001welcome to the Orange County School boards work session which had been scheduled for today for the purpose of discussing the following School Board policies IJ instructional materials ijl Library materials selection and adoption kec challenged materials policy and IMB teaching about controversial issues the public will have an opportunity to particip I'm sorry will not have an opportunity at this time to participate in this work session to provide public comment because this is not a regularly scheduled school board meeting no action will be taken and there will be no pre-agenda period in which we would normally take public info put from the public about relevant topics that are not related to the that are or I'm off to a good start right that are related to the work of work thank you so much for joining us
002this morning board members are attending mostly in person but not entirely so let me do a quick roll call Vice chair gallo I'm here Madam chair thank you and member Salamanca thank you member farant good morning good morning member Gould happy Tuesday member Felder good morning well that was not what we expected I know wow I'm not either but yeah I mean top of the day to you or something I know okay not a morning not a morning person so noted Dr Caster Dental good morning chair good morning member Bird good morning and of course I'm here as well I want to remind the public that board members will not be engaging in outside electronic or digital communication during the meeting so that we can devote our attention to the matters before us to my
003fellow board members and District staff when speaking please make sure your microphone is turned on and speak directly into it so our YouTube and orange TV TV viewers can hear you clearly we are going to begin in just a moment with a moment of silence but before doing so I want to welcome everybody back to this Tuesday following a very very incredible yesterday Monday where we celebrated both Martin Luther King and here locally we celebrated Pappy Kennedy and for those of you who were able to join us yesterday morning for a shite and Briny breakfast our superintendent was the keynote speaker and did a phenomenal job talking about the tale of two two sons and that's all I'm gonna say right now I think in a minute after we've had a moment of silence and
004pledge of allegiance that perhaps member Felder will fill us in just a little bit more on those comments but as we rise today I will personally be giving thanks to how far our nation has come while praying desperately for how much further we need to go thank you please rise and now for the 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 member Felder I'm calling on you I know out of the blue but I did overhear you talking a little bit about our former superintendent and an amazing job do you want to elaborate on that a little bit because enjoyed spending the time with you I know member Caster Dental was there and some others might have
005been that I didn't see you want to explain to the audience while we have just a minute yes just a minute good morning we were all so very proud and happy to see our superintendent Emeritus Dr Barbara Jenkins and she spoke on a tale of two sons and as a faithful educator would do she had Venn diagrams and she was teaching that's what we do but what was very interesting to me and chair Jacobs mentioned the fact that we do we've come so far we have so much further to go so often we spend all of these all of his time remembering our past and celebrating our ancestors and how well we're doing but then it stops but what Dr Jenkins did yesterday she gave us some statistical data that would make us do more
006than just say Okay celebration when she talked about the one in five black boys who are incarcerated of men and then one in twelve Latino men and the fact that we are an educational entity what we want to do we want to expose our children and then we need the public sometimes when you tell people and jar them because they weren't ready for that data because when she said it that was like over the room but she was not making up she was giving you stuff that we daily do and so I'm so proud of our district and the fact that we go beyond the ordinary we go beyond the status quo when it comes to inclusion and diversity and what she did they were probably expecting a rousing speech as Martin Luther King has
007the ability and had the ability to Rouse us but if you listen to any of his speeches and my favorite is a letter from a Birmingham Jail you will hear some nuggets that he deals with to make you go oh and that's what the superintendent Emeritus did on yesterday and so as we start our work session to discuss these materials in the library and teaching then we have to be even more cognizant of that the fact that we are The Gatekeepers over the knowledge that is shared in our district that we oversee because we need to make when you change a person's mind mindset then you have success and so we have a lot to do chair Jacobs we do but you know what we're fit for the task we are fit for the task
008thank you for this time thank you thank you and I think our community is as well okay so we are going to begin with School Board policy IJ instructional materials Dr Vazquez I will turn it over to you thank you madam chair today we are bringing forth four policies IJ instructional resources and materials ijl Library material selection adoption IMB teaching about controversial issues and kec challenge materials policy Rob Bixler and his team will be presenting policy revisions and recommendations for the board I do want just as a point of reference we've been here a couple of times we do have three books that were being reviewed we were waiting on what our policy would be we were also waiting to see what the training was from the doe and now that we have that the
009three books genderqueer this book is gay and let's talk teenage Guide to Sex based on the training that our staff received the recommendation is that those books be pulled based on what the changes are to our policy we will take next steps with those three go ahead good morning chair Jacobs members of the board Dr Vasquez today we're going to be reviewing the timeline our summary of actions our proposed revisions next steps and then questions and discussions for our tentative schedule we reviewed his cabinet several months ago electronically the policy to give feedback we had a work session on July 11th of 2022 we had a rural development workshop on August 16 2022 and then there was a little bit of a pause we did have in Nova as we received we're going to have
010some training that was available for media Specialists also which is due to be published on January 1st of 2023 in in between now we also had the Florida Department of Education met and they provided a new Florida admin code that now also includes all classroom libraries at the elementary level as being considered media centers also so what you're going to see as we go through this we've also Incorporated those into these policies also then what the rural development Workshop will be to be determined board approval to be determined then effective eight upon final vote Mr okay so this means I'm sorry yes thank you sorry for board member farant and board member of Salamanca you haven't met my team so I'll introduce you have Maurice Dragon the senior director for digital learning and Allison Kibby
011who's the director for instructional technology and library media they've been a part of this process all along for the Board review we'll be reviewing IJ instructional resources and materials ijl Library materials selection and adoption IMB teaching about controversial issues and kec challenged materials policy and I'll turn it over to Allison to continue good morning we'll get started with instructional resources and materials which is School Board policy IJ and this is being revised to include language from Recently enacted laws and to clarify the process by which a parent or resident of the county can object to the board's adoption of instructional materials as far as the actions that we've taken to make revisions they have been made to the existent existing policy language to include content formatting and terminology edits that are consistent with the new
012statutory language and I will pull those policies up here I apologize we had these all pulled up all right and then I will zoom in for you so that you can actually read this so that we can all read this oh okay sorry about that so this is policy IJ we are recommending a change to the title of this policy to be instructional materials program selection and objections this talks about the allocation of instructional materials we did not make any changes to this section here at the beginning which talks about the distribution of all textbooks Library resources and other instructional materials shall be made on an equitable basis to district schools the allocation of these materials shall be based on student full-time equivalent membership funds School enrollment and membership or similar indicators of the school
013student population so no changes in that aspect of the instructional materials policy then the policy is divided up into different sections and this section begins with the selection of instructional materials we made some changes here to be more consistent with language in hospital 1467 and change the term from adopt to selection to be more consistent with the language in these statutes so it is a constant constitutional Duty and responsibility of the school board of Orange County Florida to select and provide adequate instructional materials to all students of the district whether the materials are selected from the list of approved materials from the Florida Department of Education or through a local selection program the following procedures for the selection of instructional materials apply only to those instructional materials that serve as the major content tool and
014basis for instruction for each student in the core subject areas of mathematics language arts social studies science reading and literature the division of teaching and learning shall coordinate the selection of instructional materials so only minor changes in that section to the word adoption and using the word selection instead the following section was tweaked quite a bit just to make sure that we were in line with the wording from hospital 1467 this section focuses on the state adopted instructional materials so the Florida Commissioner Commissioner of Education shall determine annually the areas in which instructional material shall be submitted for adoption and evaluate them pursuant to law no changes there the superintendent or designee shall assign the responsibilities for the district's participation and the state adoption of instructional materials determine areas of the curriculum in which state
015adoption of instructional materials is needed and communicate those needs to the commissioner of education and establish procedures for the requisition purchase receipt storage distribution use conservation maintenance of records and reports management practices and property accountability concerning instructional materials no changes to that section item C the duties and responsibilities include keeping adequate records and accounts for all Financial transactions for funds collected such records and accounts shall be a component of the Educational Service delivery scope of the district's best financial management practices review we removed item d as the training that was mentioned in this original version of the policy did not pertain to did not pertain to instructional materials originally however when the state did release their Florida Department of Education library media training there is a component in there about instructional materials so we found
016a different place to add this back into the policy and I'll point that out to you and then we removed item e the does anybody have questions about this section so far any questions at this time no the only question I have was about removing that but but we'll get to that later yes ma'am thank you I'm sorry member Castro Dental training that media media specialist is that's basically a like a slideshow it is a narrated slideshow at the moment yes we have been told that the Department of Education is working on creating a more Dynamic version of the training do we have a place where where members of the public can see that on our website the members of the public can go to the Florida Department of education's website currently and it is
017on the instructional materials page and it is the very first bullet at the top but we can certainly link that on our website as well great thank you and it is also on this agenda item for today I copied the slide the PowerPoint to it's on this agenda item well I just want to make sure that it's easy to find yes thank you member Kester Dental has an excellent success thank you okay the next portion of the policy deals with District adopted instructional materials and this would be the process that we would follow if we were not following the state adopted process but we followed that process so the board shall Implement its own instructional materials review and selection program for district adopted instructional materials that are not state adopted the procedures are established within
018this policy and provide for the evaluation and selection of District adopted instructional materials these procedures include processes criteria and requirements for the following selection of review committees members one or more of whom must be apparent legal guardian of a child enrolled in a district public school and this comes directly from House Bill 1467 so this is amended to reflect the changes in that law review of instructional materials selection of materials including a thorough review of curriculum content and Review Committee recommendations the procedures also identify by subject area a review cycle for instructional materials specify the qualifications of reviewers establish a process that certifies the accuracy of instructional materials and comply with all other current requirements and then we removed several items below to just overall create some more clarity within the policy about what happens
019when we actually evaluate the materials regardless of whether we follow the state adopted process or the district adopted process so the items that you see removed here have been absorbed in a different part of the policy and that part of the policy is the evaluation of instructional materials so you see here that this applies to both state adopted and the district adopted process the board is responsible for the content of all instructional materials used in a classroom or otherwise made available to students whether adopted and purchased from the state adopted instructional materials list adopted and purchased through the district's instructional materials program under section 1006.283 of the Florida Statutes or otherwise purchased or made available the selection of instructional materials and the standards used to determine the propriety of the materials shall include the age
020of students who would who normally could be expected to have access to the material the educational purpose to be served by the material priority shall be given to the selection of materials that align with applicable state standards and include the instructional objectives contained within the curriculum Frameworks for Career and Technical education and adult general education the degree to which the material would be supplemented and explained by mature classroom instruction as part of a normal classroom instructional program then the consideration of the ethnic socioeconomic cultural religious physical and racial diversity of our society in accordance with section 1006.31 of the Florida Statutes any instructional material containing pornography or otherwise prohibited by section 847.012 of the Florida Statutes may not be used or made available within any District school for purposes of this policy pornography is defined
021in the Florida Department of education's online training program as the depiction of erotic Behavior as in pictures or writing intended to cause sexual excitement the instructional materials for college board advanced placement International Baccalaureate dual enrollment and Cambridge assessment International Education are not selected by the board the instructional materials may contain college-level content participation in these programs is voluntary if it is found that an instructional material does not meet the criteria set forth in this policy or that any other material contains prohibited content the district shall discontinue the use of the material for any grade level or age group for which such use is inappropriate or unsuitable and this is where we added the training component because participants learn about how to evaluate these materials in that training so committee members shall complete a training program
022developed by the Florida Department of Education prior to involvement with the review and selection process the training shall develop skills to assist committee members in making valid and objective recommendations regarding the content and rigor of instructional materials and I will pause there I do have one question for you on number three I don't know if you called Preamble the first part of number three the board is responsible for the content of all instructional materials used in the classroom are otherwise made available to students whether adopted or purchased from the state adopted instructional materials list adopted and purchased through the district's instructional instructional materials program under sections or otherwise purchased or made available I know this section is for instructional materials but the language that last part or otherwise purchased or made available I am trying
023to understand if that also would pertain to classroom material classroom Library material that would be made available but not necessarily considered instructional from a legal standpoint if somebody can interpret that for me Please Mr pomerani Madam chair what that Preamble is a direct reproduction of 1006.28 that comes directly from statute including the or otherwise purchased or made available that is designed and intended I think to say if it's available for a child to use in the classroom these standards would apply to it so Mr palmerini I went to I went to 1006.283 and I will admit by this time it was getting a little late in the evening but I didn't find this language and you just mentioned 16.28 is it definitely 283 and can you give me the subsection yeah it's 1006.28 sub 2a1
024and most certainly it does cite in that language 1006.283 it is a direct reproduction of the statute oh I'm so confused so I will find this language in 1006-2-8 then subsection two a one not one thousand six point two eight three yes but this language then points to okay I thank you I was thinking I was going to find this language in one thousand six point two eight three so how would you interpret this language and my concern with this is the board there's a lot of times or enough times when the board is responsible for things that it doesn't actually have the authority over so my concern was if that included classroom material that the board may not have any idea of what's in each classroom being responsible for it means that we would
025have to put in a whole new system to monitor it so does that refer to all purchased or otherwise available material or does this strictly refer to instructional material the language is very Broad and I think your responsibility would come in the form of if you were made aware of it you may you certainly as a board are not going to be reviewing under this policy all of the classroom materials used in all of our 200 some odd schools but if you become aware of a material that is in conflict with the requirements of the statute I.E it contains pornography or materials harmful to minors is obscene it's not age appropriate then you would be responsible to ensure that material is not on the Shelf or I made or otherwise made available to students I
026like that answer because it's it's more reasonable I do get a little concerned about someone else's interpretation of us being responsible for anything that is in a classroom with no ability under our current processes of knowing what's in the classroom so I just want to leave that standing concern on the table member front Madam chair can I just add one thing of course of course Mr palmeri please so under our current process with what we have to do at least with child or let me try that again in English classroom libraries at the elementary level this may be changing we do have to list those on our website so there is some level of you know overseeing that we are going to be able to certainly Rob and Allison and Maurice are going to have
027that ability when they see those lists they'll say oh you know this book may not be age appropriate we could deal with it that way but most certainly you all are going to be reliant on your staff you all can can't oversee 200 into or 120 individual elementary schools unless and until you become aware of a material if somebody raises a concern to you all and then you fail to act on it then I can see the board being held as not being responsible for overseeing it at that point but we also have District staff that will Overlook some of these things especially in elementary school since we're going to have a list of those materials let's use the term oversee instead of overlook Mr pomerani thank you sorry if I didn't speak correctly too
028I just thought Overlook could be interpreted two ways that was thank you very much for clarifying that so I think then and maybe this is covered and I don't remember seeing it superintendent Vasquez I think it will be important for there to be a process by which there is oversight of what's happening in the classroom reading materials because we've said that their staff will have access to that but I don't see how they're going to be proactively looking at that it sounds more like we're going to be reactionary and I would personally prefer that there is a process by which those documents if not approved before they go into the classrooms that at least there be a process by which they're reviewed by our staff so that's one person's opinion but I just don't want
029something ending up in a classroom library that has been decided elsewhere or here is pornography and having this board responsible for it because we don't have a process for our staff to review it please so the house bill 1467 requires a lot of transparency including school or grade level reading lists which are published on each school's Media Center website and that would include any instructional materials that schools purchase which could be the otherwise purchaser-made available resources that are referred to here in this policy it also requires classroom Library lists be posted on the website and that was something that was established during the Florida Department of education's rural development that was published on November 22nd so the classroom Library list right now teachers are compiling those lists so that's phase one we have to get
030all of the all of the data at the elementary school level and then the next phase will involve media Specialists actually going through and vetting all of those titles so we're working on a way to scale that because we know that it's one media specialist against thousands of books in teachers classrooms and so we're working on just right now getting the list and getting teachers to create those and those are due to the district on March 10th and they will be published on every school's Media Center website so to summarize there will be a review of all those done by our staff yes and we are also requiring that principals go through the training that was given out by the Department of Education we suspect that there will be more information forthcoming as books are
031submitted or districts share titles that have been pulled so we're not sure that this is the end-all and be all but principals have been made aware that they are responsible for the resources within their schools that are being used I've also had conversations with legal and I want to reiterate what Deputy Council pomerani said the we will do our due diligence to ensure that all of the resources in our schools comply with the law but if something for some reason gets in it is our responsibility how we react or how we act upon that information which is what was shared with us when we were at fads from commissioner Diaz at that time is Once you receive information that there is a an issue how is the district responding to that and acting upon that
032information thank you and let's go next to member for aunt thank you chair Jacobs I think to just my own two cents on that I feel like it's that little part that you were questioning I think it's more about us being just holding others accountable and you know making sure that everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing not micromanaging of course but you know if we see something coming up and saying hey is this being taken care of you know checking in with our principals or you know whatever the what do they call them the area superintendents things like that just making sure that everyone is kind of on the same page do they need help and just holding them accountable I don't think it's going to be something where if one book
033is found and we had no idea because it is true there's I mean that could happen you know someone brings it in it's one day it's in the classroom and then all of a sudden we're responsible I think it's more about how we are responding to it like we've been saying so my question real quick was on let's see what section is this so it's number three B but then it seems like there's two B's I don't know because then there's two B's here but it says the instructional material for college board advanced placement internal Baccalaureate dual enrollment those type of things it says participate participation in these programs is voluntary is there something where we are notifying parents for instance 9th graders most ninth graders are put automatically into a an AP course for
034oh my human geography and you know if that's something that like as a nine brand new I've got five kids so my first one I had no idea that those were optional or voluntary I just assumed that was something we had to do because that's what was given to him our parents being made aware that is voluntary and how how is that happening one of the lessons learned from all of this is we have posted information on our website now about all of this and we've also been we also are requiring letters be sent home that lets the parents know the rules and regulations around this as opposed and that as it relates to Advanced Studies courses so whether or not we're whether whether or not we need to be more open or more transparent
035about voluntary I can't say with I can't remember what the letter actually said but we can definitely take that back but we have been sending notification home we requested all parents all schools and let her home and teacher send letters home about the materials and college level to make them aware they can't opt in and opt out but I can do more from that Middle School eighth grade to ninth grade transition we can definitely work on that for sure oh thank you so much I appreciate it because I know there are some classes maybe not the Human Geography I don't feel like there's anything in that one but there are others where they're given books to read correct that are going to be more adult content and then they're not allowed to opt out of
036reading that because it's part of the curriculum and you have to take it for the class so just so parents are aware that hey your child is signed up for this there are the you know these are the titles of the books that are going to be read some some of these may be controversial if you don't want your child taking reading these books sign them up for a different class that way there's you know there's more transparency and people people are aware before it's halfway through the semester and it's kind of too late that's a great takeaway because I know we sent it home this year when school started but to your point getting those eighth goes before they transition and make their schedules is a good takeaway for us perfect thank you pleasure
037gallo thank you madam chair I have just a few questions on page two this is actually a comment more than a question but it talks about the b i where it says one or more of whom must be a parent or legal guardian of a child enrolled in the district public school I know our intent is to make sure that it is a parent within that school but I just want to make sure that when we only choose people to sit on this committee that it's an actual parent and not a teacher who has a child in school or a district employee that has a child in school that it's really a parent that attends the school that is not an ocps employee that's chosen to be on this committee because I think that's our
038intent is it not yes it is yes okay so I don't know if we need to put something in writing on that but I just want to make sure that because there's a lot of committees that will be going over between this policy and the next policy where we are choosing parent legal Guardians and so I think it's just important that we're very clear that we need a parent with a child enrolled in that school and even a parent from that Community it should be apparent that you know as we challenge books that's from that community that should be on that committee so I just want to make that point and then I want to jump down to 4A page four a it talks about and I just need a clarification on this it says
039which one is it's the third one the degree of which the material would be supplemented and explained by mature classroom instruction what do you mean by mature classroom instruction this language also comes directly from the state statutes and we could Mr palmerini would you be able to okay give me a second thank you did that work no yes I'll have to look for it and I'll get back to you as soon as I find it but okay yeah it's in one of those 16 28s okay can we come back to member Galo on that yes I do have two other questions though on page five on four it talks about I guess when the district is choosing any type of curriculum that is different from the state adopted curriculum it says that factual American history
040so that does that just apply to the district chosen material or that would that be to the state adopt a material as well that applies to the state adopted material as well so if we were if we were to get some curriculum or look at curriculum that was adopted by the state that didn't depict clear factual American history then we would not adopt that curriculum in Orange County that is correct that would be part of the public comment piece as well remember Gallo okay thank you and then I wrote down D and I'm not certain oh and D on the same page it says it is found that instructional material does not meet the criteria set forth in this policy are there any material contains prohibited content to the district shall discontinue the use of
041the material so I have two questions if we're going through a class and the committee is choosing it how would such material get adopted in an instruction material number one and two who's going to deem that material as prohibited content is it going to be based on what we've already established like the pornography that definition like what will that be based off that prohibited comment how do we Define prohibited comment content excuse me this language is also directly from house bill 1467. Mr pomerini would you be able to help us talk about the accountability portion of member Gallo's question I was actually looking up the statute that she wanted 16 34 2b3 for the record so if she can repeat the question I'm sorry sure so my question is if they're going through a class
042it should there should be no inappropriate material adopted if everybody's going through a class so that they're very clear on what can and can't be adopted number one number two if it does get adopted how are we defining prohibited content within the material who's making that who's making that determination whether it's prohibited content it's grade level appropriate like who's how's that defined and who's making that determination the member Gallo because because you can't hear your five minutes are up we're going to take an answer and then of course we will Circle back through okay we'll take an answer on this and if Mr palmerini can give us an answer on the other one he can and I actually have a follow-up question on one of your points to make sure that we're all clear for
043the for the new board members in particular this time is really important because this is our chance to make suggestions before anything gets advertised goes out to the public once we get to the next step then if we go oh ouch didn't quite mean that let's rephrase that then we kind of start the process all over again so it's worth our time slowing down and making sure that all the words make sense and we're comfortable with it now and sometimes sometimes I feel like we kind of rush through this because we have two more hearings but then we get to the next hearing we're like ah we're not happy and we have step level step back does that make any sense okay so you want to take a shot at answering and then I can
044maybe give an example okay great remember can you hear me yes so in looking at whether or not a material contains prohibited content I can only think that it would come up in the context of we would receive a complaint for example I could see that context and in that context if we receive a complaint from a parent then what we would do is our staff would look at it and say based upon the factors for instructional materials that we look at generally age appropriate not containing any you know pornography harmful to minors materials is this actually factually correct our staff would make a determination on whether or not it contained prohibited content in the first instance and if if our staff finds that it contains prohibited content then we would discontinue the usage of
045it in the grade levels in which it's appropriate that's how I Envision this process working out and Mr Bixler has another example well the one that came to mind is you know sometimes the legislature passes you know laws that says we can't teach something so for example the textbook the math textbook adoption last year where they came out after began the adoption process and says you can't have information about SEL a cell in your math textbook that could be an example we had something adopted the state could come out and say you can't have these this item in your material we have to pull those so that was like a practical example I came up with okay I think there will probably be some follow-up questions like when we say staff we're working on abroad
046level but I think the board will probably want to understand the implementation part and whether or not we have that in policy or whether that's something that you come back and provide I think it's going to be important to understand is that District staff is that staff at the school and then the one other thing I think we need to get clarification when we come back from Member Gallo when she wants to make sure that parent isn't a teacher does that mean not a district employee at all so I just I think we need Clarity on that before we you all write something we come back and are on different pages okay let's go on to member bird thank you I have a few questions first how are we helping teachers with this whole process
047of cataloging my obviously you know I've probably heard the same things you've heard that especially our elementary school teachers who have huge libraries classroom libraries have just said okay I'll just pack them up and put them away I'm not going through this process of cataloging so that's exactly what they're doing they're packing them up and our babies are not having access to all those books in their classroom because of this so is there anything we're doing as a district to help our teachers or support them or are we providing them with some kind of easy cataloging program or something that would make this easy we had a large a long discussion about this topic when it first came out and so I'll give I'll let Allison kind of tell you the specifics of what we're
048trying to do to assist and she happened to be at a conference with other districts trying to work through this as well and every District's doing something a little bit different and part of the Dilemma that we face is being so large is from a central office perspective assisting five to six thousand teachers with their books that could change on a daily basis it became proc it became impractical for us to assume that responsibility and so we pivoted from that to what could we do to provide them training and support and I won't say it's the easiest way but ideas on how to do this I'll let Allison talk to you more specifics but we did have this discussion it's very difficult for us as a central officers say I'm sorry classroom teachers this will
049have to fall on you but there was no there was there was no logistical way that we could monitor on a daily basis and I was a Elementary School principal so I know this classroom library has changed on a daily basis also Allison we have heard the same things so we try to think about the resources that we have at the schools and we know that we have iPads swivel kit iPads and so we worked with its to push out an app called ISBN scan it allows teachers to scan the titles that they have in their classroom library and then export all of the books that they have scanned into a Google sheet that we have asked them to place in a Google folder the app is not perfect there is no app that is
050perfect and so some of the information it does not recognize in the ISBN database so that information about those titles has to be added manually and you can do that either directly in the app or you can do that on the Google sheet that ends up being generated after that process many schools have engaged Volunteers in this process so parent volunteers student volunteers and then as you said some have chosen some teachers have individually chosen to no longer offer a classroom Library unfortunately this is not something that was funded and so I think that you know causes issues as well yeah okay thank you I appreciate the resources and I'm sure you guys are doing a great job of pushing that out so that teachers know where where exactly on school websites are the classroom
051resources going to be I can show you if that would be okay that'll be helpful thank you foreign so this is the Aloma Elementary School website and I'm not picking on them they're just first in the alphabet so they always this is my example website so the law required household 1467 required several things to be included on Media Center websites or on school websites and so we put most of those things on the media center website we worked with the web services team here to have a standardized template so that every school website is the same so if you go to any school website and you click on Media Center you're going to be able to click on that or you're going to be able to click on the destiny Library catalog that is a
052requirement of Hospital 1467 that you have to provide public access to your school's library catalog so that is there if you click on media center it loads it's loading you'll see a lovely template you'll see a brief introduction to the media center and the purpose of our library media center programs you'll see the information for the media center staff and then you will see the collection development procedures those collection development procedures have to be posted in accordance with the law and this will eventually link to the new and revised version of school board policy ijl there's also information about the destiny Library catalog and how that is the system that we use to track all of our books and then there's a video that teaches users how to actually search our destiny Library catalog we
053got some Community feedback about that and that video is also available in Spanish next you will see the heading for instructional materials those do have to be listed again in accordance with Hospital 1467 and the statutes so these are on every school website K-12 and we have grade band specific lists we continue to to add to these lists here and provide lists to these schools for example we have some schools who purchase instructional materials that the district doesn't purchase and so we've been working with those vendors to get lists of all of the materials that they provide in their subscription or in their kit or in their set and then are sharing those with schools next you will see the school and grade level reading list and this is where schools are responsible for adding
054their own grade level reading lists this school in particular has not yet had the opportunity to do that and then we are again working with web services to roll out kind of the next component for classroom Library lists so you're going to see a heading down here that will say classroom Library list and that will link to a Google drive folder that will have that all of the lists that are available from that school thank you thank you I'm sure we'll be circling back around thank you member Felder thank you chair Jacobs I just have a couple of things I have to may have to come back to me too listening my concern is the checking balance of of this system and that nothing will fall in the cracks and some of the discouragement teachers
055aggravation the teachers are going to experience when they're trying to illuminate the minds of students to get them to develop expert cognitive thinking because you have to have two views to be able to come up with what you think is right based on your frame of reference that you're drawing from so I really have some concerns about that one of the ones I if you go to page five and it's going to be three three and three four the consideration of ethnic socioeconomic cultural religious physical and racial diversity of our society in accordance with section 106.31 and explanation to the side says include only instructional materials that accurately portrayed ethnic socioeconomic cultural religious fiscally physical excuse me and racial diversity of our society with so much controversy how can one determine that it's accurate I
056think that I have the potential to you know to determine whether it's accurate because you know more than one person has written a book about it at least but I'm just concerned that this whole thing of people can argue whether or not it's accurate so I just have a concern what is what is the measuring stick to determine that it's accurate because none of us were back there but is it accurate okay the second question I have regarding our policy on instructional material is there may be books adopted you know materials that they go over but what what about the extra the teachers may use for an example we used to I can't think of the term it's escapes me but we used to have lessons and I remember when I was teaching we had
057to show a segment of The Godfather part two and it's rated R and it was showing you know the when when the guy came over as an immigrant so and it was the problem the instructional material so teachers who decide to add you know other materials like maybe snippet from a film or a snippet from a song or something I remember teaching Dylan Thomas don't go gently in that good night along with Tupac's me against the world so my students can understand and compare and make the comparative analysis so I mean but I had no restrictions I had no one micromanaging my material because I put out a syllabus the summer before I mean we have a week of pre-planning the syllabus since we started working on syllabus tattoos tell that where's the second day
058of pre-planning about Thursdays we completed so the principal gets a copy AP gets a copy and then we have parent night when they come like in about two weeks when school starts and they see I have a PowerPoint it's the exactly what you're teaching so I'm just concerned that how's all this going to get checked and will it be checked in such a way that it prohibits the creativity of teaching subject matter that would allow our students to use their brains cognitively I'm I'm just so concerned about that I'll probably roll back around but I just wanted to put that out there thank you I'm not sure if there's a if there's a question you can answer in there well I mean I think you know member Felder kind of said it best when she
059shared before part of it is being transparent with their families about the syllabus and so I mean I don't I can't speak to statute but I mean I think part of that communication piece and letting parents know what you're going to be teaching and the resources they're going to be using kind of Falls in line with what the policy is trying to trying to illuminate is be transparent and share with what you're going to do and you've shared that you've shared stories with me personally of how you've use literature in your teaching but you've always brought the parents in on the front end to share what's going to be what you're going to be using I think that's kind of what this ties into I remember your real question was okay you've got this how
060in the world with so many 14 000 teachers who's going to be checking ahead of time of sending out a syllabus saying this is my reading list and why that was the I mean everything you said I grasp the problems but that technical problem can you address that so a couple of ways to address member felder's question number one you sent out the syllabus and I think the school or grade level reading list is kind of another way of addressing doing the same thing so all the things that you were mentioning the books ebooks videos those are all supposed to be on the school or grade level reading lists if they are part of required instruction so teachers would need to add those secondly house poll 1467 asks that a certified media specialist who has
061completed the Florida Department online library media training be involved in the selection of resources on score grade level reading lists and classroom Library lists okay not satisfactory but that's where it is right now we'll come back okay it's good that we're not but at least we realize the discussion that we're going to pop it's going to be continuous right it is as things come up but I'm hoping as a board member you're understanding where I stand where I'm going to stand as it relates to this issue about instructional materials thank you thank you member Castro Dental thank you madam chair I am part of me if I'm a little confused the class libraries are usually the books are usually purchased by the teachers or parents or donated by students and school libraries are purchased through
062school funds our class libraries I mean a lot of times they're not for instructional purposes they're more to supplement a student's interests or free choice are we I are we is this policy kind of controlling both instructional and the teachers so supplemental Library so that was determined in the rule that was developed on November 22nd by the Florida Department of Education and I could get you the exact number it's in here somewhere for the rule okay well to help Allison out thank you it's 6a-7.013 and what they did is they said library and media center they gave a definition library media center includes everything you have in your library plus your classroom libraries in your case your Elementary grades so it lumped in classroom libraries from a teacher into a library media center definition there
063was discussion on whether a book or material is inappropriate or or there was an objection in in someone's library but isn't that term determined by a parent lodging a complaint and going through that whole school literacy review that is correct so if if there is a concern regarding anything in even a classroom library book the parent would need to follow the request for reconsideration process that is part of school board policy ijl and the classroom Library lists aren't necessarily I don't believe they're directly mentioned in ijl but we do Define what a media center is in ijl and we do refer to Elementary sites specifically Okay so we can go forward and Trust our teachers and media specialists to put books on the shelves with the guidance that the state has given us and if
064they follow that guidance they shouldn't worry unless there is a challenge brought to them for the school is that right that is correct okay are we doing anything to encourage teachers to keep their books in their classroom for their students those who have said this is just too much I'm just this is so much micromanaging so much nonsense so much extra work I can't do this are we doing anything to help them I think we're trying to be encouraging because it is their choice to have that library or not and as Allison has said we've heard the gamut some are like I can make this work I'll I can make it happen I'll figure it out getting Volunteers in and some have just felt that it's just not worth their amount of time so it's
065really it's all over we're hitting it multiple or they're going to Pare down their Library instead of having submitted they're going to go through and weed it pair it down so I don't have to manage so much of it so it's a little bit of everything and then do the do the elementary teachers also since they're responsible for the same level of knowledge about their books did they also go through the media specialist training or they maybe they're not required to but should they be offered it to avoid being caught up in this we can make it available for sure I mean it's not required but we could make it available okay we'll help for how to make that work with we could do that all right thank you thank you let's go to member
066Gould this time actually following up on some things that member Castro Dental is saying but a point I'd like to make is this is a new rule that dramatically changes our operations and our relationships with our parents all parents not just some parents so it is evolution and needs to be Evolution and we need to continue that two-way feedback you know certainly to the doe into the state so when my children went through the apex program at Olympia we had an orientation and the curriculum was reviewed there and we were told that they would be getting college level courses and the syllabuses were shared so I think that's already been in practice in our district in across the board I mean we were not unique I had friends in Dr Phillips and you know West
067Orange and Evans they were they were all saying that they went through that same thing so I don't want people to think this is new we've been doing that and sharing that information all along the way this is just a broader use of sharing my question which does follow-up member Castro Dental is what about the families who want access to books that are not representing their children in school or some of the history that is not covered in our textbooks that would be in those classroom and media centers whether it's a child that's disabled lgbtq highlighting you know African Americans who fought and were spies in the American Revolution whatever that might be how do they get access to the materials they want for their children and what is that process and how clearly can
068we communicate and is there anything in the statute that stops us so those are my questions okay so part of this Miss Gould is before part of this transparency or in regards to purchasing books for the media center the school library is the ability to share titles that you're going to be purchasing before you actually purchase them so to me thinking practically is these however a school decides to do a PTA showing or a SAC meeting to show the titles are up for purchase before it's purchased would be a perfect opportunity for members of the community to say hey I don't see these titles represented in my library could we also purchase these and I think that's part of this process that's still evolving I love your term it's still evolving but as we get
069into the end of the school year the March April's the maze when the budgets become available before schools can purchase they've got to share what they're going to be purchasing to their community so to me that is a prime and we can help with that communication that part of that is also Gathering here's our here's our media materials that are posted on the website I don't see titles that represent X Y and Z could you look at these I think it's I think it's a great way to do that so follow up please okay I love that what if it is something that we've chosen to take out and we wouldn't necessarily Supply it to them can we Supply them with a resource on where to get a book to bring into their home on
070that on that topic and we've had a couple you know that and we've heard from various members of the community who are absolutely opposed to having access to that book for their children and others who vehemently want it because it helped their child through a very difficult stage in their life so we have a mental health issue too to address here and while I understand what will be able to likely have available within the school I don't want to take the resources away from the families that feel they need them in the best interest of their family John you wanna so it's weird when you look at the case law when it comes to this it talks about you know just because it's not available in the school doesn't mean that a parent can't choose
071to buy that for their own child it doesn't necessarily say that we here's a list of resources there where you can find this book or that book it at that point if we this is the case law generally if we can't have it on our shelves it's up to the parents to go ahead and find that resource on their own without necessarily our help I don't think that the statute addresses this one way or the other okay so before I run out of time I want to quickly follow up on that we know that 70 of our community is on free and reduced lunch they don't have books in their houses so and they can't afford the 10 or 20 or 30 dollars for the book so is there a way for those parents seeking
072those kinds of things to have at least a resource list available to them whether it's used books I don't know what it is but where are all those books going where's the repository those maybe they can go there for them so just a thought in trying to meet everybody's needs in our community but let me let me call on the superintendent but I have a question for the superintendent don't we provide library cards to all of our students well that's what I was going to say every one of our students have AG online access to the Orange County Public Library they have the cards so they're still able to check them out electronically through that Avenue so that's what I was going to say and the library does provide free of charge mailing them to
073the house so I think that is something that might be helpful for us exactly I think part of our messaging needs to include how you would get access to books that are important to your student and you're not finding schools through the Orange County library system is a sign of liaison so media Specialists or anybody who is school-based can reach out to their Orange County Library System liaison they're a great partner to our school district every fall we do a library card sign up drive so students have the opportunity to sign up for library cards which allows books to be delivered to homes for free and then that just expands the potential beyond the virtual library card agreement that we have now so as Dr Vasquez said students can check things out electronically through those
074resources if we don't have them and then if you have a physical library card you can go to any Library location or you can request a physical copy of a book online okay back to me I the one problem that is going to be overarching in my comments throughout this is going to be about process and I know a lot of times process isn't dictated in statutes sometimes or in policies sometimes it is and there's a lot of process in this but I struggle with decisions being made at a school level or even at a classroom level decisions that especially on the definition of pornography are harmful to children and having different decisions coming down from different schools and Dr Vasquez and I have talked about this and I think we've publicly shared this so
075you'll you'll just hear a lot more as we go through this about how important I think process is to making for to reducing the chance of error if we have a clear delineated process on the issue of AP and Baccalaureate classes I understand what's been sent out these letters have been sent out what I'm hearing is that there may be adult content or controversial issues what I think what I am looking down the pipeline and thinking about what kind of complaints might we still get I think that language alone may not communicate to parents that the content may may not be consistent with the content at a allowed by the state which sounds contradictory because I think the state has said it's okay if it's in that class but not this class but I do
076think we need to be a little bit more explicit than controversial or adult language because there are people out there in our community that are very concerned about pornography and are more focused on it and I just don't want confusion after the fact that their child's been in this class they knew they had an option but they saw controversial and weren't worried they didn't expect sexually explicit content because of all they've heard in the news so I don't know exactly how we communicate it in a way to make sure that parents understand what they're choosing but I do think it's probably going to be important I think we had an answer on member Gallows question I saw nods of heads that the St the parent is not going to be employee of the district is
077that is that the general thinking you had member gallo or just not a teacher yes Madam chair that it would not be an ocps employee okay and then one other question I don't remember where it was but I did see it and we've talked about it we've talked about the language in the statute that reforms refers to Elementary classroom libraries why is it only Elementary do middle school and high schools not have classroom libraries well currently it is only Elementary the rule is currently up for proposed revision again to exclude the word elementary and work towards including all classrooms grades K through 12 and public comment is due on January 18th so thank you for clarifying that I just I just thought it was odd that they singled it out and I wondered if it
078was a typo so at the end of the day it might be but we'll deal with across that bridge when we get there and I think that's it for me at this time let me let me go to Vice chair gallo thank you madam chair so regarding the topic that we're currently discussing in tomorrow's State Board of Education they are changing the rule and I have no reason to doubt that it won't it won't get past and it does say that the media specialist has to approve all Library materials including classroom libraries must be approved and selected by a media specialist that's what the rule says if passed tomorrow and I believe it will get passed so I guess my question is I don't know if this is verbiage that we need to put in
079IJ and ijl but we're going to have if this passes tomorrow we will need to change our policy to reflect this change and we're at our work session now and we will in 30 days after we post it try to go to or workshopping it sorry go to a work session where there can be public comment will that get pushed out so that we can incorporate this new this new language that will be adopted tomorrow that's my first question thank you answer from Member Gala Mr pomerani you're recognized thank you madam chair certainly we can we're going to have to notice this for a rural development Workshop we're going to then have to incorporate the language that comes from this new rule getting passed I suspect that by the time we get this noticed for
080a rural development Workshop Rob and his team and Amy and I will or Miss invol and I will have the opportunity to sit down and put the language in there to so that we can properly reflect the new rule by the time we come to a rural development workshop and then what we would indicate in the red line would be this was from the recently enacted change to rule 6A whatever on whatever date that ends up occurring thank you Mr popularity if I share you recognized thank you madam chair all right so it wouldn't necessarily then need to come back before the board is that correct Mr pomerani not in a work session Vice chair Gallo we could incorporate that change and bring it to the rural development Workshop Vice chair thank you to what
081I was discussing earlier on page five that D on how to determine the material that isn't appropriate I just want to make sure I understand because I believe another board member circled back to it too so there would have to be a challenge to the material so the material would go through the committee process and that's how it would be deemed not age appropriate or not suitable material for for that schools is that correct yes and that objection process is outlined at the end of this policy thank you and then finally my last question is with our teachers being nervous about their classroom libraries with the need now for media Specialists not only to approve to approve all Library content in a classroom there will be teachers as was mentioned that will probably back off
082not have as robust of a library or no library at all so what are we going to do as a district to make sure that those children get more media time that they have access to books that they need that they have access to books that they enjoy reading you know we're still struggling from the pandemic and the thought that a child wouldn't have as much access to a book as they would last year or even two weeks ago concerns me yes that's a great question I think as we move forward part of it will be monitoring how many of feedback from our principals in our classroom teachers is to those who are choosing not to offer a classroom Library I know that Allison and her team have been hosting training sessions for media Specialists
083trying to show them the easy way easiest way possible to to to to accomplish this so hopefully over time and we understand more of what the expectations are and we can show and maybe colleagues can show that it's it's a doable process that we'll have more and more teachers join in I understand the frustration or the concern and I understand the teacher's frustration we're working at what we're doing all we can to show them the way to do it and make it as manageable as possible member gal thank you so much that's all I have Madam chair all right thank you member front thank you chair Jacobs okay so for me I just wanted to double check okay when we go on to the destiny.ocps website so it's our you know the how we can
084look members of the public can go and look and see which books are in each school so we click on that it shows an entire list of every school available is there a way on that website where you'd click a school and now it would show every teacher every classroom and the teachers then can select just like we do here it's just it's in they would just type in the book that they have it comes up they select it and that graphic is now within their classroom it's by school though correct yeah so when you click on Destiny Library catalog it takes you to the school's Media Center collection like in the media center eventually what you are going to see at the bottom of this website and we haven't rolled this out yet is
085a classroom Library list heading and then underneath that is a link to a Google drive folder that has all of the reading lists in it or classroom Library lists in it so it'll be Miss kibby's seventh grade sorry fifth grade classroom Library list and it will have the title and author of all the books in that classroom so we aren't able to put those into the destiny Library catalog for the media centers is there a reason why is there a way we can ask Destiny is that like is that our website or is that through Destiny is something that we purchase a license for and at the moment they don't offer a product that is just for classroom libraries and we are not aware of a product and then again this is not something that
086has been funded so we are doing what we can and there's no way to put I'm just trying to think of other ideas to make this easier because this would be very easy where you're just typing in the name it's selecting it a parent comes in and helps the teacher because obviously we want teachers to have books in their in their own classrooms for kids to read That's I mean the kids come in they're reading dog man or you know you get up into the middle school there's different books you know and so for teachers to think I just want to you know get rid of the books if they're having to do a whole Google Drive yes that is tedious but there's got to be a better way I mean we're in 20 yeah
08723. we've explored many different ways so the iPad and the app that we have recommended is kind of the easiest out of all of the options it doesn't require any sort of account creation you just open the app and you scan and you go as I mentioned it does not capture every single book because no app is perfect but then teachers have also been looking at other apps they've been signing up for accounts as long as it generates the same format which is it has to be a searchable format and include the title and author and other specific information in a searchable format and so we've decided that is a Google sheet for our district and then maybe two if you know the whole thing where like the media center the media Specialists are the
088ones who are you know having to approve and select these can they go through and say Hey you know they go down a list already they already know okay all dog man great we love it all the you know bad guys series we love those those are great they go through and do all that those are already selected a teacher goes and looks at the list and goes oh yep those are on there great it's approved something in that sense where they're already seeing it's now covering every teacher within their their their school and then you know eventually then the teacher would have to go with their list and have it approved so at the moment we don't have like an approved list of any sort because we don't actually know what teachers have in
089their classrooms we can expect that the dog man's the diary of the wimpy kids the Beloved books that there will be many of throughout our district so we are trying to figure out a way to scale this so we are asking everybody to put everything in these Google folders which we all have access to here at the district level ideally we're going to find a techno magical way to involve many people in approving those books so rather than 140 media Specialists all approving the same copy of dog man we're looking at a way where one media specialist who has taken the training can improve Dogman for all 140 students and so we are we are looking at ways to do that just to be as efficient as possible with this process okay and then another
090question as board members are we able to get access to all the books within our County right now as a board member I have to go in just like a parent and I have to type in click on them like yesterday I found two books and then I'm going through each of my district schools but is there a way for us I know you guys have that access yeah so we can provide you with a link that and some directions to search by the entire catalog but we can't necessarily build out like many catalogs that are just the schools in your District No No but okay as a whole yeah the county as a whole I would like you we can provide you with directions for how to search thank you're welcome all right remember
091bird thank you I just wanted to throw out there when we were talking about public libraries that the Orange County public libraries did away with their overdue fees in October as many libraries across the country have done to try to encourage reading so you know hopefully that's something we can also push out there all right so I want to go back to something that one of the board members brought up about supplemental materials in classrooms and you know I'm thinking middle school high school level as was mentioned many times teachers will show you know video clips or whatever having to do with something particular subject they're teaching and when I read this is all of that is supposed to be cataloged because it's considered supplemental is that Pomeranian I wouldn't say catalogs per se I
092think it is for your primary instructional materials your ebooks and that kind of stuff but with respect to whether or not it can be used or not if it's if it's in the classroom and being used with students it is subject to the challenge process it is subject to our responsibility to remove it but I don't think we have to go in there and say every supplemental thing has to be cataloged now I will say with respect to that and we've had these discussions too supplemental materials are designed to supplement and align with the Florida standards that have been approved by the state so if you have and I'm hard-pressed to think of an example right now but you could have a supplemental material that directly contradicts what the Florida standard would be in that
093case you probably wouldn't want it to be utilized because it's conflicting with the Florida standard but as for actually cataloging every one of those no but we're responsible to ensure that they're age appropriate they don't contain inappropriate materials etc etc since there's a possibility that the rule will be changed tomorrow and you know are already our ever expanding role of our media Specialists will be even more probably after tomorrow and is there are we doing what are we doing for our media Specialists or what kind of help are we giving are we offering any supplements or anything for all the extra hours of work that they're now required to put in so anything as I'm reminded almost daily by general counsel that any so has to be bargained we did start last summer by giving
094extra days to our media Specialists of someone so they could start to call on catalog their collection will continue to do that probably give them more more days this summer than we did last year and I agree given the ex responsibilities of having to approve classroom libraries we probably need to as part of the bargaining look at a supplement for them as we are for other resource positions based on the amount of work that's been added great thank you where what about this is another possibility could we as a district look at in I know money and resources are always an issue but could we look at supplementing Elementary libraries classroom libraries with books you know like providing sets of books that are approved books for our Elementary classrooms to ensure that all of our
095kids have access to plenty of reading materials so we already have some Partnerships where we're providing classroom libraries at some of the schools as you mentioned it's dollars and so if we're looking at providing raises for staff that adds up very very quickly I do think that once we have an initial review of the books once we know what's in our media Specialists that in our media centers that's going to help our classroom teachers to say as another board member pointed out all of these books are fine they're going to be part of our classroom Library so I think the not to say that this is an additional work because it most certainly is but I think once we go through that first initial cycle and we're able to fine-tune our process which I believe
096we can share with the board and not include in the policy because it'll be something that will be tweaked that it will get better than it is right now certainly as board member Gallo mentioned that it's going to take away the term Elementary we will learn from others and our media Specialists are very good about collaborating we need to get through this initial hump thank you thank you member Salamanca thank you chair so maybe one very broad question that is maybe too much in the weeds but I'm curious between Media Center materials and instructional materials is this a different threshold of review a different process a review is their difference period on how the state and how we are treating it obviously I read through both the policies but I just want to make sure
097I'm clear on that no that's an excellent question so the policy that we're looking at right now pertains to instructional materials and textbooks and so the criteria for what is in a textbook is similar to to library media center materials however a committee reviews the instructional materials before they are ever adopted before they are ever purchased by the district they are they have to be tightly aligned to standards and then library media materials there's some overlap but library media materials also take into consideration the population of the school reader interest and general School Community stakeholder input so the library media center collections are unique to every single School in our district there is not a media center collection that you are going to see that is exactly the same at this school as it is
098at this school because we serve children who have different interests in different communities and have different backgrounds so there are some some general overlap and then library media centers have more opportunity to purchase books that better reflect the students that they serve got him that's helpful and so I guess you know in terms of today's discussion right I think from the board's perspective IJ which has focused on the structural material were fairly aligned on following State Standards here my one area where I feel similar to I think maybe it was member gallo wasn't a page four number three it I think more clarity on what that one two and three are I think we're mostly using state-based language which is great but I think when it comes to our district language this is a place
099where maybe we could be more clear or explicit on what this means there's some pretty broad right mature classroom instruction that I get it's the state it's not going to go anywhere so that can be there but it would be helpful in our policy to have further maybe more detailed explanation of what some of this stuff is and the actual policy when the time comes and obviously you know we'll do our best shot and hopefully it doesn't go against state but I think from the perspective of I get this is the state requirement but I also don't want us to be walking in the blind here for some of this stuff so that's one question I guess in the actual Logistics of how we're collecting this right and my background's in Tech so I know
100every freaking tech product out there probably so we're are we currently using that website you've been showing us for also book collection or is this being done manually through Google Drive I just want to understand like what is this Tech stack that we're using okay so the fallout Destiny discover that houses our media center catalog our collection so all of the library media center materials pre the November 22nd definition that includes Elementary School classrooms so these are all the books that we've purchased over years and years for our schools it includes physical copies and ebooks the other solution that we are using right now the state in that role defined the format that classroom Library lists in school and grade level reading lists must be available and so they requested that those be searchable and
101include the title and author for books and then included some additional information for other types of resources so that's how that was defined can we get that list of the specifics like the format that they want us to have it I can absolutely pull that up thank you so I'm in the weeds here but it's so full nope you're good I will you can send it to me after okay I will I will find it I was trying to quote directly curious on the format that we have to present yeah we'll we'll send it to you on the actual group very basic it just says searchable and it has to have title author got it okay super simple and then the actual you know classrooms right now for teachers and media spouse shows what are
102they using to get this on to Destiny Okay so they so we are not putting any of the classroom Library content onto Destiny Okay so Destiny right now is just for the traditional Media Center collections correct what we are using to create the other classroom Library lists as Google Sheets is the swivel iPad so we have iPads that went with the swivel robotic bases that we got a couple of years ago so we have those at Schools they're essentially not really being used at the moment because we are not in hybrid pandemic instruction mode so those iPads are being use teachers can check them out and then they can use the app that we pushed out which is called the ISBN scan app it basically opens a camera and then you scan the ISBN code
103on the back of the book and then that captures the title the author the year it was published all sorts of additional details about the book and then that is what we export into a Google Drive and it can all be done from the iPad people have asked can I use a different app the answer is yes as long as you create the searchable list in the format that we have specified which is the Google sheet okay remember Castor Daniel thank you madam chair I have three points first one is I know that we have access to the Orange County Library with our students do our current media Specialists have like explicit lessons on how to research and use that resource and show students you know how they can access a broader collection I know
104that many of our media Specialists have lessons that they do like that with students I don't know that we have a standardized lesson but we could certainly work on creating an updated and revised one based on the current resources that ocls offers okay thank I think that would be helpful since we are limiting our collection that students know how to access a broader collection thank you and it can also be used by our English teachers and history teachers and how to how to research and use that resource my second one is does every school currently have a media specialist because I know in the past sometimes we just have a clerk as of December 30th we have 100 185 certified media Specialists so we do have some media specialist vacancies some schools have media clerks
105in positions where they if they don't have a media specialist they just have a media Clerk and then some schools don't have a media Specialist or a media clerk at the moment and why do they not have those is it funding they have other needs I'm not sure I will be transparent in saying it has been difficult to find certified media specialists okay a certified media specialist do they have to have a master's in library or what makes them a certified media specialist taking the Florida Department of education's media specialist exam occupational exam okay and my final concern is when the class Library lists are posted online for any parent to see let's say that you have you're a parent of Miss Smith a child in Miss Smith's class but you want to look at
106all the other second grade classes and see what they have and you say haha Captain Underpants I don't like that book or you're looking at another one and saying you know I've heard before Harry Potter is satanic I don't think we should have those books what happens if if I don't even have a child in those classes and I want to challenge them do I have standing to do that I mean what do I am I just gonna start this whole process of weeding out everybody's other classrooms yes so that is outlined in school board policy ijl and the draft that we are going to share today a parent guardian or resident does have the opportunity to challenge that material and request that it be reconsidered for inclusion in the classroom Library and then do
107they have to go through that process that we have outlined where they have to list the title on what they find is wrong with it and they have a summary of the book and they have to fill out that form and then do we currently have a way to make that transparent on on our website of who is lodging that challenge at the moment we do not have that okay that's something that we should consider for transparency sake we should know who is putting forth this challenge I think that would be helpful thank you Dr Basquez I wanted to just comment on the media specialist my understanding is that all schools are allocated a media specialist and we had conversations last year letting them know that because of this new requirement they would all need
108to have one for this upcoming school year so those schools that don't will will need to have one for this upcoming year thank you Dr Vasquez of course every school must have a bus driver for every bus but we weren't always able to so I'm sure you mean they well currently some of them aren't purchasing it they're using those dollars for something else or they've purchased a media clerk in lieu of and so those dollars will not be able to be used for another position thank you for that clarification a couple of a couple of things if I can go back to member Gallows question on page 5D just for clarification this is the language about instructional material that does not meet the criteria and who can raise that issue and I think the answer
109was that challenge could only come from a challenge by a parent or a resident and I do believe that the superintendent or her designee should be able to raise this issue I know it'd be highly unlikely because we're talking about educational material not Library material but I wouldn't want to preclude if somehow it's determined by the superintendent that we have found something in our educational material that shouldn't be there that she would be precluded from exercising that power I'm sorry remember Salamanca number two on Page Six foreign I think you're looking at Paul c i JL member Salamanca that's right sorry yeah ijl6 has it you're right so right I'm just saying that same language I think needs to apply to instructional material even though it should not happen likewise there shouldn't be anything in
110the instructional material that a resident or a parent is going to find either but I never want to take away the authority the superintendent has and lessen it below the authority that a resident has to review or remove material we could yeah okay thank you and then this is oh just slightly off topic but because the several of the books that are being pulled are focused on lgbtq topics and I remember the board asking and this was probably sometime Last Summer for the district to look for other material that we could supplement that with that wouldn't violate the definition of pornography obscenity and again this is not a policy level issue but I would certainly and I think most of the board members would encourage that if we haven't already done that we make that
111effort so that portion of our population has material that they can relate to remember Frant thank you chair okay I think really what I'm hearing too is we need to have a standard so we have to have some sort of set standard right now it seems like we from what I watch it's you wait for Tallahassee tally Tallahassee makes a decision and then we change everything to match Tallahassee but there's no sets like we need to have a more of a standard I think member Salamanca was alluding to this that there needs to be a little more clarification and what Tallahassee is saying can be a little Broad and we need to clarify I actually pulled up some emails from March of last year as you recall in October end of October 2021 I came
112in and we shared about genderqueer finding that there was several others there was four total one of them was tricks which is full of foul language explicit sexual content things that we literally really could not read right now so if I read it right now to a room full of adults everyone would I would be stopping you because you would be violating our policy of not being able right so my exact thank you for clarifying that because then that book should not be in a school so I think we need to have things where if this for instance if the book was made into a movie would it be R-rated would it be x-rated would it be PG-13 we're curating content so just for members of the public who want to say this is book
113Banning this is curating content making sure that is appropriate for children we are an education system making sure that children are learning to read write do math critical think this isn't about just you know hand-picking things we don't like this community we're removing that things like that we do not do that here we're making sure that it's worthy to be read out loud to a room full of adults so in March 21 on the 21st of 2022 I had written because there was it had been then how many months four or five months and so I said you know thank you for getting back to me what level of sexual acts in a book would be deemed inappropriate for Orange County Public Schools for middle school or for high school how much profanity is deemed
114unacceptable in a book by Orange County Public Schools would 10 words be inappropriate 50 words is there certain type of profanity that we're allowing or not allowing I'm just trying to understand where the line is drawn and so the response I got was as far as your other questions I can respond by referring you back to policy ijl and then I don't know if this will also be in this policy as well but what what are we allowing what is that is that for this policy or is that something that I need to discuss then in the next policy I'm looking to who I'm well actually I was next rjl is next so the policy that we're only halfway through is about instructional materials so textbooks the concerns that you're raising would probably be more
115appropriate to discuss during policy ijl and then how come we are allowing then so if textbooks so Media Center material selection would be ijl so why is classroom libraries they're not part so classroom libraries are not part of IJ they are part of ijl I think so we're just kind of mixing the two yeah okay so all right that's fine but I think we need to my biggest thing is just making sure that we have a high standard these are other people's children right and so just making sure that standard is high and we you know we want to hold everyone to that highest standard and I think you know ensuring that kids are learning is great and you learn about diversity and all the different you know areas we have a huge you know
116cultural differences between our entire County we have so many cultures that are represented so many values that are represented and making sure that all of that is you know we're representing children but also respecting other people's values and what they represent as well all right let me go to Vice chair gallo two quick things first I want to say I agree on the mature classroom instruction with what member salmonaka said about it needs to be clarified once we get the definition of what the state or what the Department of Education meant but just so that we do need to clarify that so that it's not confusing in our policy to our employees and then the second is in relation to the medial media specialist right now they serve as triage to all of the computers
117that have issues on our campus will we be removing that from their plate in light of all the extra duties that are going to be put upon them with this new policy I don't have an answer for that at this time we'll have to look at that but I mean that is part of what they do along with the school-based tsrs but we can definitely you know I know we continually get feedback from them on their roles so we can definitely continue to get feedback and see where there's ways that we can remove things from their plate I know that Dr Dr shanoff he and I speak often about the role of the TSR the media specialist so I can take that back to him as well okay I would appreciate that I know that
118our secondary have new computers and maybe they're not quite as busy as our elementary schools but our elementary schools still have the older devices that I would imagine still are having issues and needing to be fixed and that is a lot of their time is spent on triaging and fixing computers and sending them away and whatnot so anything that we can do to to help them out would be appreciated thank you yeah and then regalo just we are looking at the refresh in fact I just talked to Dr shanoff last week we are looking at a refresh for the elementary coming up so that hopefully will help them as well wonderful thank you okay I think we are halfway through IJ let's pick up where we left off yes ma'am so we are on page
119five in the adoption of instructional materials section of the policy as you can see this section there was not a whole lot of change but it says the appropriate content specialist and the senior administrator for instructional materials under the associate superintendent who oversees curriculum shall obtain committees to evaluate materials for district adoption and obtain samples train committees and publicize adoptions these committees shall evaluate instructional materials which have not been used previously in the district to determine their appropriateness and usability in the schools before such materials are requisitioned evaluations will consider the Florida standard statutory requirements under Section 1003.42 Florida Statutes and the district strategic plan normally oops normally only those instructional materials which have been District recommended and District adopted shall be requisitioned for use by April 1st of each year the district will notify
120in the Department of Education of the district's plan for purchasing state adopted materials as required by Florida Statutes the following procedures for the adoption of instructional materials apply only to those instructional materials that serve as the major content tool and basis for instruction for each student in the core subject areas this language does come directly from statute 1006.283 public meetings of committees this is new this year meetings of committees convened for the purpose of ranking eliminating or selecting instructional materials for recommendation to the board must be noticed and open to the public so we've added that Public Access of recommended materials public access to student editions of recommended materials will will be provided 20 calendar days before the board hearing will be provided 20 calendar days before the board hearing and public meeting public notice
121of materials considered for adoption public notice of the materials being considered for adoption shall be posted on the district's instructional materials website and shall specifically list which instructional materials are being reviewed and the manner in which the instructional materials can be accessed for public review public hearing the board shall conduct an open pump and open noticed public hearing to receive comment on recommended materials prior to adoption finally the public meeting the board shall conduct an open noticed public meeting on a date other than the date of the board's public hearing to prove an annual instructional materials plan identifying instructional materials that will be purchased and this public meeting shall be held on a different date than the board public hearing so items two three four and five are all things that we have done for
122many years and the public meetings of committees is a new addition as a result of House Bill 1467 being signed into law the next section goes over the purchase of instructional materials there were minimal changes here following adoption by the board requisitions shall be issued to purchase current instructional materials for the state adopted instructional materials list so that each student in kindergarten through grade 12 will have a major tool of instruction and core courses of the subject areas of math language arts science social studies reading and literature and of course those materials must be free of pornography the following you'll see that there are no changes here so I will skip over those in the interest of time the next section is access to instructional materials We just cleaned up the language here a little
123bit to make sure that it was that it mirrors House Bill 1467 and laws established throughout that bill use of instructional materials the principal shall ensure that instructional materials are used to provide instruction to students enrolled at the grade level or grade levels for which the materials are designed to use again this was something where we had to clean up the language a little bit and make sure that we were mirroring House Bill 1467 same is true for lost and damaged instructional materials I just needed to make sure that mirrored language in the most recent Bill section 9 here points people who read this policy to policy ijl so that they know they're if you have an objection to supplemental instructional materials that are already in use your pathway is to look at the child
124materials process in ijl and then this policy continues with the objections to instructional materials that are selected for adoption so this is the process that you would use if you have a concern for an instructional material that is currently up for the adoption process again this was something that we really just cleaned up to mirror hospital 1467. it says that a parent legal guardian of a public school or a resident of the County May file an adjust an objection to the adoption of a specific instructional material any objection to the selection of any instructional material shall be filed following the process below so again this may happen within 30 calendar days after the board's adoption of instructional materials so during the process parents Guardians residents have the opportunity to participate in public comment they also
125have the opportunity to participate in the actual review committees so the board has this as an opportunity for anybody in the community to after the focus or the instructional materials are adopted to object this provides an outline of exactly how this occurs and how many calendar days need to be between each part of the process and this is directly reflective of the Florida Statutes and the recent changes as a result of House Bill 1467 and I did want to note that the decision of the board after conducting the hearing regarding and instructional materials that are already adopted is final and is not subject to appeal the remainder of the policy talks about the use of instructional materials allocation minor changes made to reflect the connection to the state standards and then language just coming directly
126from the statutes and making sure that we mirrored that and there were limited changes there and then the sale of instructional materials this was added the principle upon request of the parent or legal guardian of a student in the school shall sell to the parent legal guardian any physical copies of textbooks used in the school and textbooks shall not be sold to parents or legal Guardians at a profit and those are the changes okay let's start with Dr Castor Dental what's up before I read that's for now thank you thank you madam chair I wanted to follow up on what member farant was suggesting as far as our standard and I think in this policy you mentioned I mean pornography is defined in this section as the depiction of erotic Behavior intended to cause sexual
127excitement and I don't think that we need to create a list of bad words we don't want to allow in our books there's a lot of great literature out there that would be thrown out the window if we were to start doing that and plus who knows I have a different idea of what bad words are that my mother did Growing Up So that's also subjective and I don't know if we have the ability already in our schools for a parent to put restrictions on what their child reads but I don't think we need to put restrictions on what other children read so I don't know if there's a form that a parent can say these are books that I do not want my child to have access to I mean that might satisfy some
128of the concerns by some of our parents so there isn't a form traditionally that is just a conversation that takes place between the parent and the media specialist it's usually just a very low stakes conversation for example when I was a media specialist I had a family who did not want their child reading about ghosts all I did was put a note on the destiny account don't check books out about ghosts and then my media Clerk and I knew not to check books out about ghosts and it was a very informal conversation and we met that parents needs in that in that way okay I know that high schools have a lot more students I don't know if they need a form or something more formal but if that process works I think that we
129should stick with that one if it's in informal the parent can have that conversation and put a little note in their child's online checkout when a when a resident challenges a book how do we determine which school they're challenging is it by how close they are to the nearest school with that book or does it automatically go to the district level do we have that yet member Castro Dental we've never had that situation it's just typically I you know I would guess it would go to the district level at that point but that's just me guessing off the top of my head not having dealt with the situation before it seems it would like bypass the whole school process which kind of jumps over I mean why would a parent then even start at the
130school level if they can have someone else just go right to the district level I think a resident should also have to go to the school level for that review process so if we don't have that in procedure now maybe we should have that first step that is how it is written in the draft Within ijl okay and then when a book is challenged at the school level and you're looking for parents to participate in that or you just want to notify other members of the school the parents that a school that a book is being challenged how do we communicate to other parents that someone at your school is challenging this book we believe that would be up to the school level to decide and many of them could use their school social media
131channels or a connect orange or something of that nature okay I think that would also be a point of transparency that other parents are made aware that a book is being challenged and what the book is and all the information that they should they might need to know that because I don't as a parent if my child was at a school where a book was being challenged and I didn't know about it and I disagreed with that challenge I would want to have a way to also share my opinion thoughts thank you member Caster demo I'm just following up on that if we if we do have a process by which we notify parents of a book being challenged I think it would behoove us to have that consistently throughout the district so it's not
132some schools do and some schools don't the I'm sorry I do want to clarify something I said a minute ago less to anybody misunderstand we have policy dealing with our code of Civility for what Ken and campy said at a public hearing specifically speakers addressing the board shall refrain from making disparaging remarks about any individuals shall abide by the code of Civility are prohibited from using loud and offensive language inappropriate gestures profanity or other language and the discretion of the board or designee that is intended to bully belittle tease to mean other individuals so those are the things that you can't those are the things you can't say or do at the board those are not that is not necessarily the same as what you can't read about in a book but I was responding
133to a member ferrant but if she said certain things I would have to stop her here but that is not the same definition as what is prohibited in books I did want to go back to if I can get back here a couple of questions I have I think I understand I'm on page eight one b and I read this several times yesterday I was confused and then I finally realized we have our resident a resident of the county okay in order to in order to be able to file an objection you have to be a parent or guardian or a resident of the county and then it says for the purpose of this policy resident means a resident of the county who has maintained his or her residence in Florida for the preceding year
134so if to be a resident of the county you had to live somewhere in Florida but not necessarily in the in the in this County for the preceding year which I assume means the whole year has purchased a home that is occupied by him or her residence in the county that would be in Orange County or has established a domicile in the county so since there's an or Mr palmerini I'm assuming that means that you have to either have lived in the date for a whole year and now be in the county or if you didn't live in the state for you didn't have to live in the state for a whole year if you were a resident of the county or had established a domicile so it sounds like you could be in the
135county for a week am I reading that correctly since we have an ore in there yeah or is means either or meaning any if you meet any of those requirements you would be able to file a challenge so there's no one-year requirement as long as you're in Orange County in the county yeah I think this is a replication of statutory language if I remember correctly what's weird about it is the first part of it says without a resident you have to be a resident of the county and you have to live in the state for a year but the next two you just have to be a resident of the county and you could be a resident of the county for a day so I don't know understand what was the point of the one-year
136Florida residency and under the stats what is it called what's it called the term that basically requires you to try to make it everything mean something this is huh in Para material yeah so there's really no reconciling this is there yeah it's I went back and looked this is actually straight out of the definition from the statute okay I had one other question how much discretion does the board have do we have to oh okay under two d or E on page eight we're talking about there's the hearing officer process and I'm asking us because of what we went through with discipline so the hearing officer here's this case and then they issue findings and the issue recommendations and then it comes to the board and sometimes we're required to accept the findings of fact
137and not debate those and base our decision only on the recommendations in this case can we disagree with the findings of fact of the hearing officer I don't think there's a reference to what you're talking about is chapter 120 proceedings and I don't think there's a reference to chapter 120 here so could you possibly but I would like to research that just a little bit more because this is sort of we've had other districts not ours have had hearing cases before hearing officers on instructional materials and I think they generally try to follow the administrative rules which is you don't overturn the factual findings unless there's no evidence on the record to support it but let me check that just to make sure that I don't see anything in the statute requiring us to adopt
138chapter 120 proceedings and depending upon the outcome of that we I think we might want to change this language because I don't really want to be married to findings of fact if we believe those findings of fact contradict the statute but they will depend on what Mr pomerie finds any other comments on this member Feld are you yeah okay I'm so sorry go ahead member Felder I wanted to say something as it relates to what board member Casa dental was saying about the language I guess coming so freshly out of teaching we have to give our teachers the benefit of the doubt in terms of how they choose material and we must understand that they are responsible enough that when they are going to have subject matter that will deem itself to be controversial that
139they will follow the proper procedures and I maybe have mentioned it some time ago in a board meeting when I was reading the book the pursuit of happiness and before even deciding to read it I had a meeting with my principal and I said this is a book I'm going to read I met Christopher Gardner and we talked about it I had a developed a lesson plan for it I said but there is a chapter in the book that deals with sodomy I said I need parents it's a rape I need parents to know and I pinned a letter I wasn't the only teacher who had some controversial books AP classes they were reading something that's controversial and so out of the five years the last five years that I was at Edgewater where I
140taught the book out of the whole of five years there were a total of three parents who had a complaint and I offered them an alternative book Secret Life of Bees that they could in addition I had a lesson and all of that and weekly quizzes for that book but my point is again I'm going back to the individual teacher and the fact that they teach because of their ability to be creative to teach life skills creatively and to use materials to help better communicate their teaching points and then I remember meeting with Mr Bixby and you guys we talked about those persons who are not parents but live in the community and have some issue about materials whether they are in my district or not and then sort of choking teachers in terms of
141the curriculum that they want to choose I just want us as we're looking at adoption of materials and how we having a check and balance system that we have we must please consider and giving teachers the fact that they can make rational decisions about some of the books that they're going to read and they've had conversations I don't want us to forget about that and I'm glad you said something about the words that we try to have a civility in our comments well majority of the teachers that I know and during the 40 years I talked we exercise civility in the classroom in terms of the material and then your opinions and how you feel and not be offensive to other people culturally or sexually or racially whatever so I just want to as we
142began to look at this is not something we can hurry up and decide obviously but I do want you I just wanted to share that from my perspective that we have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have a lot a skill level to be able to determine what they can do and what's going to be okay do you understand what I'm saying okay all right thank you so much all right we have no other speakers I think we've no Dr Castro Dental about being transparenced by the book challenge I forgot to mention that when a book is challenged at the school level there is a public notice it has to be publicly noticed that's part of the new policy that has to be publicly knows the public does know the book
143being challenged so people can come into the conversation so when we get to ijl it's we'll make sure that we reference that for you but there but there is a has Republican notice not at the school level also what does that look like like an email that goes out to the parents or is it like posted in the newspaper public notice it's the same public notice as we would do for one of our hearings or one of our one of excuse me one of our school board meetings We've posted on our website we would post a public notice over here at the ELC on it that's helpful but I don't think that reaches parents I mean a note I want to make sure I forgot before I slip my mind thank you I appreciate that
144there's a notice but if I wasn't on the school board I wouldn't know there were meetings thank you Madam chair I also have an answer to your question thank you sir it might help if I looked the paragraph above where it says it's not subject to chapter 120 so my apologies for that so the same rules were are not applicable that you're thinking of where you know you can reject findings of fact only if there's no competent substantial evidence on the record you can make in even in chapter 120 hearings you can make de Nova legal conclusions meaning you don't have to give any deference to the hearing officers conclusions of law I think you all have a wide range to do on an appeal what you would want to do and you're not constrained
145by the strict 120 procedures I would caution if if the hearing officer makes a finding a fact that it's something that he says in the book it objectively it says a b and c if the book does say a b and c I wouldn't reject that but you're not bound by inferences and you're certainly not bound on factual issues and you're certainly not bound on the legal conclusions all right thank you all right we are going to take a break we have been here two and a half hours which is good and we've gone through the first policy and that hopefully hopefully paves the way for the second one to go a little smoother I don't know I don't think so because I have more issues with the second one in the first one could
146go badly but we'll hope for the best we're going to take a break Dr Vasquez has ordered some lunch which will be here in about 10 minutes and after that we're going to come back at one o'clock to give everybody a chance to do some catch up on some emails and other things all right all right so one o'clock reconvene foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign amazing foreign foreign foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you thank you thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign thank
147you foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you thank you foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign okay I got it to clarify the process by which appearance berries and to incorporate language from policies IMB and kec which are being recommended for a repeal revisions have been made to the existing policy language to include content formatting and terminology edits consistent with statutory language if I can interrupt you for a minute I think I should have given our folks backs back there a little bit of an advanced notice So for anybody who may be tuning in we are just now reconvening
148after a lunch break and we are taking up ijl and we're just starting that process fantastic thank you we'd like to begin by proposing a new title for this policy to be Media Center materials programs program selection the policy just like the previous one we reviewed is divided into different sections and again with this policy we made substantial changes to better reflect the language in hospital 1467. which guides the content of this policy so this beginning section is about the selection of media center materials and other reading materials the objectives for selection Preamble if you will was revised to better mirror the language in the house bill and basically this part States this is why we are required to have media centers and what the purpose of those media centers is underneath you will find
149some additional bullets we only made a minor change to item D which I states that materials represented materials representative of the broad racial ethnic socioeconomic and cultural diversity of the students in this District this language was taken directly from the Florida Department of education's training training materials so we wanted to make sure that these things were reflective of that and then most of the other bullets from above come directly from the statutes as well and were in our previous version of the policy the next section of the policy is called responsibility and training for selection of media center materials this used to just say who was responsible for the selection of media materials but now there's a training component as part of hospital 1467. so this section includes who must take the training and when
150it must be taken so this first section to a material shall be selected by District Personnel who hold a valid educational media specialist certificate principals are responsible for overseeing compliance with school district procedures for selecting School for selecting materials at the school to which they are assigned and that does mirror language from house bill 1467. this section continues and none of this was here media Specialists and any other Personnel involved in the selection of material shall complete the Florida Department of education's online training program created pursuant to section 1629 of the Florida Statutes to assist reviewers in complying with the requirements of section 1006.31 before reviewing and selecting age-appropriate materials and Library resources prior to such training becoming available media Specialists and any other Personnel involved in the selection of material shall consider the requirements
151contained in sections 1628 16.31 and 1006.40 of the Florida Statutes the superintendent shall annually verify that all media Specialists employed by the district have completed the department of education's online training program and that is the training program that we discussed earlier while we were talking about IJ and we have already shared that with our media Specialists and our principals as well the next section addresses criteria and procedures for selection of media center materials and other reading materials the standards to determine the propriety of materials shall be in accordance with section 1006.40 of the Florida statute specifically that the material is these are all the same as they are for instructional materials these three items here free of pornography and material prohibited under Section 847.012 and this is where we use the definition of pornography that
152was provided in the Florida Department of education's online training materials also these items need to be suited to student needs and be appropriate for the grade level in each group in addition we absorb language from school board policy INB in this part of the policy the board May install a secular program of Education including but not limited to an objective study of the Bible and of religion as such media Specialists May purchase religious materials and or materials about religious figures for the purpose of such objective study while using the materials no employee May doctrinate and indoctrinate any student with a Viewpoint of a particular religion and then here is where the selection criteria for Media Center materials expands beyond the criteria for instructional materials so it states that media Specialists shall evaluate the existing collection
153consult reputable professionally recognized reviewing periodicals and school Community stakeholders consider materials based on reader interests consider materials that support the State academic standards and align curriculum and consider materials that support the academic needs of students and faculty this language was cleaned up and also mirrors house bills for House Bill 1467 so it was kind of in different parts of the policy previously and now we have it in one section foreign materials shall also be considered on the basis of overall purpose timeliness importance of the subject matter quality of the writing production readability authoritativeness reputation of the publisher and producer reputation and significance of the author artist composer producer format and price so that is something that was previously in our policy and is still part of it now the next section was also amended due
154to the fact that we books are often donated to school media centers so this would then also apply to classroom libraries so donated or otherwise made available materials shall be accepted with the understanding that their inclusion in the collection shall be determined by the school district Personnel who hold a valid educational media specialist certificate in accordance with the same selection criteria and procedures as purchased materials the next section deals with the criteria for removal of media center materials and other reading materials so this section is entirely new we did not have a section about the removal of media center materials previously so material shall be evaluated and considered for removal from collections on a regular basis at minimum materials shall be considered for removal based on the following criteria physical condition rate of recent circulation
155lack of alignment to State academic standards and relevancy to curriculum out-of-date content or removed as a result of a formal challenge materials that are maintained in the media center each School shall publish on its website a link to the searchable library catalog which shall list all materials maintained in the media center for the purposes of this policy media centers also include any collection of books ebooks periodicals and videos maintained and accessible on the site of an elementary school including classrooms this section of the policy is what would need to be revised pending the outcome of tomorrow's role development Workshop by the Florida doe and then the next item is each School shall publish on its website a list of all materials required as part of a school or grade level reading list and so those
156are all of the things that I pointed out to you earlier when we were talking about school board policy IJ and I pulled up the Aloma Elementary School website does anybody have questions about this yeah why don't we stop now we have a question from Vice we have several questions let's start with Vice chair gallo hi thank you madam chair all right so let's start with I have one question we're throwing a lot media specialists and I actually took the training that they're giving to Media Specialists like online like I said to the whole hour of the information at the beginning they're being given and it's very broad so are we going to provide like further guidance on what they should buy for the media scenarios what would be approved in classrooms are we going
157to need to help them out because I'm not a certified media specialist but just listening to the training as a board member I'm as confused now as I was prior to watching that sorry I turned the volume in the room up because it was hard to hear her that's let's see if we can find a happier medium sorry this thing's a little sensitive or not sensitive I guess try again hello all right we are we've provided a sort of one page document that captures all of the changes in House Bill 1467 there isn't necessarily more clarification than that we can provide regarding the statutes and what what is in there so we've just provided a list of all of the things in one in one kind of handout that media Specialists can refer back to
158if for one reason or another they are on the fence about purchasing a specific title or trying to figure out if it's a good fit for their Media Center in addition we've been doing a lot of training about where to find reputable reviews and most of the vendors that we that we partner with have reviews directly built into their website and we've also purchased subscriptions to to professionally recognized review and periodicals for our media special okay thank you and then under three a I think it was it was one I believe it when it in that definition of pornography I believe in the training that I watched or maybe I read it somewhere I've read it in our policy it is specifically said no nude pictures so any books that we have cannot have nude
159pictures which is a little bit different than the definition of pornography that they gave us so I'm trying to can you explain that to me to I don't know what else to say about that we do not have nude pictures in our definition of pornography but you're Angie I'm sorry member Gallo you're saying that the training specifically references no nude pictures I believe that it yes Madam chair I believe that it did for example I know that we took genderqueer off the shelves for obvious reasons but some would argue that the content of that the content in that book wasn't too sexually aroused however there were pictures that were inappropriate so I'm just trying to make that delineation like okay so pornography the way that this is spelled out is very specific and if that's
160what we're going to go off of which I don't believe it is because I think I think it's something different I'm just if I'm confused about like the two separate things I gotta imagine that we're gonna have teachers and media Specialists that are confused can we pause here for just a minute by Sharon let me ask for some additional help is there anybody in the room that took the training okay Miss ferrant took the training did any other stuff okay Miss front did a member front did you see a reference to no nude pictures in the training I don't remember that exact reference but I do remember this everything that you have that paragraph is exactly what was but I don't remember the reference to nude pictures I think anything if you're thinking of a
16114 year old looking at anything that would be naked and then in in context of for instance genderqueer where two people are having oral sex I mean that is going to arouse a 14 year old true staff that has listened went through the training did you see a reference to we I personally do not recall the reference I'll take the training again and confirm there was a difference in what was presented in writing on the slides versus the narration of the training and so there may it may have been part of the narration but there is no transcript and there were no captions on that training so we'll have to we'll we'll do some research on that okay remember Vice chair Gallo I know your issue is bigger than this but I just that really
162jumped out I think at all of us and I wanted to try to get clarification so back back to you and that timer never started so I'm looking in the materials right now there is on slide eight it says materials were hit by Section 8 47.012 Florida Statutes I don't know what they said but it does say an adult may not knowingly distribute to a minor on school property any picture or visual visible visual representation of a person or a portion of a human body which depicts nudity or sexual conduct so maybe that was the reference but I don't know what was said during the training versus what is on the slides that's the only that's only reference to nudity that I've been able to find in the training materials but Mr Pomeranian might have
163another so can you hear me yes we can so remember in that slide it also says it also requires the depiction to be harmful to minors which is different from the pornography so for example and I've used this example numerous times let's say you've got a book of ancient Roman art and architecture and you see the statue of David I don't think based upon this that it would be banned from our libraries because you wouldn't be able to go on and make the finding that it was in fact harmful to minors it was just a classical work of art however if it was nudity engaged in sexual activity that could potentially be considered harmful to minor when you look look at all of the definitions on it can you read us that again yeah we
164find it again sorry who's on the slide about 847.012 yep there's this there's a couple things it's actually represent it's it's on two different slides it doesn't say nude pictures per per se but on selection on side sorry slide eight it's titled materials prohibited by section 847.012 Florida Statutes and it says an adult may not knowingly distribute to a minor on school property the first bullet any picture or visual representation of a person or a portion of a human body which depicts nudity or sexual conduct sexual excitement sexual battery bestiality or sadomaso I'm not good on that word that's a massive abuse and which is harmful to minors there's a harmful to Mars and which is harmful to minors and the second bullet says any Book pamphlet magazine or printed matter that contains explicit and
165detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement or sexual conduct and that is harmful to minors so the nudity ended with and is harmful to mind yes that's what Mr palmerini was saying okay I just wanted to make sure that those two things we heard were consistent so Vice chair we've got a commitment that staff will go back and review that training see if it's said in the narrative and perhaps left out the end harmful to minors portion but let me go back to you for any any other questions or comments thank you madam chair and I appreciate that I just want to make sure that we're not removing books as Mr pomerani pointed out that just depict David or other that's educa has educational value to our students so I appreciate the clarification
166on 5A which is I think is where kind of we left it talks about each School shall publish its website a link to the searchable library catalog and then it goes on and it talks about any collection of books ebooks and videos maintained and accessible on the site of an elementary school include classrooms so my question is and I is our the elementary students access to the public library because would that be they will have access to it on our computers the devices that we give them we don't know what content is in the public library so my question is would if they were to if an elementary student would to go online and choose a book that might be deemed inappropriate or a book that we would not have in our library would we
167as a district be held responsible because we gave them access to it that's my question excellent question Mr pomerini may be able to answer the responsibility part of that but I can talk about our partnership with the Orange County library system so they provide us access to several different databases of books research articles Etc all of that is filtered by grade level so you cannot access things at the adult level whatsoever and so an elementary school student can only see Elementary content a middle school student can only see Middle School content and a high school student can only see High School content Mr pomerani so of course there's no actual guidance or and or any precedent under this since it's brand new I would suspect that it's the same answer that I've given previously it
168would depend on our reaction to being informed that of what is being accessed through the public library system if we got notification from a parent that hey my child threw your portal to the public library was able to check out a book that was adult in nature and according to what muskibi is saying that shouldn't happen but to the extent it were to happen if we did not take remedial action upon finding out that information that would be problematic and we could be held responsible for it I don't think we would be held irresponsible for it in the first instance if we didn't know that kind of material was accessible and we've taken the steps to ensure that they are only able to access age-appropriate material based upon their grade level thank you that's that's
169perfect thank you so much I have other questions Madam chair but I'm some of my other board members may ask may ask them so I will just wait and get back in the queue if needed thank you okay thank you absolutely member Kester Dental thank you madam chair I am asking a question about page four 3D which is at the top about materials shall be considered on the basis of overall purpose timeliness importance of the subject matter quality of the writing slash production readability and then you've removed a popular appeal because it was I guess the language is vague but as a former teacher I know that when I would select books for my classroom or or to introduce to students it was based on what their interests were and often they would ask me
170to get certain books so I don't want to remove the students from that as a as a source of different books to to require if we take out popular appeal can we re-insert student interest and demand yeah so student interest is actually captured in item C on the page above on on page three and it is as part it is part of the criteria for Media Center selection so consider materials based on student interest so C3 so is this just this another the second paragraph of D 3D is that just redundant or how is that different so this is very helpful in for example The Magic Tree House series there are umpteen Magic Tree House books the first three four five may get a professional review that you can actually consult and then the rest
171of them are going to stop getting reviews so if if a media specialist is trying to figure out why I need to consult my consult my stakeholders they can obviously ask the students hey are you interested in getting more Magic Tree House books there might be some sort of survey and then they can make the Judgment that is a book that they feel comfortable purchasing because they are comfortable with the author they are comfortable with the publisher they know the reputation of those books and so this is kind of an additional way to ensure that they are purchasing books that meet the needs of their collection as well that helps I understand that it just sounds like this paragraph D is redundant like you've stated everything that is in that paragraph prior essentially so you
172can see so C using C and C and C C Elish redundant to D with what you're saying yes and if for some reason it is not redundant that I can't see then can we go ahead and put the student appeal or student interest back in there if we need to maintain that second paragraph okay just for added redundancy be fully redundant or redundant at all yeah okay anything else I'll wait till we move to the other sections thank you can can you explain or help me understand why we are putting the paragraph about controversial issues in this policy which is media center related as opposed to our instructional material policy which seems like if we're talking about teaching controversial issues that should be in the instructional policy not in the library that's B yeah
173and Mr pomerini would you be able to assist us with so part of the library's media centers purpose in our schools is to supplement what is going on in the actual curriculum itself right and so they're putting it in here we could also probably end up putting it in the policy IJ with respect to instructional materials as well but part of including it in here is to ensure that what we are doing with our library orderings especially when it comes to religion and the study objective study the Bible and religion is to have books that are purchased which align with the standards if we were to have that program okay this is not a question but just a comment I'm and I have this concern before and now I think I have it even more
174while I did not particularly think that IMB was a good policy anyway because it really didn't have much substance at all considering the topic the title of it because I was actually at one point a while back looking for something that someone had brought to me a parent a concern and I thought oh well this has to be in teaching controversial issues and then I looked and it's like one paragraph about religion and then you know that's it so I'm I was not a fan of that but I also I have a little bit of concern about repealing and not having any policy that has anything to do with teaching of controversial issues because of the current climate we're in and I think that and I don't and I don't I don't want to micromanage
175and I don't want to create policy where we don't need it and I and that is a concern too but I just have a little bit of concern about us not making a statement in policy through policy that we find it important to teach these issues you know we're trying to create thinkers and we're in everything that I know that our former teachers on this board have said about how important it is to show children all sides of an issue so they can be thinkers and they can they can solve problems when they get out into the world all of that has to do with teaching controversial issues and I'm afraid if we don't as a district stand up and say this is how this is our policy on this and this is how we
176feel like this is important no matter you know the what whatever anyway I just think if we don't do that then then we can easily be get how important it is especially when we're you know when things keep coming at us all the time and so I have I have a little bit of concern about taking that policy away and not and like I said I don't think it was a great policy anyway but I would like for us to consider the idea of looking at maybe what some other districts have done with this and talking about what we can do as a district for that so that was just kind of a comment sorry okay remember gold thank you chair I am I wanted to ask a question so we know there may be
177a some more changes to these outlines how does that sway the schedule to get it to a public meeting and such and are we going to have to revisit the entire yes I think I think we can it depends on how the board wants to do this if you want to do another work session we can certainly do another work session or if you provide us with direction to incorporate the new language from the new rule that is going to be adopted tomorrow into this policy you've already extensively discussed this policy we can certainly incorporate that through the red lines we can circulate it to you for review and then I mean because essentially we're just going to be copying what's in the new rule and then we could schedule this verbal development Workshop if
178you want to get it you know moving forward a little bit quicker because we do have to adhere to the chapter 120 advertising process we have to have a rule development workshop and then final school board approval so we've done that before and it's come to the table and we've actually had to put it all the way through back through the process right and what happens when we do that not that this isn't very good content because it is and this is a great opportunity for us to discuss but the public when they come back and try to get caught up get confused between the work sessions and they don't get all caught up and then we spend a lot of time catching up people who only have part of the information so I do
179have a little bit of concern and I'm not saying that we should stop our current Workshop but I am concerned that talk about redundancy and then confusion I don't want to do that again been there done that I don't want to do it again at least if we can avoid it and bring it back I'm hearing that most of the changes will happen the way we think they'll happen but they may not and lately we're surprised well not surprise but but lately they're not always what we think they're going to be so I'm just throwing that out that before we're already a great deal through these policies but before we have to relive it all again and confuse the public between the meetings on the old version and the new version that we may want
180to consider that the second thing that is more pertinent to this particular policy that we're looking at is what happens if I'm a media specialist who's been chained but I don't quite get it right the first or the second time what is the repercussion for that media specialist what is the process without you know I mean intentional negligence of policy is one thing but this is a lot and very different so how do we give as much grace and make sure this doesn't hurt somebody's career well I don't I'm not sure that the state is defined next steps so I can tell you from our department perspective is we've been offering multiple trainings starting well into early last year training it's just coming training this is coming as we soon as begin to hear how
181the legislatures how there's always tweaks but we kind of know where they're heading we do multiple trainings Allison's team has monthly meetings with media Specialists we invite them small group we have small group trainings that go on we assist them she's divided her team into quadrants to our zones immediate Specialists know who to contact for support we go out to schools part of my Department's responsibility is school visits and so that team is always out in schools assisting media Specialists helping them in in their in their media centers walking them through so if there's multiple things that we can do from a district standpoint to assist them if they have questions if they need help we do you know virtual face-to-face and on-site okay so there's a difference between I'm not sure if I'm on
182or not I can't tell there's a difference between training right an initial rollout and then really implementation and there's scenarios we can never anticipate or questions that come up from students and parents and community and I want to make sure that we have professional development encouragement opportunities and support opportunities before there is and are any penalties to you know defined by the doe or the legislation to Give Them Enough Runway and enough support to implement this and not take books off the shelves inadvertently as some of the other board members are looking at and I think that's it's very demanding and intensive for your department with our current Staffing too and we need to be conscientious of that but I think there's just a lot of Grace and learning and educational time we need to
183factor into this and support it through part of this is and you know kudos to John we do a lot of FAQs we'll let them give us questions and then we want to make sure that we have a consistent response back so we may know some of the answers but John has been very helpful it spends time with us helping us go through make sure we're giving the correct answer also so we're trying all methods that we can to provide them as much support as we can and maybe you know we utilized that format very very effectively during covid with the updates and changes at school you know both when we were having to roll out more safety measures and roll them back so maybe even in this process if we decide to proceed with
184this full exploration of these these policies that may change in the next 24 hours that we have an FAQ for this page because I just it I don't take this the wrong way but it just wastes so much time when we're trying to catch everybody up and it's it derails good conversation when people are misinformed and coming with questions that we've already answered or addressed or a change from this date to this date to the state so that's that was my I wanted to add as well so we know that ordering books can feel even when you've completed the training can feel a little bit daunting and so we have offered that if a media specialist wants a second set of eyes on their book orders they know that they can reach out to their
185contact folks on my team and that my team will go through those through those titles look at those reviews and offer hey a thumbs up or you know that's a great title but maybe not the best fit for your age group at your school or these are some things you might need to think about so that is something that we are offering to them as well and then we know that our schools that don't have a media specialist we have communicated a process for those schools to still be able to order books because we want the students at that school to be able to order those as well so the school can kind of put a wishlist ideas topics together and then my team will actually build that list and make sure that it's good
186to go for that school so we are offering that and then we send weekly communication about all the things in the media center world and we've been calling special attention to all of the recent changes because of House Bill 1467 and every communication that we send thank you that's helpful okay so I hear what you're saying member gold and I well that wasn't much time I'd like to kind of take a pulse of the board on the issue of whether we should pause now and reconvene after rulemaking and respond with that information in hand okay you have a question yeah you said does this seem very intense and very detailed so are you suggesting chair that we pause with this particular discussion and come back later what member gold has suggested is the there may
187be a new decision out of fdoe tomorrow because they're going back into rule making and some of the issues that we're dealing with here may change and so does it make sense to continue down this path and remember Gold's point was not just that it's our time but that anybody who's tuning in may be responding to what we're talking about today and after tomorrow that it some of that may change and it's hard to keep up with Madam chair member Gallo wishes to comment on this issue remember Gala you recognize thank you madam chair I went through what's and I'm sure our District staff has to kind of what is going to be on the agenda for tomorrow for the State Board of Education and maybe they could correct me if I'm wrong but I
188think the only thing that we would have to make change is that the role clarifies that Library materials including classroom libraries must be approved and selected by a media specialist I didn't see anything else in the rules there are some changes other changes in the rules but I don't know that if it would rise to the level of policy but maybe Mr pomerini can clue Us in since I know that he's reviewed it as well Mr pomerani so most of what's going to be in the rule can you turn your mic on I don't have that can you hear me now yes much better thank you I don't have that handy light on mine so most of what's going to be in the rule tomorrow is certifications by the superintendent that we are in fact
189complying with our instructional materials and our library materials with the standards under the policy which is you know it's age-appropriate it's free of inappropriate material Etc the one substantive standard that I that I saw again as to Vice chair Gallows point was the requirement that the change of classroom libraries to Encompass not just K through five but now it goes all the way through 6 through 12. so but most of this is most of what I would consider tomorrow's rule to be is procedural requirements that the superintendent and her staff have to implement and certify as opposed to a matter of policy other than classroom libraries being K to 12 now as opposed to K to five thank you Mr palmerini and thank you Vice chair based on that I'd recommend we keep going unless
190there's strong opposition okay all right so I actually am can I can I have my five minutes back does that was that was your five minutes okay and one second of your five minutes plus five minutes all right it's click it's clicking away a couple of things that I was going to go into some detail on some of these but big picture issue last policy we discussed the fact that students still had access to material through the regular Library the and that I didn't know that was through their devices I thought it was through having a library card since it's through a device that we own and Mr palmerini has already responded now that if they do access material that they shouldn't have accessed and we find out about it then we probably get you
191know a pass on the first time but not after that answer tells me that we are still responsible for what they're accessing from the library which I that is I don't know how we're going to reconcile letting them have access to the library because we have no control over what the library does and so I think that's a huge problem that we need to figure out how we're going to deal with originally I thought it was an opportunity for students and parents to have access to material that we could improvide them but apparently not now instead it's a liability to the district so that's huge the other major concern I have about this policy is that we have an appeal process where if a parent or resident appeals to one school because they think that
192there's pornography in the book and that media specialist and team and by the way I don't think that the whole committee has to have the training if I'm not clear on that I think only the media specialist has to have the training so the majority of the even the medial Specialists may say it's pornography but she's overruled by the majority of the committee who didn't have the training so ultimately it stays on the Shelf and another school has the same book and by the way the person doesn't appeal it and it just sits on the Shelf another school goes through the same process their committee comes up with a different opinion and it is pornography so now we have a book allowed the exact same book allowed in one school and not allowed in another
193school because it's pornography and we as a district cannot have I don't know what basis I'm saying this but I just I just don't believe the district can have two different definitions of pornography the state has a definition it is one can argue what's erratic and what is not and what's arousing but to have different opinions from school to school to school is not doesn't it is not going to be legally sustainable for us to do that and we're not going to pass straight face tests with the state who's going to be looking at this so I think the this whole premise that schools are going to make the decisions all 210 are going to make their own decisions it's just if fraud with problems I really think that we need to have a district
194committee I absolutely there should be media Specialists maybe it is a selected group of media Specialists that the superintendent appoints to that role and if we want to have parents and all these others involved I'm totally fine with that as well but we can't I'm sorry I feel really strongly that we can't have 210 different decision makers not only you know is it redundant and inefficient but we can't have different outcomes so that's my biggest problem with all this and the rest of it I could get into I don't understand this language we could change that language and if we're going to stay the course I'll bring those all up when it's my time next time around but I'd like to just open the floor to a discussion actually I'd like to turn to the
195superintendent because we haven't talked about this directly for your thoughts on how we're going to manage 210 different potential decisions on the same book yes please so just to make sure I'm fully understanding what you're saying the question isn't so much about non-controversial content that may come into each Media Center that may be a little bit more tailored to that student population or Community but it is when a book is challenged okay specifically on pornography that the state has said You shall not have that in your understood all right thank you for clarifying so Dr Vasquez so we've had this conversation we've had this conversation with different members of my team and consensus is that pornography at one school is pornography at another school and so if we're looking at a book that we're saying
196violates the state rule regarding appropriateness that it should be across the board and again that you know the definition even though the state gave clarification there is still a little bit of vagueness within that specifically about what would or would not arouse someone but the consensus has been that when we look if we're saying that it's not appropriate because it violates the state rule that it violates if it's on any one of our shelves now whether their needs we've also talked about how at the district level we're going to monitor that and so through Destiny we are able to pull the report so that we can see if a book has been challenged it's been deemed that it's not appropriate based on the rule that we would be able to see oh this school still
197Hazard the school purchased it and we would be able to then intervene and as a district monitor the media centers the monitoring of the classroom libraries needs to fall from our discussions on the school principal at that school level because we currently would have their list but we would not know if if they're not updating their list if they have added titles or if they've put that back contrary what happens if a school declares that this is not pornography then does that mean universally through all the schools it's not pornography so again we've had the discussions about what the how does the district fit into the appeals either way and so do we need if if it's deemed that it's not appropriate do we need the district team to be able to go back and
198review it to ensure that it is in compliance with the state rule but there has we really have not we're kind of split on that because of the fact that number one we have personnel number two the principals and the media Specialists are being trained and they have a great rapport with Miss kibby's team and so if there are questions or concerns they're able to assist with that so we were we have not landed on that particular question answer to that question yet I'm just going to reiterate again that even under that approach now you're having one school that gets to set this the standard for all schools and I can tell you that we could have a group a committee that could say this is sexually arousing and another committee that would see something
199different and I just don't I just don't see how we're going to have something consistent I mean I know it that book gets banned but another book might get approved that another school thinks is okay and that same school over here was more conservative and said no way different book right so now that book's approved everywhere this book shut down everywhere but but I do want to remind the board that for the past couple of months each school has been doing their own review and so there may currently be books that have been taken off of one school's shelf and not at another and so again we're looking to be able to provide as much consistency as as possible but not to be able to restrict so many books that our children may possibly have
200access to we've also had conversations that you know is there a way that books may be off the shelf so to speak but if a parent says it's okay for my child to check out XYZ book that there would be a process by which that book that is maybe in the back on the professional library then that child can have that book checked out so that we are again complying but not restricting fur for everyone okay I'll Circle back around remember Frant this is the faintest light I know okay thank you madam chair okay so a couple things really just to reiterate here with what you were saying I think we need to err on the side of caution these are children we're talking about sex ual explicit sex I mean they're here to learn
201education Reading Writing math we have to focus on that these are extra things this is additional as far as Library goes and not being able to access the public library through their school computer we all have phones and I would say that I don't know anyone right now I mean I traveled to Guatemala in El Salvador you go in the middle of the village they have a phone they may have barely anything to eat but they got a phone so I mean to to think that our community does not have access to Internet outside of their school computer I mean we have to think bigger than that our students do have access they are more than welcome you know maybe the light the media Specialists can let parents know hey if you're you know your
202child is looking for a book that we do not carry at our school here is the access this is how you can access this online you can go to the library this is the closest one to our area but I don't think we need to take on I think we're trying to take on too much and we need to focus on education so education is where we need to get back to that you know the basics of why parents are sending their kids to school is for Reading Writing arithmetic Science History the Arts but to be so worried about sex being in books or not I mean come on I don't know I just I feel like why are we repeating this over and over this is definitely one a topic that I just I
203can't understand how this is even controversial so quick question for you as far as the websites that you were saying where there's little descriptions is that like on the full let or where would you because those descriptions are can be very vague because for instance genderqueer on the website for folet I mean it does say adult content so it shouldn't have been in the school anyways but it the depiction of it and the little description is very vague does not say anything about there being nudity or any kind of sexual you know oral sex being depicted in the book but there are other websites that would share that information which do you have specifics of which websites the media specialist would be looking at so each vendor has and we order from companies Beyond fallet
204but each vendor has kind of their own way of including reviews from popular professionally recognized reviewing sources like the school library Journal kirkus booklist horn book others that I'm forgetting and so those are all imported and those are the professional ones that the statute is referring to so yeah each each vendor does that differently and then we've also purchased access to the school library Journal so that they can see all of the reviews kind of in one place by that by that magazine by that professional reviewing Resource as well as with the horn book so those are kind of the Avenues that we have for accessing those reviews would you be able to email those to me just so I have quick access and I can kind of look through them and yeah sure sure
205not that I'm not say all or whatever I just like to look at it and kind of see how it they all whatever align but I think we do need to err on the side of caution clearly you know not every book is you know what I deem is appropriate someone else might not feel it's appropriate and vice versa and so I think we you know we have to look at everything as a whole but also if it's I mean we have to have some sort of standard and again like I had said with that email that I had written last March you know are we allowing sexual I mean there's I can name like a dozen right now where it talks about kids having oral sex I mean I did I did book reviews
206and two of them came back saying no it's totally fine this is completely fine but it talks about the kids having I mean they're having sex in the car taking clothes off it's ex I mean it talks all about it walking kids through so you're telling me right now that a 14 year old doesn't read that because it was in high school so 14 year old doesn't read that and get turned on by that I mean I was 14 other people were 14. like we remember what that was like to be 14 and to read those I just think it's like is that appropriate is it not is that okay and then I mean why are we pushing that kind of content okay I don't know if you're that's rhetorical questions out there I could
207try to go through and pull everybody ah member Felder thank you chair Jacobs I know it is not my intent as a member of this board to push encourage pornography being read in school or sex being discussed even though we know it may be but that's not my agenda one of the questions I do have on page three we're looking at purpose of such our objective study while using the materials no employee May indoctrinate any student and I talked about this whole definition of indoctrination let me just explain an experience I had as a teacher I was teaching American literature to honor students and I was teaching centers in the hands of an Angry God and also in that unit I taught The Crucible and I had a complaint of a parent as I was
208teaching the metaphor similarly that you find in the beautiful literature written by Jonathan Edwards sent us in the hands of the name of God that I was teaching religion in my AP immediately shared with the principal and the parent that I bet you miss Felder was teaching The Crucible and she was also teaching sentencing hands of an Angry God so in terms of our having to work through some of this minutia but at least and deal with the vagueness that we're getting and I agree with some of the other board members saying that we may need to table some of this until we get fully from the state what this policy is supposed to State I have some concerns because in teaching some literature there's going to be room for interpretation there's going to be
209questions especially if you have a student in your class and I did who practiced wicker and I had to give that student the same amount of time and of expression as I did with the student who was a devout Catholic I had to give them that time for the discussion and so here again that could have been interpreted in so many so many various ways but my classroom was I designed my classroom as a sacred place I had to written in Italian this is a sacred place after I left the Vatican which meant that you this is a learning and this is a sanctuary this is what we learn so and at the same token in 12th grade I was teaching Andrew Marvels to his core his mistress first line is off with your girdle
210you know and it's I mean but this is Rich literature that I was teaching so I'm hoping that even as we deliberate as we're doing now trying very much to come up with policy that we believe is going to match the policies coming down but but we must make sure I would like to make sure as a board member that teachers are not feeling cramped where they can't be free to teach fresh literature and there's going to be some questions and it's you're gonna have to answer some questions that's why it's important to have a syllabus and so that you can share with parents and family members I just this whole thing about restrictions and how we to establish this policy I'm kind of in agreement with board member ghoul that maybe we may have
211to wait I don't know until we come back on some things before we make some real decisions but I do want us to have the benefit of the doubt that the people that we hire to teach our students they do possess the skill set as I've said earlier to do the right thing that's why we've hired them that's that's I don't have very much more to say about that but I am really concerned about this whole idea of indoctrination what does that mean what do you mean indoctrination even though this is in the policies I think as a board member we need to be able to answer that question clearly distinctively about what we mean all right that's it for now thanks Vice chair gallo be sure you're still with us I'm here thank you
212it took me a few minutes to get to the right screen so I have a few questions on one of the pages I think it's number three and then it's number two it says it talks about the ability to comprehend the material it says suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented that's it did that come straight from the Department of Education thank you directly from statute okay so my only concern with it is that is so vegan meeting especially when you're I mean you're talking about our elementary schools in our post-secondary we have such a huge learning curve there from kindergarten to sixth grade or even within a child's ability to read we could have children reading at a high school level in elementary school is there any way to
213kind of clarify that because I that I don't even know why we have that in our policy because I don't know who would understand it or what it's there to point out Vice chair let me see if I can I agree with you let me see if we can get an answer thank you anybody want to take a shot at it pardon me is it in the statute it is in the statute okay it's in the statute so we don't really have a choice thank you madam chair is there a way to expand on it to kind of make it more understandable or is that something that we will be doing our directives is that something that will be handled when we kind of go through this with our staff at the schools I think
214a lot of I'm just hesitant to put anything in policy that we don't that we don't understand I'm sorry go ahead so I think a lot of these decisions are made in practice media Specialists certainly know who the students that they serve are at the beginning of this school year we ask that media Specialists create a collection development plan in that collection development plan we included their student their achievement data their student achievement data so they know the academic abilities of their students so that when they do make purchasing decisions they are not purchasing books that go way far beyond the academic abilities of their students again that also addresses the need so that they aren't purchasing resources that their student need that their students need kind of an example of this is we have
215the Silver Pines academy we realized they were recent certainly built a few years ago when they opened and with the capital renewal funds we were able to purchase them a media center collection well now in practice those books are a little bit beyond the ability and the needs of those students and so we've been working with them to ensure that they are purchasing a collection that is more suited to the needs and abilities of the students who are there so a lot of that comes in knowing your students achievement data knowing their needs and that is very as very Central to what happens at your school okay thank you thank you for that clarification I just want to quickly say that I agree with member bird about IMB policy I don't know that it should
216go into ijl policy maybe it makes sense to keep it as a policy on its own and then I believe a member Caster Dental mentioned the tiered access system and I think I think the superintendent may have alluded to it as well and I know that it's when a parent talks to the media specialist and they'll make note in Skyward but I do think that when we get to the secondary level there needs to be some type of formal process so that we can tier items so we're not taking books away or removing books from students that parents would be fine they're fine with them reading but maybe other parents wouldn't be okay with it so I know that we had discussed it at one of our work sessions prior so I don't know where
217we landed on that but that might be worth revisiting as well okay thank you Vice chair remember Castor Dental thank you madam chair I'm kind of lost in all of our red lines have we started the challenges to Media Center materials no not yet okay what I'm waiting on thanks okay I'm sorry I'm sorry member Gallo can't click herself off I was about to call on you again remember salamanco thank you chair a couple of questions on a larger scale I am curious it'll I think it's very clear on page two what the definition of pornography is in terms of the just a the whole part of a which is any material related to this I'm curious when you interpret this because the one my one concern is you know I think no one on
218the school board wants any pornographic material in schools we're on the same page of that what I don't want is any of these sections to then be expanded into other things that are not pornographic into parents starting to question review books in non-just sexual material but in other material in which case they start to restrict the ability of someone else's kid to read something that their own parents want them to read so I want to I guess I want to appreciate maybe from the legal perspective of the legislature do we see this review process eventually going Beyond just the pornographic or do we need to be more explicit that you know there will be a higher degree of Burden for something that is not pornographic that is being challenged whether it's on Race whether it's
219on a variety of issues where we don't agree amongst parents and communities of what is appropriate or not so the challenge process is for any book and has always been open for any book for example going back to when I was a media specialist the parent who took issue with the book about ghosts that they didn't want their child reading that very well could have been a book that they challenged following the challenge policy in kec and it very well could have been something that went to the school Literacy Council and could have been decided you know what we'll keep this book or we'll remove this book whatever so that challenge process exists for all books regardless of whether a parent is concerned about pornography or it has an inappropriate fart joke or something got
220it because I have serious concerns that this becomes a slippery slope into actual full-on censorship of all kinds of materials that any random person in the community doesn't want people learning about and so I don't know if this means that's fine we follow the state legislature on the explicit parts of the definition of pornography but that we do develop a policy that increases the level of Burden for books that are not related to sexual topics I have concerns that as we stated it does seem like one parent or one Community member in one school does have the potential to block a book from other schools and I don't think we have a clear process yet even how you undo that you know I think we have the numbers that in the past year in the
221history of the United States we have banned more books than we ever have 40 of these books are related to some lgbtq issue the other 40 are racial issues there is also you know I don't think this is necessarily only on one side of the political Spectrum I think we know kind of maybe where the right stands but on the left side you know I have heard wanting to ban To Kill a Mockingbird because it uses the n-word while wanting to ban certain things because of white savior I think it's a concern across the board whether you're a political Spectrum or not that we're trying to you know we have community members who do want to censor based on political agenda on both sides of the spectrum and I don't feel comfortable with anyone's freedom
222of expression or speech to be blocked the Supreme Court case that says that any time that you are limiting a form of expression I think it's called bathroom books versus Sullivan says that anytime you are potentially violating on someone's First Amendment speech of freedom of speech expression there has to be a critical analysis of review of why you are impending on this I understand why following state law but I also I do want to follow constitutional law and not take away the students right to expression and reading so I guess my biggest concern period with this is I want to make sure it is scoped out to what it's intended to be in this case pornography and that we have a clear policy that this is not slippery soap into other stuff so that's ah
223my this last 20 seconds I will say we're on the same page about transparency and I love that we're going to have every book in our media and classrooms on our website I would love for it to be equally as public for any book that is under review for being banned or for any book that has been banned to be equally accessible to parents so that the burden is on both sides and not just on one side thank you thank you member Salamanca I'm I wanna I'm I'm gonna go back to where I left off well no let me answer let me answer your question member from I'm not sure what book you're talking about I don't think I've read it based on what you said so I'm not going to comment specifically on that
224book I'll comment on what you described and based on what you described what I consider that pornography the answer is yes do I think that should be in our school libraries the answer for me is no the concern that I have with the process and we haven't gotten to it yet I'm so sorry at jumping ahead but it's like the main thing I'm concerned about is the principal hires the media specialist the me the principal appoints the school based what's it called School literary Council okay so the principal depending upon the principles potentially political perspective you could end up with very different interpretations of what the author intended his book to do if he's if the author he or she intended to sexually arise or not you can come up with different answers but whoever
225comes up with the first answer under this the way we have this written as I understand it that stands for five years unless the superintendent and her team comes in and intervenes and changes it and I just I just doesn't I just don't see how that works I mean the principal ultimately one principle sets the tone on each book that comes through and we could have a hodgepodge all over the place where one book the majority of us would say no way and another book the majority of us would say well that's perfectly fine and that might not be what we have but this board the eight of us up here we are totally accountable for that every book that's in that Library we own or every book that's not in that library but guess
226what we can't get sued and we can't get thrown out of office for the books that aren't in there if they're not in there based on obscenity because the Constitution as John can explain it when I'm done doesn't protect against that so if we are not asserting ourselves in a way to make sure that there is consistency that we can defend what we're doing and we can defend it consistently then we risk not only lawsuits but we also risk board members being thrown off this board there are days when I wake up and think that would be a good decision for me today but in all seriousness I do not like the idea of elected officials who are elected by their constituents local citizens being replaced with appointed people who are not directly accountable to
227the citizens in their District I strongly believe that whenever possible at the local level the local citizens should be electing those people to represent them to make decisions for them and that's why when I look at the onus on this board to be accountable and yet we are delegating that accountability to 210 different people to make decisions in a hodgepodge fashion and we're hoping that we can catch them and figure out if they were the right decisions and come in and overturn them which in and of itself is a mess because now you've you've irritated a school who thinks that their school should have made that decision I on the controversial language being out I don't think it was very good language I would be all for putting it back in I do have one
228question John for you on the part about when it talks about religious material it says while using the material no employee May indoctrinate any student with the Viewpoint of a particular religion to me that says while you're using the material while you have material that's religious you can't indoctrinate suggests to me that when you don't have that material and you're not using that material but you might use it yesterday tomorrow you can indoctrinate I'm is that statutory language I'm sure it probably is but why does it say while using the material why doesn't it say no employee May indoctrinate any student no employee anyway John and now my time is up can you all hear me because I okay it's not meant to allow indoctrination while not using the materials that's not the way it
229was in any way intended to be written or to to indicate our instructional staff should not be indoctrinating any of our students with respect to a specific religious practice being Superior to another religious practice at any time regardless of whether they're using the materials or not that's what was meant by that language if it's crafted in the way that doesn't indicate that we can certainly work that work it around and re-work the language to indicate that our employees shouldn't use shouldn't indoctrinate on religious practices at all did just we do that member gold you're recognized first thing that I want to say is that this is great conversation and to hear different perspectives and I think Vice chair gallo and Mr pomerini for clarifying what they anticipate to happen based on what's printed right now
230in the in the discussion with the further changes there's a just a couple of comments I have I don't really have a question right now but following along I'm going to work my way backwards following along the chairs logic if we were and I remember this when we were beginning to move towards one-to-one technology we picked certain kinds of schools with different Community bases to trial that stuff on and then checked it rechecked it checked it rechecked it at the district level to see what worked what didn't work what did we learn from that and I'm not sure that approach wouldn't be prudent here and that there is something at the central when it comes to the pornographic material I'm only referring to this pornographic material that comes back here because I'm going to even
231back up a little bit more I do agree with member salamonica this if we are not judicious on how we implement this could be a very slippery slope and then not meet the needs and the purpose of our work which is to engage lifelong Learners so that they can be successful and thrive in whatever career paths and whatever they choose to do with their lives books are essential to that to broadening your mind to getting inroad knowledge whether it's reading writing a arithmetic geography whatever those things that are a little less subjective in their delivery and we also need to make sure we're looking at all of our community and yes member of our member front you're right everybody has a phone how they have that phone is completely different though so even in Guatemala
232where you went there's very inexpensive by the minute cards that are actually subsidized a lot of times by the World Health Organization or or multiple others UNICEF multiple others that help with subsidizing access to to phones and technology in those communities in our communities there are people who pay by the minute with no subsidy and only use that phone for very specific purposes so it may look like a really smart phone and it may be their one line of communication they have but they may not be able to spend two hours of minutes on it on a book so we just need to make sure that when we are looking and I know it always things that seem black and white are never black and white when we're dealing with 210 000 students from different
233families different communities and then to carry that thought one step further as we've been going out to the community meetings and I've been talking with media Specialists out there I've been asking what are kids craving right now in literature you know not the things they have to read or they're assigned to read but what are they craving in literature and how has that changed and how do you anticipate that and one of the schools that we were recently at it's a very mixed well for my community it's very next so probably Black and Hispanic are less than 40 percent in in my school just because of where it's located and there was a lot of content that the media specialist purchased thinking that those two particular communities would enjoy a lot more authors by black
234and brown a lot more Representatives by back and back but they're still wanting anime they're still wanting Harry Potter they're still wanting you know the thing the flavor of the time on whatever that flavor of the time is and when they're gonna read for leisure those are the things that they're going to pick up so but we want those things available right so we want to make sure that not about the pornography but but whatever structure we put in for this we are very diligent about how we implement it so that it doesn't risk taking away or not making available something to a community because we think they need something else from way up high so I thank you that's it Dr Vazquez so I'm going to make a recommendation based on the time and
235the fact that we are not even halfway through so there's definitely a lot of ideas that the board has that I believe we can incorporate into practice okay that we can delineate what that practice is and it would allow us to tweak as we have lesson learned from other schools that may oh have we thought we did it we tried this and it worked so for example we can when a school and I'm speaking strictly to pornography because I believe the challenge to anything else the process that we have in place has been working the board feels comfortable with that and we've been able to work through those challenges the the conflict comes when the content is some people believe to to be pornographic so we could have a our district team when something is
236deemed pornographic to be able to give this is the rationale this is where why we believe it is and it could we could have the team review that to ensure well yes they have that documentation and if they say no it's not we could have the district team go back and review it so that we're absolutely sure that we're in compliance I believe that once it's deemed pornographic it does need to come off of our shelves if somebody brings up a similar or a challenge to a book that we have already challenged we can provide the documentation that says this book has already been challenged here's the outcome unless they want to challenge it for a different type of reason so we can put all of that into our practice and bring it back to
237the board what I'm going to recommend is that our staff meets individually with the board members as it relates to the policy okay changes that we would want to see in the policy and then any suggestions you might have for our practice our procedures as we are looking at the reviews and then we can come back work session with your recommendations for the policy we can send you the procedures and you can we can continue to play with that but so that we can keep the ball rolling for the implementation of our policy those were my thoughts I think that's an excellent idea everybody on board remember Salamanca Vice chair yes Vice chair yes Madam chair okay no excellent idea I think I agree with you based on what I've heard I think you can
238put something together and I think that there's a mix here that yeah and remember Google is your last comments were really helpful to to me in trying to kind of distinguish between the two so we still have member for aunt and member bird up to speak if you wish to you get brownie points if you don't I'm just kidding I already had a cookie I don't mean brownies to speak about the indoctrination what if we had a definition of indoctrination in case somebody didn't understand it or I mean I don't know if that would be helpful like I just looked it up so the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically so if a teacher is teaching for instance has happened in my kids school there was a
239teacher that was teaching about you know the world history so it's teaching all about the different religions and you know Buddhism and Hinduism and Christianity and it went back into Christianity they showed a video from like a small clip of one of the like Bible I don't know what it is one of the ones depicting the Bible in a movie form I don't know which movie it was a parent did not like it and the teacher had to remove it immediately so instead of it going like hey if you don't care for that you can step out for that lesson because no one's indoctrinating it's more just this is what is you know in India this is what is being taught or in you know this country this is the religion there in this country
240this is some people practice this type of religion that type of thing so I mean I don't know I think just for clarification of what indoctrination is indoctrination would be more a teacher getting up there and saying if you do not practice Hinduism you know then you're not practicing the right religion or something of that matter it's just as a teacher you're getting up there and you're saying this is I have to go through these topics and these are I'm going to explain to you what they believe this is what they do for their religion that would be teaching and indoctrination would be the other I don't know if that would be helpful then in this context to have a definition I don't know or people can just Google it I need some notes but
241we meet with you I see Johnstone using me with Amy and John afterwards and kind of gather all the notes that you've given us to go to begin making changes made a note on that one and then just a reminder we're not nobody's Banning books we're just curating content Banning books would be telling Publishers they're not allowed to even create the book and no one's allowed to get it anywhere this is just making sure that in our schools kids just don't have access to the content that some parents would not agree with and on any side of the Spectrum so thank you for that clarification and very good explanation member bird I was I first saw I want to tell member Gould thank you for your comments I think they were really helpful and I
242was just going to comment on the indoctrination why not just take it out because in the sentence before it talks about objective teaching I think objective teaching pretty much sums it up without having to use that word because I really dislike that word so anyway and then I just was going to kind of say what member gold said about the reasoning behind allowing the vast array of literature that we allow our kids to be exposed to and how important even though we're not teaching you know the sex the topics about the sexuality or certain things that are in books that some parents might not like the reason all of that is so important is because we're trying to we are not just there teaching Reading Writing arithmetic we can't even teach those things if we've
243got children with emotional issues mental health issues they're when they're coming to school and they're dealing with who they are as a person they don't know where they fit in they don't know who cares about them who's accepting of them who all those things they're not going to be focusing on the reading right writing and math and arithmetic and it's science it that is it's brain based knowledge that every educator knows if you don't have their heart you're not going to get to their brain so all of those other things that we have available to our kids to help them deal with those other issues are vital to reaching that child and being able to teach them the things so that was just what I was going to say on that thank you thank you
244member bird member bird I totally agree with you and that's why I think and we've done this before but I think Direction to immediate our media specialists to look for content that puts all of our kids at home when they're here that they can see themselves that they can relate to so that we're putting actions to our words and it is critically important for the mental health go ahead please yes thank you and I and I think more what I was what I want to what I wanted to get across was that I think we need to keep reiterating why that is important because I think that's getting lost that gets lost in the conversation when you're when everybody gets you know up in arms and upset about things that they forget that there is
245real reasons why we do have to provide these materials and why we do have to make sure that our kids are being seen in the books that they're reading and why the psychology of that is so important to the education of these kids and why we can't just educate them in a silo without at all like of the without those other things there and it's easy to say well that's for the family to do but a lot of our kids and a lot of the kids in my schools do not have families they don't even have families here I've got 200 kids unaccompanied minors from other countries that are here without families so this is where they're coming for that they're coming for it from the adults in their lives in their schools and they
246need guidance and they need help if we're ever going to educate them so I think that needs to remain part of the conversation and that we need to as Educators continually explain that to our community so that they understand why it's so all so important thank you absolutely all right Dr Vasquez do we have anything else that the Board needs to address before we adjourn this work session no I think we've all put in a good day's work right now I think so too all right that the meeting is now adjourned okay thank you thank you