School Board Meeting 6_8_21

001good evening madam chair members of the board dr grego and staff it is my pleasure to introduce the following representatives of community and professional organizations from the pinellas classroom teachers association we have nancy villardi president representing pinellas arts for a complete education coalition maria cantones committee member there are no members of the media present this evening thank you all right thank you all right dr grego are there any changes to the amendment i mean to the agenda there are no amendments to agenda all righty good thank you board members any items would need to be pulled all right seeing none i will entertain a motion to accept the agenda as presented high motion all right we have a motion by mrs long is there a second and mr dudley we have a second all right

002so all in favor of adopting the agenda as presented say i oppose say no and it passes 6-0 i failed to mention in the very beginning that mrs hein is not able to be with us today so all of our votes will reflect a seven person vote all right so we will now move to the special order the presentation of the top magnet schools of america awards dr greger yes ma'am chair and school board members i'm very pleased to introduce mr kevin hendrick associate superintendent for teaching and learning who will bring up a special guest that we have susan king who is the past president of the magnet schools of america to present two awards thank you dr grego good evening board members dr grego and staff members it's my pleasure to be here tonight

003to shine a light on some of the great things that are happening in our schools this year as you know we have over 100 different programs in our district that are application programs that we're proud of and each year the magnet schools of america some of the schools participate in different opportunities to be recognized and you have heard about some of these recognitions and tonight we'd like to present two of those special awards so i'm going to introduce susan king the past president of the magnet schools of america but first direct your attention to a short video to kick off the presentation hello i'm susan king past president of magnet schools of america it is my pleasure to announce the msa national superintendent of the year this award recognizes a superintendent for outstanding leadership skills

004and commitment to improving public school education through the development and implementation of high quality magnet schools in diverse environments the 2021 national msa superintendent is dr michael grego pinellas county pinellas florida two years after he was hired dr grego led the district to top in florida and tenth in the nation for districts offering the best choices for parents and a few years later the district was named a ford next generation learning model community for preparing students for college career and life dr michael graco thank you susan and thank you to the entire magnet schools of america board of directors it is an incredible honor to be recognized as your superintendent of the year i've always been a passionate supporter of magnet schools and truly believe in the value of providing all students educational choices that

005align with their interests talents and learning styles and since i came to pinellas county schools we've added nearly 25 magnet programs to expand our offering to more than 80 with more on the horizon we want all students to have access to programs that excite and engage them no matter their interest or where they live in our district in addition to programs we are continuously investing in our facilities to make sure students have state of the art learning environments including the richard o jacobson technical high school a brand new school with programs in commercial and digital art game and sim programming nursing veterinary assisting marine mechanics electricity and building construction technology we could not make this great progress without the full support of our dedicated school board members administrators teachers magna coordinators throughout the district i

006am so thankful to magnet schools of america for their support and for recognizing me and pinellas county schools for our efforts to provide magnet programs that focus on diversity innovative curriculum and professional development academic excellence leadership and family and community partnerships i look forward to our continued collaboration and i'm honored to be your magnet schools of america superintendent of the year thank you so much and now just like magic i'm here in person to do the same thing only this time they actually get the awards okay so thank you for having me here tonight it's been my pleasure and my honor to work with pinellas county on projects in the past it's been my honor to work with dr grego on both sides of the bridge and i pay property taxes in both pinellas and

007hillsborough so i'm sort of a dual citizen okay i do vote over here so don't forget about that okay i'd like to present first the new and emerging award and i'd like to ask the principal and the ap of that school to come up so they can receive their plaque and their secret envelope this it's it's not often that a district wins awards at both ends of the spectrum this award is for schools that have only been in existence for about two or three years so you won that award that school's beginning its journey and then dr grego won his award so i don't want to say you finished your journey dr grego because i think you still have a little bit of time there but anyway so this shows that this school is well

008on its way to being a successful magnet school and thank you kovid i got to visit the school to come over and do the video so that was just an added plus for me because it is a beautiful beautiful video that our school that video closed our virtual conference and i received calls and texts all afternoon about the horses okay that was so great and of course my main friend said we couldn't tell which one was the horse what are you gonna do but anyway so this lovely plaque will be the school will display this plaque and they can continue to apply for magnet schools of america merit awards to be even eligible for this they had to submit an application and first rise to the level of excellence and then they won the new

009and emerging so they won on many levels so thank you very much thank you so much you're so welcome it is thank you so thank you and then and then we have this are you gonna come down dr gregor come on down this award is one of my favorites when it comes to individual awards because nothing happens if the leadership at the top is not going to allow you to be there i think it was you one time that said to me you can only go this far if this person here is holding you down do you remember saying that i suppose so i make up stuff sometimes okay so this this is to to make sure that he is recognized for the leadership that he has exhibited in magnet schools and not just magnet

010schools because i think dr grego totally understands that it's not just magnet schools to have magnet schools it's magnet schools that improve the whole district that provide that synergy that's going to work for improvement of the entire district so he understands that and that's what makes a difference that if you do if you lead it that way then that's where it's going to go and every student is going to be successful so this is very heavy and display that lovingly okay and i invite you all to go oh i forgot your little secret i invite you all to go to magnet.edu to look at our new resources and the things we've done we did a huge pivot like everyone to to prepare workshops that would help our schools we're doing a grant writing workshop this

011summer so there's lots of things going on in our district and we are aligning all of our trainings to make sure that you can spend your esser and cares money on them so thank you very good thank you and congratulations to the leadership and staff at richard o'jacobson technical high school in seminole and congratulations dr grego very nice all right we will now move to public comment on agenda items members of the public have three opportunities to address the board when we gather for our meetings the first opportunity is to speak to the public comment on the agenda items the next opportunity is when the public hearing which is mostly on policies and lastly when the meeting is adjourned we will remain for public participation when speakers may address items pertaining to the business of

012the district at each opportunity for public input board members are here to listen this is not a time for discussion or debate we will not take any formal action on information brought forward unless it is pertaining to an agenda item however the board and the superintendent may clarify statements or refer speakers to the proper staff person to help work through the process the board is committed to a standard of civility and decorum in conducting our meetings please assist us in maintaining a civil and constructive environment by confining your comments to the business of the district and refrain from profanity or intemperate or rude comments thank you very much miss simon eddie do we have any speakers on comments pertaining to the agenda board members and dr grego we have five speakers this evening for specific

013agenda items our first is brian angst for consent number 7.50 all right good evening madam chair members of the board dr grego brian 625 court street clearwater on behalf of hammer consulting llc i know you don't usually hear from land use attorneys at school board hearings but as a product of pinellas county schools it's an honor to be here addressing you tonight on this agenda item i think the last time i addressed the board was at the students rights and responsibilities committee which would have been about 20 years ago so it is an honor to be here i did send a letter to dr grego that i asked him to share with the board dated april 30th to provide you some perspective of my clients on this process their response to the solicitation for the

014purchase and sale of the classroom site and just to reiterate a little bit that was contained in that letter it's been the long-standing goal of the school board at least the legislative policy of previous boards to sell this property in may of 2019 it was appraised at 2.89 million dollars and in january of 2020 the board unanimously approved dr grego and mr herbeck to list the property for sale and to solicit bids several bidders i believe at least four responded and my client was selected as the most qualified bidder bidding 3.35 million dollars in february we submitted a purchase and sale agreement there were some very minor revisions in may there were some additional revisions provided and my client has basically been ready to sign the purchase agreement for over a year having said that

015we're very aware of and we're very sensitive to the board's desire to give the wk preservation group time to try to raise funds to purchase the property and that's why you haven't heard from us yet because we've been very very patient we've been communicating in good faith with the administration with dr grego and with mr herbic so we're not here tonight to oppose you entering a contract with wk preservation group but i wanted to point out that initially we were told this would come back to us in october if the funds weren't raised then we were told there were three specific milestones wk had to meet which included getting a legislative funding this year which they did not do or the property would be you know enter into a contract with my client and now

016we're being told that it's going to be another year so at this point what we'd like to do is we'd like to say we are a great partner for the school board in the school district we want to pay you what you believe is fair market value for property that you no longer need that no longer serves a public educational purpose it does not have to be this property we would like consensus from the board given the about 16 months of good faith patience that my client has demonstrated and the fact that we were the highest bidder for this site to allow the administration to begin negotiating with us for potentially purchasing a different site that would obviously be contingent on the administration thinking that we were providing above fair market value and the site

017no longer being needed and being able to be declared surplus but we can't wait any longer on this site we're happy to be the backup offer for this site but we'd like to get into business with you now on another site thank you good thank you all right and our next go ahead our next speaker is beth hovind for consent 7.50 you see out in the hallway beth hovind no bet all right our next speaker is mark clutho for consent numbers 7.43 7.44 and 7.45 good evening mark luther largo seven four three seven four four seven four five all buildings that are all wrong and what do we have we have cause and effect headlines huge changes needed to keep nature earth okay a florida-like summer in the heat in the heart of alaska greenland's

018ice sheet in constant state of loss a troubling thaw the arctic is entering uncharted territory as it warms only big steps will save earth climate change makes u.s even hotter goodbye to glaciers study shows gravity of melting ice well that's what happens when you make stupid buildings and then as at the last meeting i had this article about casa passova where they're doing the retrofit of these old buildings in new york and cutting the heating and cooling costs by 80 percent i'm talking about old buildings not new structures like what you're doing here which would have been a much easier proposition and less costly so what we have here are dumb steps to further all of these examples of what's coming you ignoring science so the planet burns and it's going to go faster maybe

019some of you saw attenborough on 60 minutes sunday night yeah painting not so a pretty picture somebody's responsible and when you ignore science that somebody is you thank you our next speaker is beth hovind for consent number 7.50 good evening hello and thank you for the opportunity to address you my name is beth hoeven and i'm the board secretary for the wk preserve we want to thank you for your dedication to preserving this 13 plus acres currently referred to as the wk preserve we are impressed with your faith in our organization to build the community response necessary to complete our contract with you with the assistance of the pinellas community foundation and other foundations we are confident that we will be able to raise sufficient funds to purchase the property dedicated to the county and

020permanently preserve this land for all future generations it will forever be assigned to your students and your staff that the pinellas county school board is a leader in preserving natural forests in pinellas county years from now the property will still be available in its natural state of preservation again thank you we're holding a press conference on june 15th and we are hoping that the pinellas school board will support this press conference and support our efforts again thank you thank you our next speaker is don richter for consent number 7.50 welcome hey you guys rock we thank you from the bottom of our hearts on giving us time to purchase the west gloucesterman preserve we entered into the contract with you all and we're going to i'm here to just well thank you number one number

021two to assure you that we're going to do our darn best to fulfill the contract and to purchase the property we're working with state and pinellas future pc pfc i think is a foundation for to solicit donations and you did the right thing you did the right thing and i hope we do the right thing for you all so i just wanted to say thank you i wanted to finish up with a little quote from the dalai lama it just says morally speaking we should be concerned for our whole environment we need to teach people that the environment has a direct bearing on our benefits so thank you thank you our last speaker on specific agenda items is broderick husserl for 7.50 good evening dr greco members of the board and guests my name is

022broderick husserl chairman of the wk preservation group incorporated i'm here today to personally thank you for allowing our group extra time to complete its current mission of assuring that the property called the wk preserve located on the north side of west coast cement road remains in its current natural untouched form i am confident that our group will be successful in raising the necessary funds on or before the agreed date we have some very good leads and are going to continue to work hard on a daily basis to complete our mission as quickly as possible thank you once again thank you very much thank you all right before we know that usually we refer people to staff if there were some concerns but since mr herbick is sitting here i'd like to make sure that the

023two of you get in touch with each other brian ox and mr herbic and see if there is any property or what we can do it and then the board can decide at that point which way they want to go alrighty good thank you all right we now move to unfinished business we have public hearing to consider the repeal of the board rules regarding face coverings effective at 5 pm on june 9th this is a second reading and so we will be able to have speakers at this point but do we have a motion okay mr dudley and do we have a second okay mrs long seconded and mr kaperski would you like to explain the process that we're going through for the second hearing yes thank you madam madam chair and board members this

024is the second reading as you noted if you recall back in the fall the school board adopted an emergency rule in early august to allow the schools to open with the face covering policy during that 90-day period that emergency rule was in effect the board then went through the traditional rule-making process of two readings and culminating on november 20th of 2020 simultaneous with the expiration of the emergency policy the board conducted a public hearing and voted in the more formal traditional board rule and at this point in time you are now sitting in front of you on the table is a recommendation by the superintendent to repeal the face covering rule colloquially known as the mask policy just as any other policy we do many of which go unnoticed this is no different procedurally and

025so about a month ago on may 11th you had your first reading as we discussed at that time it was really not the board's prerogative to do away with the policy on that date because under the law you needed to have two readings and a public hearing but that leads us to today and today is the second reading any public hearing so a board approval of the recommendation today will in fact repeal the school board rule regarding face covering and place the board in the status quo ante meaning that you would be back into place as if you never adopted the face covering rule so with that we're here to answer any questions but procedurally you will hear from the public in the public hearing after the introduction of the agenda item and then the

026board can have debate and then a vote very good thank you board members any questions all right dr grego i'd like to make a comment too and then listen to the speakers and certainly the board i think the pastor opened up the meeting in such a great way by saying that last year we didn't know exactly what we were faced with and that we had to continue to change and be patient with one another and try to understand the health and safety and well-being certainly today you have before you recommendation by myself and staff that we rescind or terminate the face mass policy but let it not be lost that we were very successful in maintaining and keeping schools open throughout this entire school year it is very fitting that as we end our school

027year tomorrow that we kept the safety and well-being of all of our employees and our students our teachers every day on the front line food service workers bus drivers in the in the forefront of our minds in terms of what we should do and could do let it also be a comfort that we are in constant not say constant daily i mean but our medical team has been tremendous along the way and been recognized not only in pinellas county but in other districts for the service they provided us and you know what there's no playbook for this pandemic there was no playbook for right and wrong answers we went with whatever we thought was the very best for the greatest number of people with employees and others with well over a hundred thousand people that

028is that rely on us all to make the decisions for the betterment of all people not some but all and it was also a year where we saw very keenly that in any decision there was always opposition to some degree but we had to continually try to look and seek for the betterment of all and so i want to say thank you to the board as we end our school year tomorrow thank you to all of the employees for doing that also and be in there for their patience and for understanding that yes we'll be wiser each time we look back and we can make different decisions but we made the decisions based on the information that we had the best information that we could and we moved on that and i think as a

029state i know we've been very successful at everything that in getting our students back to school just for the boards and notice i will continue to send you updates from the department of health and pinellas specifically from dr cho i sent you an update on on very positive news a week and a half ago as of the end of may where the seven case the seven day average case count was 55 per day the lowest since the very beginning of this pandemic even lower than before testing was so prevalent and also the pos seven-day positivity rate of 2.3 which i could believe is continues to go in the right direction so the vaccinations i continue to report through dr cho to this board the as deposit as the percentages of people being fully vaccinated continues

030to rise it is encouraging that over 50 of 12 and above obviously the 12 to 15 is the lowest it's around 10 percent because that just started especially with the two dose vaccines so i'll continue to keep you apprised as we've met with all of our principals as we begin our summer bridge program june 21st we've consulted and had conversations they went very smoothly in terms of how we conduct that obviously with the boards hopefully we're sending the face mask at face masks are not mandatory they're they're at the choice of parents and choice of students and also our teachers and adults in the building we'll continue to enhance our cleaning and sanitizing protocols we'll continue to fund and not have a burden of our schools to to do that we'll continue to practice social

031distancing as i think we're all getting used to those ways of life even outside of schools we'll continue to provide school nursing services to our i'm speaking specifically about our summer bridge program and i'll speak more keenly about the population of the summer bridge program which i'm very excited about is where you are also we'll have buses on the road this summer as we're transporting students for our summer bridge program we'll continue the cleaning and social distancing even on our on our buses we'll continue to have our covet team here led by sarah o'toole and she's done a remarkable job day in and day out and long hours of trying to care and answer questions of the principles so a lot of things are moving on but i think it's time as we cross and

032transition with the with the really good news of the low contagious rates in in our community also dr cho informs me that as pinellas county we have the highest vaccination rates and the lowest contagious rates and so those two combinations are really making pinellas county and he's he and the county is very thankful for all that we've done all that you've done over the last 10 or 12 months and certainly of getting through this school year by having our students in school we without a doubt we're the key ingredient to bringing our workers back to work and our community to the greatest sense of normalcy that we can have we see that all the time whether it be a hurricane opening schools is the is a is the greatest sense of normalcy in a community

033can feel if you doubt that ask a community where their children are still not back at school on a regular basis whether they have face mask or not they're not back and so that is a huge plus and huge congratulations to this board and to this entire community for going through a year that like no other and but certainly one that we've all grown a little bit more patient understanding considerate and kind to one another and i hope that sticks and stays even past this past this time so thank you board for your support myself and staff for this year and also i look forward to a great and productive summer as we have record numbers of students who will be showing up at our schools this summer so i look for certainly you know

034where i stand on this and the recommendation is before you if you have any other questions i know i spoke a little bit beyond the one policy but i think it's all in context with everything that we've gone through this year thank you thank you all right do we have speakers board members and dr greger we have 34 speakers signed up for the public hearing our first speaker is shauna nelson good evening good evening so i do realize that you are going to vote to repeal the mass mandate today i think the reason most of us are here is we don't trust moving forward that's what you're going to keep and we also don't trust that there won't be some type of combination where if you get the vaccine you don't have to wear a

035mask but if you don't get the vaccine you're going to be segregated and you'll have to wear the mask so i know that's one of the reasons i'm here to talk today also i didn't get to say everything i wanted to say the last time so kind of here to finish that up so i'd like to get to the point where i feel like you can earn our trust back but i think we're a long way from that so last time i was here four weeks ago i told you how i truly believed that when you got into this line of work you had the best intentions at heart you wanted to be here for the children you really wanted to see them excel you wanted to see pinellas county schools rise to the top

036and i appreciate that i and i know that's where your heart initially came from but i said this last time and i'll say it again somewhere along this way those intentions were lost and our children have been failed and there's a generation of children who are now psychologically and physically harmed from the decisions you have made so though i appreciate you're going to repeal this act i'm very very concerned that moving forward throughout the summer maybe numbers tick up hey that's great dr grego that the numbers have ticked down a week and a half ago why don't we repeal the act a week and a half ago but i won't go off on a tangent regardless what happens if the numbers tick up all right is that temporary we're going to see how the summer

037goes all the summer you boom you're just going to mandate masks again so again i say this because i don't trust you and i want to trust you i had so much other stuff i was going to say but that's what came out so i'm going to leave you with this because this is what really has been resting on my heart for the last four weeks i'm sure that many of you sang this song i can tell that as a youth yourself you're probably singing the song around school and making a big deal out of it and being tough with it perhaps some of it that song even drew some of you into education so in the words of pink floyd i am going to twist them just a tad but we don't need your

038education we don't need your thought control no dark sarcasm in our classroom school board teachers leave our kids alone all in all they're just another brick in your wall if you don't wear your mask you can't play with your friends how can you play with your friends if you don't wear your mask please earn our trust back please keep these children unmasked and don't make vaccines a part of the mask requirement and remove it from the dress code thank you thank you our next speaker is gracie nelson can we move the microphone down first sorry daddy usually oh there is one there hold on thank you oh okay good thank you good evening hello hello again i'm surprised max are gone in the trash yet you know i'm tired of what you're doing to my

039friends and other kids when i'm going to school i always see kids on their phones not playing with the other kids and they're always six feet in masks and it's your fault you're causing fear please listen to me okay for god has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind stop listening to the devil listen to god our holy father be baptized in the holy spirit unmask my friends people are protesting for us thank you for fighting for freedom thank you all right thank you is our next okay our next speaker our next speaker is david happy did you sign up for both yes okay then okay okay then let's go ahead okay and what's her name carly o'brien all right honey welcome hi hi

040my name is carly when i go to school i am forced to wear masks it's harder to focus and it gives me a headache i also have to stay six feet away from my friends this year i changed schools when i was forced to wear a mask and distance it was very hard to make new friends god did not create us to be guided by fear it's time people start using their intuition and stop being guided by fear when you are in when you are in fear there is more chance you will get sick than when you aren't when you when then when you use your intuition immune systems on on masks off all right thank you thank you our next speaker is david happy follow the information good evening is 100 factual and you

041can fact check every single point i'm about to make about how wrong you've been call it malfeasance misfeasance neglection of duty incompetence whatever you want to call it every single one of you would be subject to recall over just one of the actions that i'm about to tell you were wrong to ever exclude parents from the from the campuses you were wrong to ever have dr cho advise the pinellas county school board since he has a demonstratable financial conflict of interest that none of you have ever asked him about further maybe because of that dr cho was wrong on just about every single recommendation he gave you which you now you can tell with the fouchy emails that i'm sure that you've read you were wrong to ever amass the children and we know that

042from the fouchy emails you were wrong to blame the florida department of education for your personal mask fetishes when fifty percent of the school districts across florida never force mass their children like you did you were wrong to deny parental determination as was allowed under pinellas county state of emergency you were wrong to hold a private work session with improper notice on your change of venue and you're wrong to record even today your work sessions but not allow them to be broadcast to people that want to understand what you're doing under the cloak of darkness you were wrong to ignore governor desantis as his executive order to unmask the children and to end the state of emergency you were wrong when your attorney stated you are not a subsection a government agency that we just

043didn't have enough time to get you in front of a judge you were wrong to allow the pinellas county school secretary to grossly misstate the statistics you were wrong to not challenge dr kennedy when she misstated there was an increase in juvenile hospitalizations in pinellas county and stated that the uk variant was a cause it's 100 percent erroneous and you can get the actual statistics but you never question dr kennedy's statistics you were wrong to appoint a 20-member ideological curriculum committee that is comprised exclusively of ideological liberals and registered democrats that doesn't reflect the diversity of the district was never open for parental involvement and has members who openly post racist critical race theory on their facebook pages you were wrong to have a medical advisory committee of 11 people including three that have zero

044medical expertise including one union rep on that panel and one employee of the tampa newspapers you were wrong to allow the pinellas county school board to enter a memorandum of understanding with the teachers union that allowed the teachers union to dictate the medical operating policies so today i filed a grievance with the state of florida against your assistant superintendent and the two union representatives for entering into this illegal agreement they're not doctors they're not licensed to practice medicine and if you ever allow a similar agreement to be entered again i'll file suit against each one of you thank you all right i am going to stop our rules are that we don't don't clap or have any interruption i allowed it when the students were up here speaking because i thought that was a little

045different but if i would ask you now not to applaud you can give them thumbs up you can give little jazz hands whatever you want to do to show support thank you our next speaker is mae chang good evening thank you david blessings and prayers to all all facts all science intuition love these are how we want our children to to to be guided not by fear fear is a liar and i know that many of you are just pawns in the system and i just want you to know that there is a way through any block i don't know if you're being threatened or i don't know what it is that you that you need to you know support these unconscionable rules that are destroying children and families superintendents and teachers unions across the

046nation set cdc guidelines and really i want to thank everyone that doesn't go by any of the mainstream media cdc all these organizations are owned by pharmaceutical companies so they are obviously not reliable and anyone that's just complying you are being part of a problem and so thank you all that are truly being aware and being a part of the solution for the future of this country even this world and last time i was here i wanted to share this and i'm going to share it again i sent a letter to superintendent grego regarding the mask wearing distancing excessive use of toxic hand size sanitizer and what are we teaching our children obviously none of it is science-based it's just common sense a lot of it and then i received an automatically generated email reporting

047an incident of bullying and it said thank you for submitting this report it looks as if you're reporting support for an incident incidents of bullying harassment or teen dating violence and abuse so yeah we all know it's you know bullying this is not even you know it's not even up for debate but i will say that these fouchy emails i actually hope that i mean there's just all this evidence against everything that's happening here and more and more people know it those pouchy emails they absolutely prove this fake pandemic all of the this mask horrible horribly horribly abusive unhealthy unnecessary masking distancing just pure physical emotional mental abuse so i hope that those emails will actually be a game changer and that you know whether you want to or not i don't know what your

048circumstance is but you will really not be able to and just everyone thank you our next speaker is cynthia smith good evening good evening i'm here to say please when you vote to do this for the mask make sure that you don't reinstate it back when school starts again because i've heard talk other parents of her talk that oh we're just going to go and see what the summer does and then when school starts there's going to be another vote and there could be put back we us parents don't want that we want to continue our right to our choice for the kids to wear the mask you know my story you know my daughter's story you know what she's been through with the bullying i'm gonna tell you something that i have spoken with

049dr craigo i appreciate it if you give me attention because i have emailed you and called you multiple times and i haven't got a response from you with everything that's going on with my daughter my daughter when we went to fill out work i had to get her into counseling when she filled out the paperwork there was a question that asked if she thought the world would be better off without her and my daughter answered yes why because of the bullying that she's gotten and she can't get identify some of the kids that because they were wearing a mask it has been 13 weeks guys 13 weeks that my daughter has been bullied over her wearing a trump mask and then on friday a teacher called her a dic finished the rest of her head

050yes ops has been notified but unacceptable then the weekend the week before that friday before that my daughter had a tennis ball and the teacher was like can i have your tennis ball she goes if you give me an a so he wrote a on a sticky note and she goes oh my mom's gonna be proud of me the same teacher says oh she'll be proud of you for the first time ever that is being told to my 12 year old child who's been bullied for 13 weeks i am beyond upset i am heartbroken my daughter thinks she'll be better off dead do you really want my daughter as a statistic you guys need to do something about the policies i know this is mask but this ties into it there was death threats made

051to her and the students weren't identified because they were wearing a mask she will no longer go to seminole middle school next year but i tell you what this better not happen next year because i will personally hold everyone responsible my daughter has been and i tell you over the summer if my daughter ends up dead it's your guys's fault for not changing the policy soon enough your fault thank you our next speaker is sweet good evening before my time starts i have something for the superintendent can i give it to him or have somebody yeah if okay so that letter is the intent to withdraw both my children from pinellas county school indefinitely i am going to be pursuing whatever litigation i can i have a recorded conference that my son's fifth grade teacher

052used fear to try to teach her children to wear the mask properly she thought it was okay she admitted that on mpr radio driving into school that morning that she learned that a first grader in minnesota had died of coronavirus and thought that would be a great teachable moment for her fifth graders so she told them that children were dying and so they needed to wear their masks properly so not only did she not follow the policies that you guys have listed in controversial material in the libraries where you have to ask other adults if it's deemed controversial has to go to the principal so the principal can give you a piece of paper to send home to sign and that wasn't used and that's only one of the things that my son can remember

053my son also has adhd so what he also says is multiple times a week class gets shut down by this teacher so that she can re-educate onto the dangers of coronavirus that's multiple multiple multiple interruptions i have on video the principle saying that she cannot account for how much time has been wasted in school due to having to stop to re-educate the children onto the dangers of coronavirus when as you know and as the information has come out children aren't getting that sick so for a teacher to pull one instance out that was a poorly written cnn fox news website npr news piece that has no information as to why this kid actually died or anything because we know for a child to die of it's extenuating circumstances because it's so low so to pull

054that one little thing out to push fear to a child who does that who does that but more and more you're seeing that teachers are doing really weird stuff right now you're failing the teachers as much as you failed the kids the teachers have nobody to talk to but these kids in front of them all the time that's it and you're talking about repealing the mask mandate you won't allow parents in school i had to get called to the school because my son forgot his backpack i don't know how he did that but they asked me to come bring it and when i brought it to the school and tried to open the door they called security on me because i was bringing him his backpack after they told me that they wanted me to

055bring it so these are things that are going to continue because everybody is so afraid of us parents because we're finding out what's going on but more than that these teachers have nobody to talk to but these kids they are scared there are people who are terrified of dying and they have nobody to talk to you need to figure out what's going to happen to these teachers when they're terrified that these kids are coming to school next year without masks on have you thought about you've got teacher spraying lysol teachers doing other things have you thought about the repercussions of what some of these scared teachers are going to do once these faces are in front of them and they're terrified my children will never be in pinellas county schools because of what you guys

056have shown us over all of this time thank you our next speaker is lisa mcneil good evening hi i'm lisa mcnew i wasn't planning on coming here today originally until last minute so i did not plan anything i do want to say i am an inactive licensed registered nurse the reason i am inactive and i am working to reactivate it is because i do have autoimmune diseases unfortunately i have to wear this mask in here and i already have problems from my meds i took that destroyed my lungs so excuse me i will tell you that i am here because i have two high schoolers at two different high schools in south st pete and i want to make sure that my children do not have to return with mask next year you would think

057i would be afraid because of my autoimmune disease and i am actually disgusted that the children if they still have to wear masks because something happens with the numbers this summer it is true that this was over inflated i have several friends that are doctors and nurses in the medical field who will tell you the same thing yes i lost four friends that graduated with me in 1994 from pinellas park high school this year but you know what the vaccine is out you had teachers all had a chance to be vaccinated the original fear was that people who worked there would get sick and die and i have friends who were chemo patients that were teachers in the system and yes i worried i worried my kids would bring it home but i need you

058to know that children under age 12 if they do get come up positive if they actually have any major symptoms it's because they have other health problems and comorbidities from something else not from covid it just happens that kova triggers those things everyone has a choice they can get vaccinated they can wear a mask but now there's no reason to force anybody to go to school anymore because age 12 and up can get the vaccine and under 12 does not have problems unless they already have other medical issues they can wear masks thank you our next speaker is dawn peters good evening good evening so we elect you all of you we all elected you to manage our funds to manage our children's education but when did you stop listening to us you know as

059soon as you guys got in your seats you don't listen to us anymore we come here and speak we email you we call you we come here in person our children speak when did you stop listening to us once you got in your seats that was the end of it i don't understand that when is our voice supposed to be able to impact what is going on in our schools you've taken us out of the school good job you guys did that really quick i was so actively involved in my kids schools from the time they were in preschool all the way up until you kicked me out last year nope you can't go into school anymore miss peters all my kids teachers love me because i helped i didn't even i helped with the

060kids that needed help so the teachers were free to do what they needed to do which was teach you guys have woken a beast it's our fault that we've gotten here but we're here now and we all know what's going on we're all watching and we all want to make active change we want to participate it is your job to teach our children academics only manners manners are great that's it nothing social nothing political none of those things should be taught to my children or spoken to my children unless they are actually in a politics class that's where that ends there should be none of those things measures you guys are talking about the masks but what about the covet measures the social distancing needs to stop the kid's sitting spaced apart at lunch needs

061to stop kids only able to talk to one friend needs to stop masks are just a small part of it there are so many parts of these covid measures that need to go away the parents we're going to be in the schools we have a right to be in school it's always supposed to be that way and those of us who want to participate and be involved should be able to we work and we work for free take advantage of that but these coveted measures all need to go away i don't even masks or mass fine vote against masks they can go away there's more to this than that and we know that there's more to this than that so you guys social distancing needs to stop although on the buses they probably love that

062but we just we don't need any of this anymore our kids are afraid they're not seeing their friends they're not seeing people's faces they're not seeing anything you guys know that you've heard it all let's get rid of this covid team kovid everybody who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated the numbers have dropped and we don't want to pay their salaries anymore put those taxes back into our school that their paychecks put them back in our schools i don't think anything else needs to be said about that i mean we have a right to be in school the parents have a right to be there thank you our next speaker is elizabeth fox good evening hello so here we are at the end of the school year it's a good time to reflect on what

063we've learned over the last year seems the school board puts teachers first well above the children the children are actually last maybe an afterthought contrary to what you say your actions spoke very loudly for you this year i can understand at the beginning of the year this was unchartered territory and there was much to be learned but eventually the science was very clear children were the least affected by covet and they were not vectors for spreading it yet you still turned the schools into something that more resembled prison masking the children and forcing rigid social distancing measures throughout the day and barely letting them get a drink of water all of this without any consideration of the negative effects these policies might have clearly not thinking about what might be best for the children when

064new information became available so magically following the science and experts tomorrow we can ditch all this nonsense when your contract expires the school board lets itself be led by experts who have financial conflicts and dares not ask any questions or show any curiosity as to what you're told even though concerns concerned parents flooded you with mountains of credible information data statistics and studies you abdicated your critical thinking responsibility and just did what you were told seemingly without question this is disappointing at best but personally i think it's negligent a critical thinker gets information from many sources and uses reason and judgment to make decisions a critical thinker does not make decisions based on a single source of information and most of all a critical thinker does not make decisions based on fear the school board

065thinks it knows better than parents what better than parents what is best for their children in overriding the county guidelines where parents got to choose whether their children should wear a mask or not the board showed great disdain for parents and their responsibility for medical decisions for their own children and you lecture others about bullying but have no problem with teachers bullying children about masks and indeed bully the these parents us parents that come to speak to you by interrupting us if our mask is down too low even though it's more than sufficient social distancing here and the masks are just senseless theater the school board has created an atmosphere whereby teachers who do not agree with your policies are not comfortable with sharing their disagreement unless they do so anonymously others have had to

066come read students for those teachers as they worried about retribution the school board accepts no responsibility for any of the harm that they have perpetrated on the children this past year i guess that's why you didn't question the experts it gives you plausible deniability in my mind it's culpable negligence most importantly what we learned during this past year is just how terribly the school board has filled the children and parents of pinellas county the upside is that there are a good many parents who no longer blindly trust that you are looking out for the best interests of their children and will no longer sit on the sidelines and assume it's all good and my last point you really do need to get rid of the social distancing over the summer bridge and for next year

067that's just silliness thank you thank you next is julie efron mcallister good evening hi can you hear me okay okay yes short and sweet august 24th 2020 through today june 8th 2021 one school year nine months of not seeing their teacher smile 36 weeks of struggling to breathe behind fabric 178 days with no field trips 1 246 hours without seeing their friends faces 74 760 minutes of indoctrinated fear yes i did the math how much longer do our children have to wait to breathe freely again how much longer until parents are allowed to make medical decisions for their families this power trip has gone on for far too long and we're all so happy it's ending today thank you next speaker is mark ephron i believe there's a microphone on the there you go welcome

068hi i'm mark from fourth grade and i think you should stop making us wear a mask because they really irritate me and give me a lot of headaches and it separates me from my friends because we have to social distance and did you know at school to play tag with our friends instead of touching them how you would normally play tacky if to clap and that might not sound bad but we also have to wear masks while running around at recess i found my self sweating under my mask all the time and then i have to wear that same sweaty mask for the rest of the day it's disgusting thank you next speaker is deborah williams good evening good evening so i'm here to focus on wellness because i'm a health and wellness professional and

069that's my specialty my passion it's really what i care most about and i had looked back at your website probably i would say a few months ago and i noticed that your wellness policy hadn't been updated and it's since 2017 and i found that to be an issue because it seemed to be that you're focusing on a lot of the wrong types of preventative measures for people with these masks but not actually focus on focusing on the things that are actually going to keep people healthy and well so there's a big difference there and i think my main point today is that i just want to bring to the table that you all are making this decision today i'm sure you're going to drop the policy because hillsboro has already done so and pasco has

070already done so and so it's just a matter of you now following suit but i think what i'm most concerned about and what a lot of the other parents are concerned about in the students and the teachers is that you're going to possibly put that back into place if you know numbers may change or there's a spike and we don't want to see that happen you know so we don't we don't want to see that happen i think we need to be and you need to be as a board you need to be putting things into place now to make sure that your staff the entire pinellas county school you know teachers union you take on measures that you can actually teach these teachers how to be well and healthy and focus on their immune

071systems and strengthening their immune systems and actually focus on that for the children i talked to a nurse not long ago and she brought us something really great like if we had used these the funding that you got to buy all these ridiculous masks that are an illusion of safety this is an illusion of safety because it doesn't actually do anything to keep the individual internally healthy so if we had taken that money and we had used that to say get install sinks in every classroom so the children could actually just wash their hands more that was a conversation with a good nurse friend of mine that would have been such a brilliant use of funding that we could actually then sustainably see that you know protecting our children and our teachers long term you

072know just things like that even like the school lunches and the food programs in your food education nutrition education these kinds of things are actually practical and we can do this and we can take and you know move forward with solutions but these i mean these obviously need to go i think we can all agree now that it's time and we've we've come to see that the data is there to prove that this doesn't actually make a difference but there are things that we can do that can make a difference so that's what i wanted to bring to the table today mostly so thank you thank you next speaker is myla williams it's mila mia oh there it is okay hi my name is mila i go to a school where i have not had

073to wear masks we are healthy and happy we do not wear masks because of health reasons masks are not healthy masks can make kids sick masks make kids sad because they can't breathe or smile i want all kids to have a better year without masks good thank you thank you did you want to say something unmask us kids we need freedom all right thank you our next speaker is alicia reeves so you have successfully kept our children masked for an entire school year well i'm here today like many to talk about the masks and to also convey a message to you we're coming for your seats you have abs used our children long enough this is coming to an end soon you will no longer keep our kids masked you will no longer keep them

074six feet apart you will no longer continue to teach our children any forms of your political ideologies just to name a few of your hidden agendas we've got your number you see you people up there will not be doing this anymore because we're coming for your seats thank you thank you our next speaker is richard snyder so this is the first time being here my name is richard snyder i'm a pinellas county community citizen i have raised three children in the pinellas county with my wife two of which did get to participate in the school board program one was homeschooled the entire time my youngest child got to endure it through disabilities and just graduated with the homeschooling program but i wanted to come in as i walked in you guys have a nice logo

075out there that says 100 student success i also had a term that i had to deal with with my son all the time free and appropriate education i think hiding behind policies is getting us out of the fact of what you guys are elected to do having the friendly reminder that you're an elected citizen which makes you just as important as we are out here the masks don't work there's no science proof you could go into any one of your science classrooms and talk about the scientific method and you could prove it that it's wrong you guys need to worry about what the citizens including yourselves really think about the subject you need to think about it before you stand a policy and talk about how many times it takes to remove something does it

076take as long to implement it do you take as much time to think about it you're injuring our children you're causing more harm than you realize any one of us when we walk out of this room and you're private do you keep the mask on do you worry about who touched the door handle before you this is not the only way to spread it do you worry about the person that walks out of the bathroom but you're worried about my children your own grandchildren your own children how close they sit to somebody when it's already been proven they're not likely to get it so i would appreciate if you guys are taking into consideration and get rid of the mask don't even try to attempt to bring them back next year there's still no proof

077to support it and let our children be children thank you our next speaker is michael snyder good evening good evening my name is michael snyder let me see mr snyder can you please put on your face covering thank you the board will be voting this evening whether to repeal it but it's still in effect right now thank you and i am here to speak about the mask like many others do you realize snyder can you please cover your nose and mouth thank you appreciate it you all work for me let me make that clear every one of you work for me i elected you all i elected each and every one of you do you realize that what you're doing here having children wearing a face mask do you realize that having children wearing masks

078in class is wrong do you realize every one of you the medical tyranny you all have committed this is a disgrace to my county myself and everybody else in it the choice you guys the vote you guys made to vote for chill for children wear masks is inappropriate because every story i have listened to about it has caused more harm than good the whole bullying thing with not people not being able to be identified is beyond ridiculous children getting bullied over this really is this the type of school board that we have to have the logo that says we're all about the students and then the last thing we have is our school board causing a lot of medical tyranny and a lot of harm the mask policy because we're coming for your seats if

079you don't resign and we will vote you guys out aacp anyway yeah i don't understand why you guys mask your children blah blah blah let me see and the fact that you guys are explicitly the thing you guys were doing two years ago trying to explicitly sexualize children to the way you want them how about we go back to being a quote neutral school board teach them their stuff be respectful each and every one of you and let mom and dad make the decision for their kids or let the families all make thank you our next speaker is angela dubach good evening can you hear me yes okay hi my name is angela duval i'm the chapter chair of moms for liberty here in pinellas yes i said liberty you know as in freedoms that

080you're taking away from our children i'm here today on behalf of concerned parents grandparents family members and tax paying pinellas residents what i have seen in the last past year and a half has been very disturbing you see i'm not a mom but i have many many kids that i care about and i love and i'm concerned for their future i have parents telling me that they feel ignored and then they simply say ange it doesn't matter anymore because they don't they don't listen to us and they don't care and i want answers mask we all know they don't work and it's unbelievable that we're actually still talking about this the cdc and fraudulent fossee even said they don't work but one question i do have about the mask why were kids being reprimanded for

081the mask being below their nose that's absolutely the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard so i wrote to the principal so did other parents we all got the same response it was an emailed template so it's kind of like giving a concerned parent the middle finger basically i also want to know why last year when school started there were blm signs no justice no peace signs in the classroom as well as black kids don't be afraid to stand up and protest on the board why why is this allowed but another child wearing an american flag mask was told to remove it and put on a disposal one schools school boards teachers unions need to stop deciding they know what's best for our children that's not your job you guys work for us it's not the

082other way around and you don't mess with people's children and i have a pocket copy of the constitution right here because clearly i think you all need to read it i'll leave it up front thank you our next speaker is kya pert good evening hi my name is kaia purr and today i would like to talk to you all about the mass mandate in schools the reason that some kids are still doing school online is because of the mass mandate their parents don't want them wearing a mask for seven hours each day i am personally going to school in person because i learn better in the classroom environment even with the mass community my parents don't want me wearing the mask either but it's what we have to do for me to have a better

083education i do have a friend that i go to her house all the time we don't wear masks we don't social distance and we're not spreading anything she's doing school on zoom because her parents don't want her wearing the mask for all day if you made masks in school is optional i feel like we have lots of students coming back to school in person some of the experiences that i face while wearing a mask every day is headaches i start developing a headache every day around six period and i have it for the rest of the school day which makes it very hard to concentrate on the lesson when i get in the car and i'm able to take my mask off the headache lightly goes away within 20 minutes or so when i get

084home and i have my mask off the headache is gone i do believe this is a side effect of wearing the mask all day walking into the 2021-2022 school year i would like to see the mask mandate made optional thank you thank you next speaker is carrie madison good evening good evening my name is carrie madison and i live here in dunedin my granddaughter attends academy da vinci and you just heard her speak i speak to you today as a retired registered nurse who has worked through numerous epidemics hiv and aids in the 80s hepatitis c h1n1 rsv respiratory synctable virus and sars1 i understand fear and i also understand having to work through fear is scary in the early days when you don't know much about how a virus spreads or how virulent it's

085going to be but we are not in that phase of this pandemic right now we know that children are not at high risk of covid we know that the risks of emotional and social isolation are very real and are in fact being manifested in this group and we know that the learning environment has resulted in dismal test scores and even possibly a generation of lost kids who were turned off from learning at the crucial moment in their development that aha moment that all of us had when suddenly we realized that reading was fun and that mathematics at least was comprehensible that moment is the moment that opens up fast opportunities to each child and it occurs at different times for each child one thing is certain however when a child is discouraged or overwhelmed by

086their classwork the effects can ripple throughout their entire lives we cannot afford to risk the emotional social and intellectual development of our children even one more minute masking our children hinders their emotional social and intellectual development am i the only one here who has to ask people to repeat themselves three times before i can understand them i think not what about the shy child the one who won't put their hand up and ask for clarification they are the one that's at risk to conclude you simply cannot reduce the risk of covid19 to zero everything in life has risks life itself demands risk to be lived fully and meaningfully now is the time to mitigate the risks to our children's emotional social and intellectual development stop the mask mandate thank you our next speaker is virginia

087frizzle good evening good evening i brought three children through this school system the last one graduated in 2012 and how grateful i am that i was able to be part of their classroom and i kudos to that last person that was just here because there was times when i had to approach that teacher with my child to keep them couraged encouraged to be in school and enjoying school i remember a couple times of that was the essence of why i walked into a classroom is to keep my children engaged you know what all three of them have bachelor's degrees today and actually serve this county two of them do and that's not going to happen with this class that you have committed such audacities to this year it breaks my heart and i'm grateful that

088i didn't have to walk through this with my three daughters in pinellas county yes i was in the classroom as a volunteer all the time also makes me pissed off that my constitution means nothing today that for forcing a person to wear a mask without their consent is a violation of the fourth amendment further gathering vital statistics such as taking one's temperature as a violation as a person's right of privacy violation of this protection result in your actions of being reported hopefully to the u.s department of justice which is required by law to investigate civil rights violations is this not a public place i know i don't pay dues to come in here so it's not a private establishment it's a public establishment who doesn't care about my civil rights because you sit on your

089thrones up there i didn't realize your thrones were so beautiful and recently i didn't didn't have to spend as much time back here in 2010 and 11 as it didn't seem to be as necessary and i'm here because there's a large group that do not trust you that's truth how can we trust we've been lied to by faushi than we know now we've i've seen the emails i read the emails commissioner pat jar gerard told me that she doesn't do her own research it's probably what goes on in here too you guys don't like to do your own research and your teachers because i know all my fellow friends and patrons have given you lots of research and yet you kept it to the last day i have i have i have my daughters teaching

090camps and schools no one's getting sick no they're not getting sick their children are getting sick and you know what i'm like i said to those commissioners i said what if what if the activation of fight for flight and that stress response is is unmeasurable and the kids start wearing these face masks to hide themselves so that they can't tell their depression or they're cutting them thank you thank you next is robbie robb is robbie rob present denise lewis good evening good evening here we are again seems like month after month we come here and talk about this i'm glad to know that you're going to be voting on it today but i along with the other parents would like to express my grave disappointment in the way that this has been handled having seen

091the fouchy emails have you seen them have you seen the fouchy emails some some of you are shaking your head if you've seen the fouchy emails why didn't you send out an email right away saying this has been a farce end it now why are we even still here why are we even still here talking about it why isn't it done children are not getting sick children are out and about with their with their friends when they're out of school but when they're in school they're like little automatons they hate it you've heard from them they want it to end the parents want it to end and you're keeping the parents out of the schools i just saw a notice where the makers of zantac are being sued because that medication causes all kinds of

092different cancers zantac something that the that the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors have pushed on multitudes of americans you got a stomach ache i'll just take a little xantax no big deal just like tylenol and ibuprofen not that harmful but it causes bladder cancer prostate cancer pancreatic cancer lung cancer all the cancers you might be entitled to a settlement but you're promoting the vaccine i know more people that have died from the vaccine than from the illness if we're talking about covid i have my friends whose parents have died from the vaccine at least six of them i don't know anybody that's died from covid i hope that you're not pushing this experimental medical treatment i hope that you're not going to push it on the students when they come back leave it to the

093parents to make the decisions for their students for their children they may be your students but they're their children and they have the right to make the medical decisions for their own children you don't have that right you've heard from many others in the community that are coming after your seats like there has been a great awakening in this country people that have been standing on the sidelines are no longer doing that anymore we're not going to stand for it anymore it's time to end it thank you next is mark clutho good evening mark luthor largo it's such a painful painful effort to put on this mask and anecdotally if the mask is not effective you would think that the flu season wouldn't have turned out like it did but i don't think that you

094can have that be like it was and it's just unbelievable the propaganda that i've listened to tonight a lot of fox news talking points headaches and such ah just unbelievable unbelievable i feel sorry for some people that bring all these things on their poor little existences it's a tough tough world you know and it amazes me how they come forward with all their scientific facts that is really a bunch of hokum is the best way to describe it that's all it is there would be a lot more people dead if it wasn't for the vaccine for people washing their hands for the social distancing for the mask for all of these efforts that have been made over the last year and they're a bunch of dreamers if they think it's anything different thank you our

095next speaker is jordan lee good evening good evening my name is jordy and i'm in fourth grade in my classroom there are two people that chew their mask and there's one person that drinks through the mask and when we go to pe we don't put our mask on because we're outside and when we're done doing exercises and running we have to put our mask back on also yesterday fifth graders graduated because they had a party their parents couldn't even see them have a party and have a good time and no volunteering they had to do it all online how sad is that some people will wear masks also some people will mask if you make it optional also i am one of the kids that you laughed at in the secret meeting and when you

096say thank you at the end are you really thank you when we're all here saying all these stuff and here are some of the things that my friend said i can't even hear some things that my friend said that they want me to say i can't breathe through my mask it's very hard thank you thank you our next speaker is kristin lynn good evening education involves the seeking of facts and learning about what is the truth and what is not indoctrination is aimed at influencing people to believe in facts without being able to back up these newfound facts with anything but opinion you the pinellas county school board has been indoctrinating our children into believing that they need to wear masks for safety as stated many many times before at past meetings and emails you

097have been provided accurate factual educational information in regards to children and wearing masks you have chosen to taken the indoctrination approach in handling our minor children we've made it to the end to the end of the school year and i bet you're saying wow we did it we made these kids worth these masks this whole school year not educating yourself on factual information but biased information from your inner circle hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior activity for which one criticizes another or practice of claiming to have moral standards your discrepancy across the entire school district has been nothing but pure pure hypocrisy you have put students in isolation rooms because they took their mask off to breathe you have trespassed parents for stepping foot on their children's campuses and then other

098schools some students walk around freely with freely with their mask around their wrist you have some students outside with masks on at some schools and then you have some others without you have some children with plexiglass dividers between them at lunch and at other schools you don't and then your superintendent and miss cook you were mass free at a podium speaking but yet the students had to wear a mask at the same podium on the same day the most basic thing parents have asked is our choice for our children in regards to the mask simple as that if a parent choice chooses to mask their child that's their decision another thing that we have asked please allow us to walk on our children's campuses and be involved involved with their teachers their staff and school

099another simple thing there are many schools in this county and in this state that are running normal but yet but yet you hear but yet we are here being deprived of that donor probably doesn't this place deserve to be a warm inviting experience for our kids not where they want to go and dread it you are a public school board not a parole board we've come here month after month pleading for our parental rights for our minor children but instead you are treating them as if they are on trial and as if we are trying to earn acceptance into allowing them to breathe free at school thank you thank you our next speaker is melissa king good evening good evening my name is melissa and i'm here tonight i have prepared remarks but there have

100been so many valid statements that i appreciate very much i've been watching the school board meetings because i've been unable to attend personally and i just felt it was important to come tonight as a citizen of this county as a teacher a former teacher in this county in charter schools and just share my voice and to just to tell you how heartbreaking it is to think that this school board can listen to these children month after month and parents month after month and not have the heart to apply critical thinking skills to do the right thing and as a citizen is very upsetting it is extremely angering as someone who values freedom that you people could just sit here and disregard ignore as educators we have an opportunity to educate people this information that's just

101come forward has been around for people who would look for it this isn't new information for a very long time for people who are seeking health rather than living by fear there's plenty of education that you could have provided to teachers and families ways to keep their children healthy beyond that as a former kindergarten teacher i just can't even imagine teaching children to read with a mask i'm very grateful that i didn't have that challenge because i'm not a pup in the public school system but let me see i just i'm not sure how mr greco can say for the betterment of all because i don't understand how individual choice isn't for the betterment of all why isn't that it's okay if i want to take care of my body and be healthy and stay

102safe and the next person chooses to live an unhealthy life or lives in a situation where they get exposed but that's our choices that we make this is america we have freedom of choice here and i appreciate that he said the information that he had but it did make me wonder where were you doing any research because the information has been available there are resources in the community there are doctors in the community that have been treating people that have alternative methods of getting people well it's been known since the very beginning that the size of the virus can pass through any mask all these masks thank you our next speaker is susan bucci welcome hi again my name is susan bucci i'm from tarpon springs i think this is my fourth time here i

103have been listening to those these frustrated parents grandparents including medical professionals and other experts almost every single person has presented a strong clear and reasonable argument for removing the mask requirement you have been offered countless studies backing their arguments and i truly wonder if you have reviewed anything you were given it is my understanding that your main role as school board members is to support the school community in such a way as to provide a thriving learning environment for each and every student whatever they may look like for that student and every student can wear a mask i recently had a conversation with a cashier at earth origins i asked her if she was happy she no longer had to wear a mask she said she absolutely was because after her first three days of

104wearing one at work she wound up in the emergency room because of her asthma and that just makes me think about you know what is it doing to these children that are wearing the mask all day long our bodies were made in the image and likeness of god if you begin to interfere with them you cannot be guaranteed a favorable outcome why are those who are wanting to trust in god being asked to go against what god has intended for us it just doesn't make sense to me if people who want to go against all that is natural that is their right but they do not have a right to ask those who trusted god to do the same i talked about pharmaceutical companies before just to refresh your recollection they fund the studies being

105taught to medical students they own the content of the shows who air their commercials the content of the print media in which they advertise they far outspend gas and oil lobbyists this entire pandemic has been their show and most people bought into it they bought into the fear playing right into their hands they have made an absolute fortune during this time good for them they are marketing geniuses but it is time we put an end to this they have victimized all of us but we can no longer allow it we have to stand up now or this will be just the beginning so i know you're going to vote tonight about the mass but if anything changes over the summer i was thinking that maybe you could have a couple of nights over the summer

106to hear both sides of the argument there's so many videos and interviews out there of people that are not just mainstream so i was thinking if you listen to that video everybody listens to it and then you listen to the video of the other people that are just as competent then you can all the people that listen to both sides can vote whether or not if anything changes they should wear a mask or not education is key and deborah williams made a good point too about how to start from within and make ourselves healthy because if this keeps happening what are we going to do all right i believe this course of action will show true leadership on your part and give all of you a chance to be heroes in the eyes of the

107parents but more importantly the students the students are very confused right now they have been getting conflicting messages this entire school thank you next is jeremy kench good evening good evening board returning once again sticking with the topic tonight making the agenda obviously speaking again later but i don't even know where to start what to begin i mean i want to thank everybody else that's came continued to come and try to do the right thing for all these kids because we've been here every meeting nothing gets heard nothing gets done you guys have your agenda like everybody says i mean to get given a trophy for doing such a great job this year with all of these kids yet you neglect the welfare of children and allow them to be attacked by your police boards

108and everything over the mask mandates still on topic let's not try to cut my mic again you didn't deserve that prize i mean it's my opinion you won that like biden won his vote jokes or joke it won't be forgotten none of this will it doesn't matter what you say obviously none of us trust you it doesn't matter what you say at this point because we're still gonna have this fear all summer long but our kids will be free and i'll tell you what change it next year we all do vote you've opened up a lion you've awakened this all the seats aren't guaranteed and damn it my children will come out of school next year you won't have them please be careful you will not have them next year and i'm sure many more

109are going to jump on board with this we paid the taxes we pay your payroll we pay your bills and your debts and your everything we elected you and what are you doing for all of us it's not the same people coming here all the time i know i am but there's many people here new faces first time second time first time still have the same amount of people you've got my old lady co-order protection now she has to sit across the street she's not tried to come in here and talk to you people she's followed this but the day you attacked her and my daughter and son for trying to speak on his mask back in october they tried to do the right thing be patient i'd come in here and speak on their

110behalf and what gets done we still got a court case waiting we're not taken guilty plea i can't wait this isn't over for most years because some of these are going to be called in and things are going to happen things will change because civil rights were taken keep violating everybody's civil rights because then somebody i mean you've come so damn close to unleashing a beast here but i'm not going to allow you god have mercy on me and giving me the strength i need to keep trying to do the right thing coming here and talking to you people to get no responses like everybody else no answers no nothing that was your job man you all would not still be sitting there and just looking at me if this was your daughter what would

111you done you wouldn't want your job still you would not be sitting on the seat with the rest of this board in this panel agreeing to the way my children neglected throw to the street told there's no address here we don't work here by your police department tossed to the ground a 13 year old girl innocent young mother attacked and assaulted videos and audio many times said i just don't understand where used people are being trained thank you cynthia houle i believe she left is that correct next is julie roust good evening thank you hi my name is julie rose and i'm a fifth grader first of all you've heard everything and you still vc's children there's almost nothing that you haven't heard but i come here because it's wrong you all do let's get

112this straight you'll keep on coming and coming until you end this mass command in pinellas county schools and if you don't you'll take your seats away you force children to wear masks above their nose now do you spit out of your nose or mouth kids have 99.9999 i can go forever percent chance i'm dying from covid you already know this we all waste our time to come here and you act like you don't care the parent raised the child not you and this means that you should not decide if a child wears a cloth on their face children have begged for you to end this and you still comply in school don't you want to make everything fair and give children the best for their academics like i said my last speech how could a

113kid pay attention in class with masks on why do we all have to repeat ourselves i'm going to teach you a little history don't you remember the declaration of independence the declaration of independence was made so people have the right for freedom now it's forcing little children to wear clasps on their face above their nose against parents authority freedom i know you're not supposed to answer in any speeches but i want to know why you do this to children another question for you is why do you change the camera every time someone takes off their mask while speaking these masks do nothing it's not just cloveness actually giving symptoms actually masks also give symptoms scientists have found fungi and bacteria in children's masks imagine you're a kid during the kova 19 pandemic and you sat

114down at the cafeteria taking off your mask to eat food you then notice bacterial substances in your mask and well yes you can get a new one but what do you want to play with other kids knowing there could be bacteria and fungi on them without them even knowing i spent hours on a three-minute speech erasing and rewriting and you act like you have no respect for children you're creating a scared generation of kids and this needs to end how many times will you need to come up here and basically tell you that you aren't doing your job correctly you don't get it at all you are impacting the development of a child's brain you need to go back to school and while you're at it unmask the children thank you our next speaker is

115joe tillman hello my name is joe tillman at this point you've heard it all there's no science or data that backs up the effectiveness of masks to slow covet spread but you haven't listened masks are developmentally inappropriate for children but you haven't listened you've heard stats and studies that back this up but you haven't listened you've heard this from medical doctors outraged parents and so many others but still you haven't listened i've been here before like so many of us i poured my heart out and shared my belief that masking children is child abuse today you will vote on whether to keep the mask mandates but like so many other decisions you've made this past year you have shown your agenda is not in alignment with the best interest of our children's well-being and so

116regardless of the outcome of your vote today i and the rest of us here know there's no assurance you won't try to bring these back again next flu season or worse with a vaccine mandate and so tonight i'm not really here to speak to all of you tonight i'm here to speak to all the parents at home who are listening parents out there that are tired of the masking of their children in schools of concerns over crt and comprehensive sex education poisoning young minds i am here to tell you there's another way and you have options quick about me i'm a single mom of three elementary age school children i work a full-time corporate job and i am also a small business owner but the most rewarding role i've taken on this past year is

117homeschool mom prompted first by my disgust with the thought of my little children being masked all day at school i started with my pcs but your relentless holding onto the mask mandates led me down a path to find a better way to educate my children out of necessity i felt forced into homeschooling but now that i'm here i am so grateful for this path the resources online programs homeschool support groups have all been both eye-opening and wonderful this year i learned my fifth grader had never had a history class before we happily resolved this by introducing american history engineering and other elective courses there are many fantastic self-directed programs online if you like me can't make the time commitment to teach them purely by yourself you can find meetups nearly every day for both kids

118socialization and collaboration with like-minded parents and in my classroom god has his rightful place at the forefront parents if you are disgusted as i am with these masks and social distancing rules for little children and the red flags of everything else they could be exposed to in public schools i'm here to assure you there is another way i have found my tribe and we welcome you to join us unmask our children thank you thank you our next speaker is daniel aymond good evening we'll see about that is the sound counselor kopersky of your mask mandate being optional because i have some video i sent to dr grego and the board members of their pot washer not wearing a mask i never got a reply from you last month they sent it again tonight so i'm

119going to take the pot washer mr option mr men can you please put a face covering over your no i can't because unless you're going to get the pot washer put on hers okay no there's a requirement right now no there's not a requirement this is optional go ahead and trespass me arrest me whatever you want to do cut my mic all right it's over madam chair i'm going to give mister and one more warning mr mr men i'm giving you a warning if you do not put it on your okay thank you our next speaker is jeffrey caputo is mr jeffrey caputo kristen strecker good evening hello so here we are again we made it to the end of the year the longest school year ever it feels a bit crazy that our children

120can freely breathe and literally go everywhere without a mask except for school every different group of the government agencies you know major medical facilities they've all altered their coveted restrictions based on learning more about covid through the year we've been through except the school board hillsborough and pasco county have both publicly stated that mass will be made optional in the fall they both even allowed their graduates to actually smile in their once in a lifetime photos except pinellas apparently when there's a department of education event masks are optional but not for the children sitting in school all day every day if you put your political bias aside look at the bigger picture take all of the new information that we now know children being masked makes zero sense we're asking for mass to be optional

121in the fall with no strings attached children are essentially not carriers of this virus teachers have had ample opportunity to get vaccinated if they want and we've all seen the photos of dr grego at a podium mask-free and then seeing children at that same podium on the same day wearing masks that was the biggest slap in the face to all of the parents and all of the children who've been struggling to abide by this mandate for the whole year and it was just really it sort of showed that he knows he won't ever be held accountable for his actions so that was really disappointing i just hope you guys take all this into consideration for the fall thank you thank you our next speaker is joanne marshall andrea tipton good evening so tonight you'll notice

122that a lot less people showed up and if you ask anybody why it's because they think you're fully removing the mass mandate we know the truth those of us that showed up we know there's going to be strings attached we know that you're going to look at it again in august because i spoke to my principal just this week and she said you guys will be looking at it in august to see what you're going to really do and we know how long it takes to get these things removed so we're going to keep showing up it's very annoying for us too to be here the other thing is i know you guys said you saw the fouchy emails we all saw them it's pretty embarrassing that a year has gone by i'm masking our

123precious children knowing asymptomatic people per his email do not spread it like they thought it did but yet our kids are still masked i'm looking at graduation photos of my friends kids tonight in san diego california none of them are wearing a mask my son is in fifth grade his step up was canceled they're doing nothing for him he didn't even get a zoom so it's goodbye good luck in middle school this year not every kid got even a zoom and i can see you're annoyed that's great douchey has come out to just recently and said everybody needs to get vaccinated because there's another variant of this my kid is not getting vaccinated the other thing is i've already had kovid i'm not getting vaccinated now they're finding out that we probably have we don't

124need them are you gonna make me get vaccinated to go on my son's field trip next year because i'm not getting vaccinated my son missed his enterprise village field trip which i think is one of the most important field trips for little kids and they totally canceled it this year and next year i want to go to that and i want to go to it vaccine-free i'm not wearing i'm not getting the vaccine i don't understand why that is such a hard thing for you guys to understand that 50 of the people are not getting it now they're not going to get it when the school starts the other thing that i really want to talk about is what happened to alicia and nothing got done because the kids had a mask but yet another

125child was just bullied at that same exact school those are going viral pinellas county is on the map that county this county that school is all over the internet with multiple bullying videos and nothing was done for alicia i don't even know that little girl her video was sent to me by somebody in california and that's how i found out about it and then i met these people here who came out to support her that something has to be done because that testimony this morning was or this afternoon was heartbreaking to hear her mother i can't even imagine what she's going through i hope that all of you go home and cry about that tonight because that was very hard to listen to hear her say that the world would be better off without her

126what kind of child has to feel like that she has to go to school next year and think that her life should be over because of bullying but then another girl gets bullied at that same exact school and they kicked the kid out that bullied her but nothing was done for alicia you guys got to really do something about that county thank you our next speaker is kevin smith good evening good evening i'm back i got three main points tonight the first thing is a speech from dr timothy leary back in the early 70s i believe think for yourself question authority throughout human history our species has faced the frightening terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are or where we're going in this ocean of chaos it has been the authorities the

127political the religious the educational authorities who've attempted to comfort us by giving us order rules regulations informing and forming in our minds their views of reality to think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness chaotic confused vulnerability to inform yourself think for yourself question authority that's not for you guys that's for everyone else that's listening everyone else that's had to show up here my second point dunedin native dundeen resident dunedin business owner our business provides fitness activities to children primarily ages 3 to 7 17 sorry quick story one of our students has been breaking out having multiple headaches and has been very short of breath this is just one of them she is deathly afraid of removing her mask and being in trouble even

128though our environment is a mask optional whatever the family and the child is comfortable with she is still afraid in our environment we finally got her to go ahead take it off take a breather go get some water she's breaking out all around her mask it's filthy she takes it off like any child where they don't take great care of things and they drop it on the ground after class she ends up picking up putting it right back on on her face they do this in the bathroom they do this all over they do this in cafeterias at schools i've asked this of multiple children again i try not to assume because i'm not a child i'm not in the school so we have to ask them please just tell me how your day is

129what goes on and they all admit they all do the same thing my third point is if you go to pcpao.org pinellascountypropertyappraisers.org and you start looking up any school including this building in pinellas county it is listed as property use county public school and what is the exemption government yes it's not homestead it's not institutional it's nothing else it's listed as a government building this is true for all other schools that i have researched in pinellas county just coming from someone that's used to do property appraisal my final point is freedom over falciaism unmask our children thank you our next speaker is audra christian good evening good evening i see our tribe showed up this is awesome yeah so do you guys remember a year ago when i told you that you were eroding your

130own authority by doing what you guys were doing and not listening to people and all of that you really are single-handedly like creating your own demise and you know you lost the argument with when mark mc whatever his name is your only ally like that's that's the only ally and he goes from school board to school board that's pretty bad so 2020 taught us a couple things as parents right that you guys don't think for yourselves like at all okay you're supposed to i want to make sure there we go okay and that you are totally okay with hurting children for the greater good because we all know this is awful this is bad right actually caprice edmond said her little daughter is used to him like ah you could get used to uncle freddie

131molesting you too it doesn't make it okay you get used to abuse you do and that we learn that you guys will blindly goose step in stride with the teachers union but not the taxpayers right that's the truth so i think you guys owe the children an apology a really big apology for saying i think you need to tell the kids hey guys we're sorry for being complicit and abusing you on a daily level daily they were abused for hours right all because dr fosse was like yeah you know i mean you had parents giving you medical stuff that told you this wasn't okay and you guys still did it so i also wanted to say and i don't even know if this is appropriate but you know me i'm going to say it anyway

132sarah o'toole works for you guys with all the sunshine requests that we keep getting her name keeps coming up over and over and over again and you know what we heard about that one she's supposed to be a christian so sarah o'toole this is to you need to do what's right you need to do what's right sarah because you're complicit in the masks abusing children you are complacent in the crt and you are also complicit in the new sexual education that's coming out so there's a hinge right there do you get what i'm talking about there's this one name over and over and over again do what's right sarah o'toole okay we're done have a great day guys thank you our next speaker is natasha keto good evening good afternoon this is my daughter here

133with me she goes to a public school here in pinellas county but i'm here to talk about the mask policy and like the others i have trust issues for instance at the last meeting we were given explanations from school board attorney david kopersky about what his opinion was in regards to governor desantis executive orders were these so-called opinions seem to have more of a direct influence to your decisions or should i say a lack of decisions than the hundreds of parents children in general public who are actually caring about the suffering of the children from wearing masks for seven plus hours a day this is what i consider to be unethical from here on out do we need to start filing complaints to the florida bar to report that a school board attorney is directly

134influencing pinellas county school boards to enforce something that is unethical and unreasonable what reasonable person could listen to hours and hours of testimonies of how these masks have caused harm to our children and not step up and do something about it what right does that give you to tell us what medical decisions we as parents can or cannot make about our children just to get an education why should we support or entrust our school or any any school with our children who mandates child abuse coercion shame guilt manipulation and harm to children by wearing a mask irony on your school board regarding face coverings sorry school board rules regarding face coverings you've listed florida statute one zero zero one point four one which is general powers of district school board section one states the euro

135to determine policies and procedures consistent with state law last time i checked the cdec is not a lawmaker also there's nothing in the florida statutes the florida constitution or the u.s constitution that supports child abuse or child neglect that's what masking children is this is however not consistent with state law but you have still chosen to do so you've still chosen to do so even though you represent us not the other way around the mass policies have caused teachers to be silenced quit their jobs and brought out the worst in what school teachers we have left this is evident in the blaming and blame shifting that is going on today with the schools your actions from the last meeting was a perfect example of this with the way you treated that young boy when he

136was struggling to read his speech and how you refuse to show compassion something so simple no more abusing our children from here on out and give the choice back to the parents where it belongs and remove the mask policies from our kids from now on thank you thank you our next speaker is anna luna aaron oszewski hi there how are you i'm back again i was actually here the very first meeting that you had my name is erin olszewski i'm a registered nurse i'm also an army combat veteran and i don't even know what to say to you guys anymore i wasn't planning on speaking but i saw these parents here today and as a nurse you know i listen to my patients right as a nurse i'm an advocate for my patients they know

137their bodies better than anybody else and i listen to them and what you guys are in a position to do is also listen to the children they know their bodies better than anyone else so to their parents and i feel like you guys have really taken it upon yourselves to ignore all of these parents and all of these children telling you how they feel and this goes against the actual science the actual science not the science that follows the agenda as a nurse i know for a fact that these masks don't work they're not professionally worn they're not professionally fitted you know you guys know this but you continue pushing this knowing that this is causing a lot of problems in these children how can you continue to ignore the actual science and claim that

138you're following the science please pay attention to me a lien great go like all of you guys you know this is what you're doing you're in a position paid by the tax dollars we pay for you to sit there and for you to sit there and ignore everybody is really a slap into the face to all these parents so i'm gonna take it upon myself to let you know that your seats are going to be taken we are organizing we have all of your background checks especially your husband caprice we have his background check we have a lot of photos of him too it's pretty disgusting so for you to sit here and put our children in masks up to eight twelve hours a day sitting with no liability the liability will come and it's

139gonna come in the form of your seats being taken and we the people and all these parents are going to be taking that so it's up to you if you want to stand on the right side of history or you want to stand on the wrong side of history it's disgusting i'm appalled but at the same time i'm glad that you have all been exposed and this is just the beginning and you guys can go home all summer and enjoy it but you know what you abused our children this entire school year and i hope every one of you can go to bed at night and be able to sleep because our children haven't been able to do that thank you thank you our next speaker is maria canaan hello greg just be clear one

140correction appreciate everything you said earlier but you didn't keep schools open school board ain't keep them open the teacher should as hell didn't keep them open desantis kept them open so just to make that very clear data wise decision-wise it's okay everyone's accepting defeat at this point right fauci cdc everybody it's okay but at some point you all need to as well okay i know there's not gonna be a public apology but myself for a year i've known the same things coming out that have come out now about mass about about this whole thing these people most of them not that guy everybody has known this data what's embarrassing is it took you guys feeling all this pressure from everybody around and making decisions you are the last ones like that's how sad this is

141you're the last ones to use this data you claim you're using you're the last ones to accept even federal guidelines on on these things and that's that's it's sad the unstable gentleman who came up here and said fluz are down and blah blah blah yeah we get that you know human interaction stops virus transmissions that's i mean that's evident but that's not the world we live in unless you guys all have homesteads and acreage where you don't interact with the human race kids don't social distance anywhere in your schools if you think they do they don't i can point to countless situations with the kids nobody's social distancing on the buses they're still whispering to each other they're they're talking they're touching each other i mean again this is all just a game you guys

142didn't have your masks on before you came up here nobody in any of our rooms has our masks on except for for the cameras right nobody is doing any of these guidelines anymore everyone can get vacs that wants everyone can stay home if they want you need to be honest to your teachers that are still fearful you did that you drove this fear deborah was right you haven't updated the health policy back in october i said you need to get your teachers right they have fear for no reason the school board wanted to keep that fear up that's fine it was on you to calm that fear and not have the situations happen that happened with your teachers everybody has tools to protect themselves it's time to give that choice back the bullying that i've

143heard because of non-mask wearing you don't hear the opposite right and if this was a gender or race issue you guys would all be forced to resign the bullying situation that happened as embarrassing spring of kids of lysol all this other thing that went down in our county is a disgrace you guys took this you knew it was virtue signaling for the longest time you ignored the science you claimed to follow and either way it's just time to admit it just move on we know we won't get an apology again right and for people who sit there and talk about the if everyone's not vaccinated you need to educate the public okay 10 of your student base is vaccinated vaccinations are not mandatory in florida those are religious exemptions and you're around non-vaccinated people all

144the time adults aren't vaccinated we are not up to date you don't get boosters for the shots that you should nobody up your ipad does you got your covered backs you got your flu vacs that's fine you're not getting all your other vaccines on time either way you chose to come for our children at the end of the day we're coming for your art your seats for the bad decisions that you made thank you our next speaker as agnes agnezika canaan i go to an unmasked school when i tell my friends about how i don't have to wear masks they're amazed why you made you make them wear masks and you and you make them social distance one of my friends when somebody accidentally took a drink out of his cup he broke down crying

145because you taught him the wrong thing i wish that mass could be eliminated the only people who should wear masks are surgeons and doctors when they're doing operations that's it nobody else baseman's pose serious risk to the healthy every single student in that school wishes that mass could be removed they get they get sweaty at recess kids run around in them they can't change their masking and barely get a drink of water and then they have to go home and wear them thank you our final speaker for the public hearing this evening is wendy woolley good evening good evening how are you so i guess you saved the best for last i've heard dozens of people come up here this evening and talk about how it's all been said but it hasn't all been said

146a lot of things have been missed like thank you really thank you from the bottom of my heart thank you for keeping my kids safe thank you for keeping my neighbors who are teachers safe thank you for airing on the side of caution tonight i've heard about canceled parties and a lack of parent involvement at school and sweating at recess and i mean we live in florida and you sweat at recess but so far no one has mentioned that my son's favorite teacher caught covet in march and is still on an oxygen tank and no one has mentioned how i don't live in fear i actually live and trust that my son's school is doing everything they can to keep him safe but not just him and not just the people who complain this is

147my oldest son and he wanted me to read something on his behalf he goes to middle school in dunedin he says i attend one of the many schools managed by the board and i acknowledge that it is incredibly annoying to wear a mask but not a single person i know is radically opposed to it does not prohibit their breathing it is a requirement and they understand that many of the people here state repetitively that they have a few students who that very few students have been infected recently and they use that as a reason to repeal the mask requirement but can they not see that students are getting sick excuse me students are not getting sick because of the mask requirement and proper covet protocols parents have come up to say that they know the

148audacities that the students experience but then they admit they haven't been in schools recently how can they know of that audacity and finally we both admit that there is a huge chance that statistics regarding the virus may have been inflated but at the time the information that you cited is informal i'm sorry i gotta breathe but at the time that the information you cited is the best that we had and other information may have been informal unreliable or biased he would like to say thank you for keeping me safe thank you good evening thank you is that it all right and that will end this portion of the public input and so board members are there any comments ms edmund i have a few questions i know we've had a hearing before and some of

149the questions that i'm going to ask are repetitive just because i think it's important to be crystal clear we have heard from some people talk about whether or not we can implement a mass mandate in the future i think it's important to get some guidance on that if there is a increase in cases or anything like that where we need to reassess if we will be able to do that as a board who are you asking are you guys a legal question for mr kapersky yes the as i mentioned when i introduced this item the board in october adopted an emergency rule chapter 120 point 54 which governs your rule-making ability that every policy you adopt you've got to follow those procedures in that statute and that is exactly what you did in august i'm

150sorry if i misspoke not october and august you adopted an emergency rule the statute requires that you find that there's an immediate danger to the public health safety or welfare and then you have to cite to that and then of course you have to have public input at the board meeting and then adopt that so you could certainly do that again whether it's covid some other immediate danger to health safety or welfare but you're going to have to have a discussion as to what grounds led you to that conclusion all right does that mean go ahead and i know dr grego when this was introduced you shared some of the plans but can you go into further detail about what we're going to be doing over the summer to ensure the safety or following the

151covet protocols that have been made with our covet 19 team well as i mentioned ms edmunds is that we're going to continue to to keep our buildings clean and we're going to have about 10 000 i think elementary school students so the good news is that is very a lot less students than we normally see in a day but we're going to have a great summer bridge program we're going to be running buses we're going to be serving food and i look forward to it i mean i think we've learned a lot but we also learned that as the speakers have said that we're we're we're good and i never thought off-ramping this virus would be as more difficult than on-ramping but certainly look forward to the board's vote and moving back to some sense

152of normalcy okay anything else all righty this is kane and a follow-up question to miss edmonds question to mr kaperski when we put when the emergency order was put forth in the summer and we had to create a safety plan to reopen schools masking was part of the cdc recommendation at the time and from my from what i recall governor desantis and mr corcoran had put forth in the emergency order that we needed to work with the cdc to create a safety plan in order to open brick and mortar schools for the school year in september in late august depending on when we chose to open schools and by doing so we had to have a safety plan that was recommended by them and that was put forth with cleaning procedures and coveted safety procedures

153due to increased numbers in florida at the time and that made i believe the boy's decision of finding an immediate danger to the health safety and welfare under the statute easier than it would be i think in the future if those conditions do not exist and it was also true that due to that emergency order if we were to not create a safety plan and we were to not open brick and mortar schools we would have had to lay off thousands of teachers in pinellas county and lose an abundance of jobs and schools would need to close if we were to make that decision at the time that is correct that emergency order required that the parents be given the option of in-person education otherwise anybody who learned virtually would only receive and i'm looking

154at mr smith approximately two-thirds of our normal revenue which would yield as you noted significant layoffs and budget cuts that no district in the state of florida that i understand absorbed or decided to test many districts we were able to continue to offer choice to parents as best that we could at the time in order to offer them virtual instruction as well as brick and mortar instruction and hybrid classrooms as well as offering many extracurricular classes that in other districts were not offered including music programs film programs engineering programs medical programs veterinarian programs and several other extracurricular magnet and additional programs that many districts for went offering due to covid by only offering core curriculum during this school year so i do think that as we came up with our safety plan we did our

155very best in pinellas county to offer choice parents not just in the way their child was instructed but also choice in curriculum throughout the year where other districts had to scale it down and we tried to continue to keep offering it the best that we could in many many different ways and i just wanted to point that out that was part of the decision-making process in july and august leading up to the original emergency order that was put into place okay all right thank you are there any other comments all right well there there is no other so we have a motion that was made by mr dudley a second by mrs long to repeal the board rule regarding face coverings effective five o'clock on june 5 o'clock p.m on june 9 2021 all in

156favor say aye aye opposed say no it passes 6-0 unanimously all right we will now move on to the consent agenda do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda okay we have a motion from ms long and a second by mr dudley all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously as well 6-0 we will now move to items introduced by the superintendent yes ma'am chair and the board thank you so much for your patience and understanding and certainly your comments this evening i want to thank the public also for coming out and being involved with this conversation as it's happening throughout the state and i think we've all hopefully learned something from it but i also want to not look past the many celebrations and many things i've

157certainly witnessed as our end of school year is happening and some of the great stories that you've seen and certainly you want to thank the board for your attendance at each and every one of our graduations today so i just a huge thank you to our teachers our staff our students our parents and everyone involved with making this a successful year i too want to say thank you to our staff for putting on and the raise in tropicana field for allowing us to to infiltrate and to occupy tropicana field and to help us along the way also baycare park ballpark which graduated the other evening friday evening clearwater high school so and many of our other graduations that took place at our high schools for some of our smaller centers special centers and so forth

158again we finished we occupied them and we also represented them all i was very proud to hear the speeches of our students i shared with each and every faculty member the grateful feeling that they have and in their speeches i was astonished of the but also not surprised of the gratefulness that they felt to the teachers and the amount of time they felt to even thanking crossing guards food lunchroom service workers plan operators teachers administrators for really getting through this school year and making this school year a productive one for them so if you haven't seen that little video that the communications department they just took capture they captured bits and pieces of the of the students speeches and this is from their heart so this is a lot of what they've they've felt so

159thank you so much we were notified just the other day yesterday or the day before that tu tran this is a classroom support employee at rollins elementary school has been named as one of the top five finalists in all of florida as a school-related employee of the year tran has worked for six years and as a bilingual associate he's offered support to students during his lunch break and after school he also runs the principal's multicultural advisory committee we know it as pmac with pmac he creates activities that staff members and students can incorporate within their classroom he also leads and facilitates an after-school math club he does it all there he volunteers with faces with face it and helps teens throughout our district between the ages of 12 and 18 years of all learn about

160the consequences and effects of possessions of alcohol tobacco and other things you know since 2013 i had added up but we have had as a district that had six top five finalists and two overall state winners in the support employees which is unprecedented it's it's been great also just a reminder sarah painter our teacher of the year and is also a top five finalist is and has been in tallahassee since sunday she should be coming home tomorrow i'm interviewing and working with the commissioner and the leadership team in tallahassee as she goes up against four other finalists throughout the state of florida and i certainly say kudos to her and thank you for representing pinellas so well we have clearwater high school seniors that won the junior rotc scholarships we have three clearwater high school

161marine corps two of whom will be going to getting full full college scholarships of 180 to 000 each one going to the university of south florida in the fall to pursue a degree in civil engineering and the other two going to emory riddle aeronautical university both were receiving over just under a quarter of a million dollars to attend that university we also had senior winner a senior winner and also a principal of pinellas park jacqueline schmier charmier pinellas park high school senior received a full scholarship for two years and as a florida prepaid scholarship from the florida tax watch and she's 16 years of age she's an early college admissions student and she's also has overcome a tremendous amount she's legally blind and she'll be attending the university of florida she's done such a tremendous

162job so this scholarship will certainly become in extremely handy the florida tax watch also selected principal patterson to receive the florida one of a few principal leadership awards for raising the academic excellence of pinellas park high school so we congratulate both the student and the principal that received their awards just this past week really interesting i know this is the last time i can brag on some of these students and we don't have time to to do all of them but but some of them just are so different and that's the finalist for the npr's national competition allegra durst clearwater fundamental middle school eighth grader was named as a finalist of the national public radio npr 2021 student podcast challenge there were more than podcasts submitted from 47 states including the district of columbia and

163of that number 12 middle school finalists were named and allegra was one of those her podcast was named stardew valley which is loosely based on the video game stardew valley where players inherit their grandfather old farm plot and star in stardew valley so interesting stuff our students are competing throughout the united states just as a reminder our summer bridge is not only going to kick off but it's it's it's going very well we have over 17 000 students enrolled the one new program that i mentioned to the board was the rising kindergarten students we have over 1100 students and that number continues to grow rising kindergartens are registered for the kickoff into kindergarten and we have over 60 percent just around 60 percent of our targeted population registered for summer the summer summer bridge over

16417 000 total right now that have enrolled so we're going to continue that push we're happy that the parents are engaged with us and that it's going to be one of the more robust summer programs ever as i mentioned before we are providing transportation to probably around 45 4600 students and parents who've requested that so we're pleased to be able to provide that service this year and hope to continue it too that concludes my comments and thank you okay items introduced by the school board attorney i have no items thank you ma'am good thank you items introduced by school board members mr dudley thank you i wanted to first of all congratulate all the seniors graduating and you know we been a tough tough couple of years but they certainly have memories to share that

165are a little different than most everybody else but i did want to single out i had the honor and the privilege of attending the lelman innovation academy graduation and i got to tell you it was really something nice i this is the first class that started as fifth graders and went all the way through and graduated and there was i'm not sure that it was right now 100 103 or four whatever it was but i'll tell you what it was a great ceremony kids really were so ecstatic you know going up getting their diplomas the fellowship amongst all of them because most of them have been together since fifth grade and it was it was really a wonderful experience and my hats off to principal garcia she really did i the kids were everybody was

166very very respectful it was a really a very very nice ceremony and i think that when it was all done they after they all walked they gave each one of them the graduates a carnation and when they did the moving the tassel they all took the flowers and threw them in the air and then they went back later and retrieved them so they'd all have one but then they went out and had a little get-together out in the courtyard there and i was very impressed and it was very it wasn't what i expected i don't know what i was expecting but i just it was it was just different and it was remind me an old-fashioned graduation it was held in inside they have a gym slash auditorium put the chairs out they were all

167separated the kids all wore their masks a couple of students spoke and it was really really a great great ceremony and again my hat's off to ms garcia and the rest of their staff and they did wonderful and you can tell the kids really very sincere when they want to walk across the stage a lot of hugs and stuff because they know each other you know i mean they've been there you know since fifth grade so anyway that's really one i had to say i think that the now with the graduation's all behind us now and it's let's hope that from here on out we get some semblance of normalcy and i think we all have to kind of just look at what's happened is in the past it's done let's move forward and power

168positive thinking don't you know just go there with a great attitude next year and let's get it done thank you very good thank you all right miss kane thank you so much i want to say as we conclude this school year this has been one long school year for everybody involved and i just want to say an absolute thank you and heartfelt gratitude to all the teachers and staff of pinellas county from our lunchroom staff to our custodian staff to our bus drivers to our teachers we've all they have all pivoted in so many ways this year been incredibly innovative and supportive members of this community to our children we've been told many times tonight that we're uncaring or that we're unfeeling all of us here have families all of us here have children i

169have four children in schools and i can't thank the teachers enough for doing their absolute best in a world of unknowns this year we've all struggled as a community and i think it's an important time to come together and graduation's been a wonderful time for that i've seen many communities supporting each other being there for each other regardless of whether we all have the same issues the same problems everybody is struggling with something in their personal life everyone is struggling in different ways through this pandemic but it's important as a community to come together to make decisions that benefit as many people as possible in the community and i do thank staff and ad administration teachers all that were involved that continued to try to do what they knew or what they felt at the

170time was best for students and parents and families and thank you also to parents who pivoted and worked harder than ever this year to partner with teachers to help teachers if they were online and they were doing hybrid i know i did for several semesters and it and i felt like a teacher's assistant many times and that was a new experience for me even though i have done school online before for myself it was very different as a parent to become the teacher's assistant and try to teach my children through that medium and so i think teachers who worked with us parents who helped us through who may not know how to teach certain subject areas i've never been a kindergarten teacher and it was a learning education for me this year and i appreciate

171all the help and support that i received from the school and the principal and the vice principal and all involved it's been a difficult year for all of us and i am happy in some ways to put it to a close but also to take all the lessons learned forward as we move forward in education we've learned so much from this experience about teaching through technology i'm excited that in the future we might find better and more useful ways to use that technology for students to benefit their education moving into the future we have to think about what's coming next and how we can use these lessons to push our community our children and our families forward and so i thank everybody for this year for all the innovation and for all the hard work

172and dedication that so many people have put forth thank you thank you all right mrs long i'd like to also say thank you to all of these hard workers that we have in our school system dr grego for your leadership dr kopersky mr kaperski for your guidance in this all the administrators the teachers the support staff i haven't been at the last two meetings because i had coveted and i was in the hospital and a week ago i lost the biggest inspiration in my life my mother but she taught me that you have to be kind you have to think before you open your mouth you know children watch these meetings maybe not the little ones but the older ones and then i hear all people all the time how did our society get this

173way because we're teaching our kids when when you say these terrible mean things and i'm sorry but it has to be said respect starts with us and if we want our children to learn respect if we want our children to grow up to be good citizens it starts with us and i've learned i had a great mom who worked for child abuse i saw child abuse but my god it doesn't matter our private lives that has nothing to do with the job we do here that has nothing to do it's what we do here and every single one of us made these decisions to help everyone the parents the children the teachers and the community many of our support staff worked at nursing homes those older people had a right not to get coveted we

174didn't know what we were dealing with when we first started and mr kalu thank you i think i watched the last meetings i know that you've gone through some terrible things and sometimes it does take a lot of people to get knocked down but thank you for the support you showed tonight this is ridiculous this country is going down quickly and we're helping this isn't about mass this is about political issues and don't try to tell me it isn't we all need to be supportive of one another and i'm sorry i'm going off but at 60 years old i finally realized what's important is being kind to each other thank you thank you mrs edmund first i would like to congratulate the class of 2021 sorry i'm not supposed to clap in august i was

175a teacher i was a working at fairmont park elementary school mask on social distancing and everything i have four kids they've all gone through pinellas county schools and proudly one graduated last year from saint pete high school and one graduated from this year from saint pete high school when people come to explain or express their viewpoint regarding the decisions that have been made following the guidance of the medical team i think that it's important not only to be respectful as ms long mentioned but to have some type of understanding nobody knew what we were getting into here we are the cases have declined and we're moving forward the best thing for us to do now is be supportive i don't want to go on a tangent but i also think it's important to talk about

176some of the things that were voted on in the consent agenda and i am proud to support the equity position which will be an administrative on not special assignment my staff it will be a part of dr greg dr grego's leadership team when we talk about equity in education it's equity for all students all students whether you're low income houseless and foster care minority or student with disabilities so i am proud to support that initiative and i want to thank dr grego again and his staff for leading through the pandemic for being innovative when it comes to how are we going to be progressive and support cultural competence and equity for all students i think it's our job we all rant for elections and of course people can say what they want to say and

177do what they want to do but at the end of the day i believe that every single one of us is here because we want what's best for kids i'd also like to highlight some of the administrative appointments and that's one of ali owens for 74th street i had the opportunity of working with her at woodlawn elementary and again i can go on and on and on about my work experience my volunteer experience being a garden that light em and a parent of kids that attend pinellas county schools and when i tell you yes we have work to do but we have to have people that are willing to put forth the effort and what i've seen from behind the scenes and working with staff having one-on-one conversations is that this district is ready to

178move forward yes we have some area superintendent appointments and you know i really think that under dr grego's leadership and some of the goals that he has that we'll be able to move forward i won't go on and on and on but you really don't understand what goes on behind the scenes there's a lot of conversation and dialogue that you may not see or hear on the dyess and i am just grateful for all of the staff and the work they do behind the scenes it's not for a photo op is not to have a newspaper headline thank you kevin hendricks i really appreciate you thank you and i will close my comments by saying things have been politicized and moving forward we're going to have to remain focused focus on the end goal of

179100 student success thank you thank you dr carr thank you i'd like to just express appreciation to dr vazquez for her team and miss matway for the incredible job that went into all the behind-the-scenes work that was necessary to accomplish these graduations that we all had the opportunity to attend and experience i too had a student who graduated last year and during the pandemic and have students have children and i'm grateful that this year's class had that opportunity to experience that in a more closely gathered and well-attended event so thank you to the team for that work i also would like to point out some of the items in our consent agenda that were voted on today and including some of the changes to our area superintendents we acknowledge the retirements of some folks and

180when we have this much leadership turnover i just want to express that i appreciate them taking the risk and stepping into these new positions and that i know they will be well supported i'm very happy to see some of the placements of folks that still remain here and continue to mentor them and guide them through as they are stepping into these new roles as our new area superintendents also with the end of this year as i think mrs kane expressed well we didn't always know what we were getting into i think that it's important for us to acknowledge the individuals who made tremendous commitment throughout the year who spent large amounts of time weekends evenings in addition to our teachers who spent evenings and weekends learning the new software simultaneously teaching walking into an environment

181they didn't know but the individuals at the district and mr hendrick you were acknowledged for your leadership in our teaching and learning miss paula texel who had to help support and guide so many individual human resource decisions being made miss beth herrendin who has done a tremendous job working with the public and our communications department mr smith who had to navigate us through so many different decisions being made around finance mr kapersky for your guidance in our legal field and mr herbick you are amazing because not only did you have to first do all of the work involved in keeping our children safe with the new requirements of the marjory stoneman douglas act but then had to pivot that and make our schools more open and aerated while still complying with those elements provide transportation

182in a whole new way and serve food to students through closed doors so it's been a tremendous year i agree it's a time for us to come together as we make this turn and look forward into the accomplishments that we will achieve this summer working to fill any gaps in student learning and begin next year successfully so i'm proud to serve on this board i'm proud of my colleagues that i work with and i appreciate you your compassion your professionalism and your devotion to children so thank you for being allowing me to serve with you on this board and as part of this team thank you there have been a lot of things that have been said a lot of people have been thanked but i want to just share very quickly one thing that

183is kind of on my heart when i work with school boards i often share the story about the man that was at nasa and they were a reporter was walking around looking around and just seeing what was going on and he came across a man that was sweeping the floor and he went up to the man and said what are you doing and he said i'm working to put a man on the moon that's what this district has done this year all the way across the board every single person that has been involved has been working to get our children the best education that they can possibly have this particular year to do the best for our students to keep them safe to keep them getting a good education and also to meet their emotional

184and physical needs i'm not going to go through and again thank every individual people they have already been thanked and but i the one group that hasn't been thanked is this board i want to thank you we have managed there have been political issues that have come forward we are from a variety of political parties ourselves and not just two but we have managed to not make things political when we have been making decisions for our students and we have and we've worked hard to make sure that we're concentrating on what the students need and i want to thank you for that i want to thank you greatly i want to congratulate the students that have all graduated i think it's just amazing that they were still so excited about everything that was going on

185at the end of the year i want to wish all of our staff who is not going to be working over the summer i wish them the most relaxing and wonderful summer and those that are doing summer bridge thank you for doing so and we wish you great success with that so thank you very much and with that we will move on to any items that were requested by the board i did not record any questions except that mr herbert get in touch with mr onks that was here that would be the only thing okay and all righty so if there are no objections i will adjourn this meeting we will have our evaluation afterward but we will now move to public this meeting is adjourned and we will move to public participation mrs simonetti

186do we have speakers board members and dr grego we have i believe 12 speakers under general public comments our first speaker is sandy stegmeier welcome good evening first thing i'd like to tell to parasite man president trump is not a parasite he's the best president we ever had okay i currently have two high school students and two grandkids in pinellas county schools i'm also involved with moms for liberty we stand for american exceptionalism we stand for truth verse lies we stand for good verse evil moms for liberty says no to your locism agenda we say no to indoctrination of our children we say no to critical race theory and we say no to comprehensive sex ed we're not going away my friends who are teachers do not feel safe to speak out for fear or

187repercussions from you i found i find that astounding good news teachers we have your back governor ron desantis has your back turning point usa has your back charlie kirk is recruiting teachers giving you the tools and power to fight marxism in this school google turning point academy god bless and the battle has just begun thank you our next speaker is lee bryant good evening good evening chair cook vice chair long i'm so glad you're back we were worried about you we missed you i'm glad you're here dr grego and staff if you looked on the sheet that i turned in what i wanted to have public comments on it was simply thank you i know how hard this has been i was part of the team to bargain the mou the memorandum of understanding on

188how to get this county working safely we did not talk about democrats we did not talk about republicans we talked about safety for the teachers we talked about safety for the staff we talked about safety for the children and success for the children that was our concern and we worked hard to try to come up with a plan to make it happen that you have been accused of some of the things that you have been accused of is disgusting you have worked hard we have worked hard this county has worked hard to have a successful successful year it has been tough this is the toughest 10 years of 2021 i've ever had and i hope i never go through another decade like i just went through this year the negativity is just sad i know

189how hard miss texel worked i know how hard dr corbett worked i know how hard we all worked with the pcta looking out many sleepless nights many phone calls many tears with people that were worried about how we were going to get through this year we got through this year it was not easy thank you thank you in addition to that thank you for including the all of the instructional personnel in the bonus plan that is coming out and full-time support staff that is important because this is not teachers and principals this is school board teachers principals guidance counselors support staff bus drivers janitors everything is what it takes to make this school system work so we need to make sure we recognize that and appreciate them and i do now we need to make

190sure we get paid people paid a little bit better a living wage for some of these support people these workers thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is joanne marshall good evening i've been here before talking to you about bullying in pinellas county schools and the problem in seminole middle school has not been resolved if it was you wouldn't want a teacher to call you a d-i-c-k head this is a 12-year-old child you may have a bowling program that i did see with all these fancy slides but to me it's all bs today i want to read some comments from my son who went through bowling in broward county schools from elementary to high school all located in parkland my name is marshall i'm 28 years old i was excited when we

191moved from new jersey to florida and started kindergarten what i did not know then was i would endure years of bullying with no help from teachers the administration counselors or anyone else kids bullied and the parents bullied some years were worse than others i was miserable and emotionally destroyed i witnessed others being bullied instead of the bullied being the victim somehow we were made out to be the bad people my brother and sister were bullied as well nicholas cruz was bullied my daughter went to school with him as the years went on it got worse until i finally left the school without finishing high school that experience is something i would not wish on any child i've talked to alicia smith and i know how she feels you have an example here of bullying to

192work through yet you are failing you must change how you address the issue or you will find yourselves in a situation like parkland did it is not just a student retaliating who has been bullied but also those who choose to commit suicide don't put alicia in a situation like me where i grew up and wondered what my life could have been like if i wasn't subjected to years of bullying you are responsible for the children when they are in your care do your jobs or you will be voted out i am absolutely as a mother who went through this heartbroken listening to cynthia i know what it's like and it's horrible you have to do something i implore you please do something thank you thank you our next speaker is taylor huggin good evening good

193evening i'm taylor huggin i am a teacher at cypress woods elementary in east lake i've never actually spoken at a board meeting before it's my first time i just graduated from the university of florida with my masters of education and curriculum and instruction i was incredibly excited very proud of myself working full-time and through a pandemic and going to grad school i so excited submitted my transcripts to hr and was told that i do not qualify for the advanced degree supplement because curriculum and instruction does not fall under any area of certification now i am certified in elementary education i'm also certified in middle grade social studies and i think we could all agree here that the basis of what teachers do is develop and implement curriculum and doing that through instruction and i was

194told because there is no exam so there's no specific certification area in curriculum and instruction i am not qualified to receive my master's supplement and that was incredibly disappointing of course to here after spending you know over 30 000 at the university of florida to receive my degree so i just asked that maybe that be revisited at some point some understanding that how a degree a master's of education and curriculum instruction is not considered an area of certification for a teacher to me logically does not make sense and i was unfortunately denied by hr however i was told i had a concentration in educational technology that i could receive an under educational technology but i would have to take an exam the exams i was provided by hr was library media specialist exam computer science

195exam or engineering exam which i thought was very confusing as none of those fall under educational technology so i thought it was interesting they said i would qualify in educational technology with no matching exam but not under curriculum instruction which i have two l1 elementary and a middle school certification for so i asked that one that the curriculum and instruction be revisited as an area of certification qualifying for the advanced degree supplement as that's the basis of what we do as classroom teachers and then a suggestion i would have is that maybe we create a document with hr that actually shows what majors and degree programs would qualify what exams you would need because going into this i'm though i'm very happy with what i selected i might have chosen a different path knowing that

196this was not one leading to additional financial security not that's what it's about we're not an education for money clearly but just having a document maybe that explains the teachers who are looking to further their education so that we know if you choose this major this is not going to lead to the advanced degree supplement and then this will and this is the exam you'll need to take when you're done i think that offers some clarity for teachers so they're not kind of blindsided like i was just excited and was crushed thank you for your time thank you taylor if you will please first of all congratulations we're happy to have you and congratulations for your degree paul texel is the head of human resources unfortunately or i don't know what it's hard to to

197get into your transcripts here and it's not really the best place so unfortunately some laws have been passed that have restricted us from from doing some of those things that we would otherwise dance but miss texel heads up our human resources right behind that clock there so it should be overjoyed to talk with you thank you wonderful thank you yeah thank you good luck to you the idea of a list of master's degrees that would qualify i think is also a good idea so thank you our next speaker our next speaker is mark clutho again welcome mark luther perspective most important word and we look at what was said tonight the woman wearing the maga hat she couldn't get the word complicit right and then what did we hear from this woman in the cult

198oh isn't it something so sad where was trump when i was in vietnam you have an answer for that one i don't change the subject study links reduce screen time to raise cognition how about that and here's one teaching slavery the great is an f getting back to the buildings and what's happening with this planet get ready for climate disasters it's not going to be a pretty place giving aging buildings a green makeover developers are devising ways to retrofit new york's oldest structures to reduce their carbon footprints well you have these buildings for two decades i've been coming here with the science of high performance passive solar building that's being employed here with these retrofits and it's just been flagrantly ignored and that's why the hurricanes are getting bigger wildfires are getting worse and more

199frequent and the ice is melting not going to be pr a pretty future thank you our next speaker is kathy swagger good evening hi my name is kathy schweigert as you just announced and i live in clearwater so i'm speaking about the curriculum i'm i'm not so familiar with everything that's being taught in the schools i've just met parents and i've heard a lot of criticism and i've done a lot of reading so this is what this is my opinion basically as a school board you have key roles and one of them is ensuring schools operate in a manner that reflects local values and needs this and i got off the line offline and we've heard a lot of parents today that have their needs which is to have their children unmasked and i see

200that we have a lot of very irate parents who feel like they're not being listened to that's something that you all get to handle my subject is in our country and in our county the majority rules in pinellas county our majority values and needs are this we are conservative americans who want our children well educated with knowledge they can use to survive well in this world i think we're all of like mind in that if you want to open minds and enable all our children this includes reading lots of different books to learn about many different cultures ideas experiences attitudes and decisions both good and bad that show consequences written by many different authors including anne rand harper lee shakespeare and even dr zeus who made reading fun and silly and some of these books

201have been cancelled i don't know if they were cancelled here in your school they were not i'm so happy to hear that because the vast reading is what gives us a vast education real education includes learning phonics do you guys teach phonics good phonics using dictionaries now i have talked to students who didn't understand the meaning of a word and the teacher told them figure it out from the context i even educated some college-level students in a seminar i was doing and they were told the same thing so this is this is backwards you should get the dictionary out how can you know if a word has seven different definitions which is the one that fits in in into that context i mean look at the word congress congress has a very wide range of

202definitions all the way from the government meeting to having sex it's like where did the heck come from so we have that and then cursive was cut out of schools is it cut out of the schools here cursive yeah i don't understand cutting out a cursive writing because part of our education includes writing in such a way to make one's voice heard and duplicatable cursive so as adults our children can read the letters our grandparents wrote to each other and saved which described world war ii and what occurred and what happened in germany or the original declaration of independence or working out your own personal thank you yeah i did thank you yeah if you'll leave it with mrs simonetti where the know mr kaversky they'll make yeah thank you okay our next speaker is

203kevin king if kevin king is not present our next speaker will be nancy vilardi good evening hello there there are two issues i would like to put before you this evening first is the issue of non-relu renewals i understand that the law allows non-renewal of annual contract teachers at the end of any year but is it truly in the best interest of pinellas county schools to non-renew teachers after their first year of teaching especially when there had been no interventions no supports or even conversations about what that teacher might need or do to improve i doubt any educator in this room or in any room across the nation would claim that they were a great teacher in their first year i know i was not but i did become one with years of support and

204the expert guidance of my more seasoned colleagues which brings me to what possible reason would those seasoned teachers after 10 or 15 years of service be non-renewed did they suddenly become inept at their craft or is it possibly a cost savings maneuver annual contract vulnerability is only one in a long line of state-determined edicts which brings me to my second issue teachers and staff are constantly fighting against the gradual usurping of local control by the state legislature but we need and expect your help i understand that there are certain things that you have opposed but we are asking that you take a stronger stand against people who are ill-qualified to make local decisions from doing so executive order after executive order in just the past year took control out of your capable hands and determined

205how schools opened despite a district's individual case numbers the masking issue even was determined by those outside of our community this has been a gradual takeover of locally controlled public education that can only serve to eventually weaken us non-educators now determine when we teach what we teach and how we teach yet we have seen no massive improvement in in results teaching should be entrusted to the teacher who not only has the appropriate schooling training and heart for the job but has also been saddled with additional state mandated trainings that have not proven to improve practice evaluations are determined by the state used by many and used by many as weapons to attack and dismiss teachers who refuse to conform to a state recommended robotic methodology methodology which is no place in the education of children

206i've heard this body appropriately commend the wonderful teachers of pinellas county it's time to give them back the autonomy to perform the function they were born to do and were trained for if you want successful public schools listen to those who love them rather than those who are seeking to destroy them thank you thank you our next speaker is jeremy kench is mr kench still here cynthia smith good evening again good evening i do have to say i understand you guys have had a lot going on you guys have been working overtime but you have missed some things i've come here week number five story keeps getting worse worse and worse not actually story the events that my daughter goes through i am excited to hear that next week or next school board you're voting

207on bullies getting sent to secondary schools i hope you guys pass that because i have to say what happened to alicia and what happened at seminole middle school on may 28th was the same type of bullying but leo's thing was handled much better than alicia's i was not allowed to know what exactly happened to the kids and how they were disciplined but i'm hearing from the media and your spokesperson that the kids got suspended and are being sent to a secondary school alicia still has to go to school or had to go to school with the students that physically attacked her she still saw them in the hall every day there was a thing that happened on march 12th 13th and 14th and i know i sent it to everybody where the kids bullied her

208the teacher reported it and the assistant principal said that they believe that the bullies over the teacher and alicia and they refused to remove the students from alicia's classroom it wasn't until dr hines thank you dr hines came on and got into the meeting third day in a row meetings and said we need to put a teacher in the classroom that still made alicia uncomfortable because she's the center of attention because there's a teacher there for her but those kids are still allowed in the classroom there was other students that were moved and i was told because there was 14 days left just 14 and a half days left of school the kids are not being removed from the classroom by the assistant principal and the principal that's what i was told that my daughter

209was in fear for her safety and it didn't matter they're not removing because there's 14 and a half days of school and this conversation happened on the 19th of may things need to change i pray that you guys vote for that for the police to remove to secondary school where these teachers are trained better to handle this i am so heartbroken and alicia couldn't make it today because she's so upset she just can't she's like mom i can't like who sit outside with the people she's like no i can't handle it so please let's get these laws changed or policies change to make the school year better next year not some trump to program let's see action please and let's get a workshop done with us parents whose children are bullies thank you our next

210speaker is julie vain good evening hi good evening everybody i just wanted to read you a quick google search of critical race theory the first words are critical race theory crt is an academic movement of civil rights scholars and activists in the united states so i guess what i'm saying to you all is we've seen the adoption of it in our culture in corporations and i hope to god it doesn't happen in pinellas county schools because we'll be watching you've awoken the sweep sleeping giant and we will be watching an academic theory that is being promulgated has no room in elementary middle and high school education i hope you all consider that and know we will be watching we will be watching very closely thank you so much and we appreciate everything that you do

211good night thank you are there any other speakers our final speaker this evening is nick pierce good evening my first time here i came motivated because i wanted to learn and understand why our education is failing our children i heard all the self congratulatory comments i heard hard work that doesn't equate the results let me give you a reality check we're way behind the world in science in math in reading we're not teaching our children to think objectively that's why i came but that's not why i was motivated to come up this evening i was motivated by this lady here in the other room i heard her speak impassionately about her troubled child who forgive me if i misheard you but i thought you referenced your child might even be on the verge of suicide

212because of the covet policies that this cognizant cognoscenti group has implemented but what galls me and dr greco will you look at me please because i've been observing you eighty percent of the time you look down you don't give your speakers any respect emails there maybe well i think like any teacher would respect eye contact you ignored her multiple attempts and i find that unconsciousable arrogant disrespect comes to my mind and i say shame on you owe that woman an apology i deal with ceos i evaluate them i help pick them the best ceos listen to their customers these are your customers you're not listening to them i've learned this evening there are a lot of angry people you're not doing your jobs thank you thank you are there any any other speakers there are

213no further speakers jen that ends this portion of the meeting thank you