has been family members that have reached out to me in reference to some of the literature um that our children are viewing on ipads i believe it's because i'm a minister uh a pastor of church and and they're leaning toward the religious side of me i gave them the same answer that i'm about to give you all right now um and i know if you don't like me to quote scriptures but you don't want this literature at school either i spoke with a young lady about um this issue and about the digital age about what's going on but this is not new this did not come into play with the digital age and i asked the artist a question i have any of you ever read huckleberry fan tom sawyer it was required reading in

043high school for most of us senior year had to write a term appreciate you um do you all know the story of huckleberry finn tom sawyer how many y'all ready let me see your hands the author of huckleberry being tom sawyer was mark twain he was a homosexual i don't think that required reading affected us in any way in our rearing we were exposed to it also even before the digital age i didn't choose to go that route because i read tom sawyer a hunger birth thing the author happened to be a homosexual no one took those books out of school no one took them out the library and i would only graduate from college and become quite successful as some of you did and some of you all just stated you read those books

044also and i don't think it worked your ability as a parent uh it didn't challenge your gender often times sometimes we have to and i'm going to say it and you know you can put it in the paper and you can say it sometimes we have to depend on how we raise our children mr vanderbilt he said you took the things off your child's ipad it's no longer on your child's ipad you know we can only control our own households we can only do that and to effectively to represent the community probably what should have been done a petition should have been granted of all of the parents that wanted to remove you know and they presented to us some facts tonight showing that hey this is the number of people right here want these

045items to move from the ipads but we don't have that tonight we don't have it before we don't have any concrete numbers and i applaud you as a parent for one that each discovery move and wanting you know the emir yes some of it i i looked at that little story about the transgender boy and it offended me you know because i know my grandkids you know being led down that road even suggesting that but as a parent i have to enforce in getting the right foundation so that when they are appropriate materials like this they choose to go in the right direction this was great research and i i i i hear you i listen to it i hear but we were exposed to the very same thing what about what you told me

046earlier today when you said that you would do your best to remove all pornographic material from all the devices oh yeah are you just saying that to me so your ingredients that you should be taking away [Laughter] that these items should be removed but it begins at home that's the point i'm making you know it begins at home with the parent no parent in their right mind is going to walk up behind your child and see that child looking at pornographic material and let them continue you're going to stop them am i right you're going to take that advice you're going to turn it off you're going to do something we live in a world where we can't shelter our children from everything we can lead in god and that's what we call parents to

047do yeah i mean i agree with it i just think that it you know giving it from the school system with pictures of like penises and stuff is kind of like inappropriate without signing off on anything because like you google like some mitosis or me it's been a while since i've been in school but you google cell reproduction and then on the same slide is a big old picture of a penis and balls okay once again if y'all get offended hearing it wait until you're a five-year-old one minute left i'm gonna put it on a level where the artist can understand most of us went to school back in the 60s and 70s we had books with dick sally and jane now we have kids who will take those books and make those words what

048they wanted to be see dick dick like salad salad likes dick these were graceful and books from the first and second grade those books were viewed as chronographic material based on how the child read them special how they read them we both know what the word dick means sally likes dick it was in the book but it didn't warp us so my point is this as parents we got our children do you agree with taking it off and giving the teachers control over it i don't me personally i think that should be an individual family decision of whether they want it taken off i'm okay and comfortable with discussing anatomy with my children because of my background i'm actually i prefer them to know exactly what it's called and not any other thing other than

049that but that's me personally and i don't want that choice to be taken from me because i choose to do that with my kids that's my personal preference and that's what i'm gonna do with my children so though you disagree with them being on there i command you you haven't taken off your kids but i don't think that that should be a decision for all parents because i don't feel the same way you do i don't consider that pornographic to me no i don't consider okay did y'all make that part i don't know what you all know but it was a conversation that we had earlier but my as my representative do you agree that they should be taken off some things should be and some things should not but not everything yeah i'm not

050saying everything like i said there's some great things on discovery you know i think it's a big thing because parents don't know we're over 30 minutes now okay i i do have a couple of comments that i'd like to make for the record um i am a big advocate of using technology for education when i taught um in the military that really it helped a lot of people and it helped not only get the instruction done very well but we were able to control it and so i am a big fan of technology i'm also a fan of teaching what we need to teach english math history your social science i believe that in biology we can teach reproduction very respectfully but we've got a lot in here that we're giving to our kids that

051probably don't belong in schools and i think that's more where you and i are going to agree um that gender dysphoria sexual uh exploitation uh parental rights i'm a big eon i'm taken aback by searching police and they come up with all this negative stuff for younger kids now in high school grades they can talk about current events and such but younger children should know that when they're in a crowd and they get lost go to a police officer he's going to help you find mom and dad gender identity i know families that that has destroyed because a teacher convinced a young girl that she's probably a lesbian and don't worry we won't tell you parents and we'll call you this name in school that's happening all over the country folks the implicit bias okay

052you need a whole lot of things that don't belong in school but these i'm sure some of these platforms can be used for good to teach reading writing math when we look at our overall scores of kids in reading we're not doing that good same with math we need to bring it up now i will say in highlight we're doing much better than most but we can always improve it but one thing that really caught my ear is when you said diminished religious values our schools should never under any circumstances have any app or teach anything that diminishes a family's religious values we don't teach religion but by goodness we shouldn't diminish them and you're absolutely right when it comes to having policies for adoption um i think we need to make them better make

053them clearer and we probably need a committee to come together and and write up something good with a lot of interaction from the parents there's a lot of things personally i'd throw out there's a lot i keep that's just me i'm not you i'm not miss style mr vines everyone has their own opinions but as a community this is something we need to come together with and figure out with the expertise of the teachers and the staff i appreciate you bringing this up this had a lot of courage there's been a break i've heard from probably 20 25 people who had the same concerns not a single one of them would come before the board and speak so i thank you thank you okay thank you yes would you like a synopsis synopsis um how

054our teachers use discovery education media good evening so let me just start with talking a little bit about each of the resources and i'm just going to be very brief and then whatever questions you have so emedia virginia is from whro which we do partner with them as do all the other divisions in virginia have access to these materials so even media virginia is from whro it is digital content it pulls from many resources it doesn't necessarily create all the unc their own content but they pull from let me just give you a few examples pbs colonial williamsburg nasa the smithsonian npr they pull from those resources and put it in a platform in a single space that we can then access when we went into shutdown in march 2020 we very quickly realized that

055we needed more digital content our kids were at home many times parents were trying to do the teaching um and definitely trying to fill in and help if you remember how how that was i know i remember um and these emedia virginia has lessons it has lots of content things that kids can watch and learn from so we know the value of having digital content particularly after pandemic okay not knowing where we are going and not knowing what the school year was going to even be like when we started we wanted to make sure that students had access to digital content because it was we heard from many many parents how hard it was to try to teach the content and help their child at home so immediate virginia we had access to that's not

056new discovery ed is very similar in the sense that it pulls from different resources and provides content immediate virginia is virginia discovery that's national okay so discovery is going to have content beyond the virginia standards of learning but it also has content that is aligned to virginia's standards of learning and just like any teacher would do with any textbook they would pick and choose what's aligned to whatever the objective is that they're teaching okay so teachers should be able to look at the content pick what's relevant to the objectives that they're teaching and assign that to students so the way a teacher might use these resources is if i'm a third grade math teacher and i'm teaching a unit on fractions and i did my lesson maybe did um assessment and i discovered that you

057know six of my students still were struggling with fractions i can assign a discovery ed lesson i can just assign an immediate virginia lesson just to those students to do the whole the rest of my classes i need it they already understand it but i can assign just a specific group of students so while i understand what mr dandy break was saying and would she discussed that what you lose is you lose the ability to assign to individual students you could have a teacher who could show a video for the class but you also wouldn't be able to do anything interactive because a student wouldn't be able to be interactive on their own device they would only be able to watch what a teacher can do so i just wanted to make that distinction of

058what she would be able to do or not do i also want to point out that they are supplementary resources they are not content that we we don't require any of this content it is available for the teachers to use at their discretion and just like you know anytime a teacher is planning a lesson teachers might go onto google and and look for something to use for their lesson we've provided them two resources that have content that is going to be appropriate for whatever it is they're teaching that they don't have to search and search and search for it's available they can use it they don't have to use it so when we talk about instructional materials those are materials that we expect every teacher to use is required these are not required yes yeah

059ms um do we know well first i know we're paying a lot of money for this stuff do we know how many teachers use it and how often it's being used and basically are we getting our money's worth first and second everything you said i agree with and i don't think anybody here would disagree with would we be able to filter out some of these issues that most people have concerns about thank you okay yep great questions um so i don't have it off the top of my head how many teachers are using what it does vary greatly um it varies from school to school it varies from grade to grade upper grades use it more than the lower grades that is absolutely correct um discovery education it is our first year with it anytime

060your first year roll out it's probably you know not as much as we would expect but we will evaluate that and and if we aren't getting the use we're not going to continue to pay for it i believe it's 36 000 for discovery i can verify that um but of course if something's not being used and the feedback is this isn't worth it then you know we'll move on um i don't know that we're at that point to make a decision that it's all bad right now and that is not worth it um filtering i'm so glad you mentioned that because after we met with three parents so three parents have come to the central office met with us expressed their concern i i you know don't disagree with everything they said um we reached

061out and met with emedia so whro and we've met with discovery education and let me tell you what has been done and what's going to be done so discover um immediate virginia they are able to limit access for pre-k through grade 5 students to content that is just at their grade level when their students are signed in this is a change that is going to be in the new update which should launch may or june this is a direct result of us asking them to put better filters in place and they have agreed and they said they are able to do this i also met with discovery ed some of the top leaders at discovery ed brought some things to their attention and and let me just say this discovery ad is used across the

062nation and they were very willing to listen and we're very responsive into what we requested and understood what we were requesting so what they have been able to do is um on the current events that miss vanderbilt spoke about the current events and headlines they are able to limit those to grade level bands um and so they're going to set them at like k 2 3 5 6 8 9 12 so that when you log in and you see that current events page which is one of the first things you're going to see you're if i'm a kindergartner i'm not going to have access to 8th grade current event content so they have already said you know yep we can do that and we checked it yesterday and it's working um they are continuing to

063look at other content and how they can better filter but again she literally said this is as a direct result to what you told us and what you asked us to do so i feel really good that these companies are are responding they're listening and they are attempting to put those filters in place like we've asked them to one follow-up question next time any conversations if you could ask them if there'd be anywhere that the local school division can set filters for individual students as well i can answer that the answer is no okay we are able and let me say this we are able to block in immediate virginia i think discovery o2 we are able to block but we remove it for everyone we can't remove it for one child we would have

064to remove content for everyone you'll block it for everyone i should say so we are able to do that okay any other questions any more questions yes thank you at this time take a motion well before we take the motion i was listening to this guess you know and i think we should add to the emotion that the blocks be put in place you know right now if we make an emotion you know they're not requests outright i think we should uh include in our emotion to for the blocks to be put in place based on the grade as she just stated they have they have already requested with the company so we don't have to add that to the motion okay that's what she just said it has already been um requested to those

065particular companies um just making sure that your virginia as well as discovery and they have already acted on that they have put filters in place we can block certain things then we would have to determine what to lock okay we do have the ability to block as a division certain things okay but filter but if we do you would we'll be asking discovery or even virginia to remove it for the entire district right okay and the filters the filters are just getting in place that is that is coming the immediate ones are not in place they will be discovery has already put some in place they are still looking at doing them because we've asked for additional and they are working on that and i mean the the ones that they've already put in place

066it was about one month after my conversation with them they have it in place so i'm very hopeful that even additional filters will be put in place okay thank you i'm sure if we would keep in mind as as well our students all have devices unless their parents have opted out of the device and there's still a search engine called google and we filter that the best we can but those same students can type in the word police and still see some of the things that miss vanderberg brought up through google it doesn't have to go through discovery or any media or or type it in those words so it does go back to a lot of what was said our teachers have great control in the classroom and what they're doing i would say

067especially at the elementary level and well once that device goes home it is a responsibility of the parent whether the the materials were put on there by us the parents right to take that ipad and lock it up until next time they get in school or for us to keep it in school those are decisions parents have to make and when those things do pop up i've had children that have gone through school and in the digital age as well and i had a daughter who would say yeah this is what i saw please explain this to me and my wife and i explained it to her that's the responsibility of the parent we cannot block out the whole world and these are valuable resources that our teachers are making the decision we're not making

068the decision those individual teachers are using these resources to help educate our children in a better fashion okay i'd like to make a motion uphold the administration decision to deny your request to remove the discovered education and the immediate virginia application for all students a second motion and i'd like to have a discussion i mean this this went pretty quick without the board having a discussion usually when we have an appeal we're talking about for five seven ten minutes uh seeing that the motion was read off a piece of paper it tells me that this motion this uh decision was pre-planned and that ms van brake had all three of them all three options i have the right to make an amendment after it's been made the amendment would be to form a committee to

069look at the individual um issues that miss van der break brought up and have that committee make recommendations if any should be blocked so what's your solution now we're here now so we can still do that and still make a decision so what's what's the ultimate decision so the decision has been made so are you gonna be gonna you wanna and put this into motion as well with the formation of the committee okay not necessarily us but parents and teachers to come forth with the recommendation of what should be removed or blocked in the way that ms getz said because these this good stuff on there we heard miss get speak but there's things that parents don't want too i don't want to blanket one way or the other i want to make sure we've

070got the right tools for our kids even even if we say we're not going to remove it at this time why can't we come back to it later but there's nothing stopping us from coming back to it later so why does your thing have to be amended now like why can't we just make a decision because i would like to know more and think about it on it more before i even decide that i even want a committee before like i want to have my own thoughts and think about it first before that happens so we can always come back to it again it's not like it's set in stone that it has to be the way it is we can do like we did today and have a special meeting come back to it

071if we agreed that we wanted to have a special committee for this oh we certainly could um we are in the end of march and so far everything that i've sent to the chairman to be included on any agenda items i've gotten one out of about a dozen things on different agendas so i'm not confident that if we uphold the school's position on it that we will ever come back and discuss this again madam chair yes um in in the letter that was sent out by michael marta and in the klb exhibit that we currently have it does have a procedure and this was handled by the building level principal and teachers and whoever else she decided to serve on that committee that reviewed all these materials so uh we do have a very good

072process place where educators at the building level make the decision and their decision where that these materials were more valuable for our students and then that went to central office and they upheld it and now it's here so i don't know if you want to get a group of different teachers together who maybe have a different opinion you're never going to get to the bottom line of going through all of the materials on discovery ad i don't know how you're going to type in the word police how many words are you going to type in to see what's there it's a group it's like a google engine it and the process of this is to bring forward if a parent sees something and they're dissatisfied we've had three the entire year they were all removed

073from those children's devices that's parent choice yeah and we have implemented that and we have involved parents got to sit in there at the appeal make their appeal to teachers i know a lot of people like to discredit central office staff are also educators and have master's degrees and doctorate degrees and actually have developed curriculum but these are actually teachers and i know some of you have a higher opinion of teachers so that's why i'm pointing this out teachers have validated that this is a great resource and the windsor elementary review committee consisted of principal media specialist a classroom teacher and reading coach and their recommendation of the committee was to continue the use of the aforementioned application at windsor elementary school and they're the experts that we hire these are the experts that are

074um that we have hired to put in place to do these things for us and you have the option any parent has the option to go before this committee or go to the principal fill out the paperwork and have anything they want removed from the devices of their child and just to conclude we have this motion on the floor but you know there's an old cliche saying you know you don't throw the baby off with the bad boy you know there's some good material in this media and discover education and so you just can't throw it all away you know we have to fill for it and we have to get what's best for ourselves and i i know what i said earlier but after hearing your presentation you know which changed my mind because

075all the good information that was presented tonight hearing everyone you know i have a right to change my mind you know and i'm not changing my mind that i don't want pornography in our schools i don't want our kids exposed to this but you can't just throw the baby off with the bath more you can't you can't just get rid of it all okay we have a motion on the floor this time we're gonna act on emotion we're gonna take all right motion passes three one thank you okay the next business item is ted discovery ed and matt magnum via swats can you show me in my letter where i was told i'll show you my letter and again i'm asking who made the decision not to allow powerpoints from you ms and i called

076monday to confirm if i could i'm going to call the last two days i've emailed i haven't gotten a response mrs roy did not respond oh she responded and she said absolutely i could not well that was the power she could actually okay i didn't get a response i didn't get a letter um i didn't say it in my letter on march 7 that i could not do a powerpoint nowhere in my letter did it say that well i'm sorry if they admitted it from your letter but we're not doing powerpoints so in policy does it say i can't do a powerpoint you're not doing a powerpoint tonight mrs watts okay no the pause she doesn't say that mr thornton can i do a powerpoint i mean from what i understand this is your second

077tell this to the boy okay right but i i was not told i could not do a powerpoint that's not in my letter i think that can i speak to that yes you can because i work in i.t in the digital field i think the proper way to have done this if you had a powerful point it should have been presented to the i.t partner because security reasons when i finish your your file could have been corrupted your file could have some type of virus on it so that when you present that file to our network here it compromises the network so the problem the correct procedures may not have been followed to do this so there has to be a procedure not to just say i'm going to do a powerpoint i've been an

078i.t for over 20 years and no one can walk in my office and say hey mr vine run that file no that file has to be run through our firewall social security uh scan for viruses all different types of things so to come here tonight and say hey i want to present this powerpoint is it's not adequately and after working on it for i don't know two weeks i finally finished it up monday morning i reached out to mr cole prior to make sure that he had the availability for me to be able to do that and it took him until yesterday afternoon to reach back out to me and at that point is when he told me i needed to reach out to ms ruit and at 4 12 yesterday afternoon is when i

079got a reply back from her and she said no correct she said that i received information that i could not make a powerpoint and i said at no time have i not been told that i cannot present in a proud powerpoint and then you receive your answer is do you have the package right there i ended up having to stay up very late and make package yes i work full-time too yeah okay so i had to spend more money i actually had to get somewhere else so that that was not necessary excuse me mrs schwartz your business with us tonight is the tech at discovery yeah and we would like to go forward that right now because correct so and i'd like to make clarification on that too because that is not my klb which

080is what's up there my klb consists of more than ted discovery and mcafee the agenda's not correct madam chair um ms schwartz sent another klb and added some other resources when she wanted to make this appeal for those resources to be handled would have to start at the beginning of the process with the building level principle the materials that went through the appeal to the principal and then to the central office team were these three applications that are listed in the appeal so i have my original klb from 922 which went through the smithfield high school i can read it and then i can show it to you i actually have it in a packet for everybody so my original klb says i'm clever so anything under clever ted ed mcavee discovery education multiple items

081books video articles and i have an attached article on it says the access to these apps on clever ted ed mcafee discovery education contains religious items geared towards only one religion of islam under maccabee how to practice safe sex being articles on racism how porn changes the way teens think about sex a version of the civil war is described in 1619 in a childlike video items also related to anti-racism anti-police rustic articles and books relating to right privilege access to teachers training and how to sustain the test tough conversation these are the topics i and other parents have been told by the school board and superintendent thornton would not be the students of iowa white county curriculum they are certainly on the technology and software administrated to the students of the iowa white county that's

082my klb not my kob that's not the one you presented to smith high school mrs getz do you have the original klb that she presented to uh smithville high school staff yes will you come forward please that is correct what um ms schwartz read it's the apps on clever and she specifies ted ed mcinvia and discovery education those are the apps that she was appealing okay everything but these are the same apps that we have here ted-ed discovery ed and mac mac right back in vi i was appealing everything i'm clever clever but everything in my klb or in my presentation is the conversation that i had with her i don't know can we just see the package okay susan can you explain what clever is because clever is different for every single teacher in

083our school division it is not an app it is an app to load these apps on for ease of use that any teacher has ever used on clevver which reading her appeal made it look like those three things were on the teacher's club or that her okay uh clever is a single sign-on portal it is designed only for one thing and that is to provide resources as an available single location for children to go to it's something that we were working on implementing back in 2019 and i was planning on implementing fully august 2021 had to kick it up a little bit because of code however one of the apps on clever you might want to know is google so if we block clever or black and google okay mrs schwartz for this meeting tonight

084we're going to cover the teddy discover it am i going to be a via okay because these are the things that we have approved on our agenda for tonight then we need to reschedule because that's not what i discussed the michael that's not what i'm appealing can't keep your lead over okay is there anything else on the agenda tonight uh yes ma'am chair i'm still waiting to find out who made the decisions about powerpoints i am waiting to find out because if it was a single person on the board that person has no authority the board would have to vote on that because it is not within any of our policies okay at this time we'll move on to item number seven on the agenda policy updates and revisions policy k.o.b first read and for

085the first this gets so before you have policy klb this is just a first read um the purpose of revising the policy was to actually provide more details and guidelines for the process um this is the this this policy has been in existence for many years this is the first time we've ever actually gone through the entire process from beginning to where we are tonight um in doing so we realized you know what we needed to be clearer on some of the steps for all parties involved parents schools and as well as us and you all so we tried to make it um more specific um at each level of appeal and so that's before you as a first read thank you mrs cats and as you all know on first reads it's just a

086policy we get to look over until the next meeting when we have the second read and the second second read and that's tons is record ad um i believe it was ms schwartz who sent us some information on klb and to better streamline the procedure with the regulations and exhibits those were the main changes in here and to make it easier for parents to get through the process in a timely fashion so i do want to highlight some of those things in there that you have in your packet are that the committee has to hold me within 10 business days a response has to be within a certain time period then if it gets appealed that's a certain time period and the entire process more spelt out so that it happens in a entire fashion

087right okay thank you all right there are no more concerns we have regulation and exhibit klb kobe all right nothing else come before this community tonight this