School Board Meeting 7_27_21

001good evening and welcome to the july 27th 2021 regular board meeting which i now call to order is pastor al pastor king is he here have we had him for the last minute or two pastor king is here all right since yeah okay since he is not here we will have a moment of silence we'll we'll stand for that and we'll after the moment of silence vice chairman mrs long will begin the pledge of allegiance and it will be followed by the national anthem this evening the national anthem will be performed by the palm harbor university high school after school specials under the direction of choral director blake hudson please stand and we'll have our moment of silence to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands

002one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all can you see by the dawn what so proudly we have is our spanish the grace thank you the referendum funded ignite a music camp that was held with the third consecutive summer with great success any middle school student who had a music course during the 2021 school year was invited to attend the free two-week camp held at the pinellas county center for the arts at gibbs high school and for the first time this summer transportation was provided so let's take a look at some of the highlights of camp ignite camp is a completely free referendum-funded camp for incoming 7th 8th and 9th graders who are enrolled in a music class in pinellas county schools here at ignite camp our students are in their full

003band course or orchestra ensembles but on top of getting to collaborate with students across the district they are also enrolled in three electives and we tried to pick electives that they maybe weren't offered at school so we have classes such as digital music it's really fun i'm getting to like learn new things kind of like digital music i didn't know you could like make music online really my band teacher told us it would be a really fun experience to like learn new things what i really like is that it's not just like do the assignments and get them done you actually take a lot of time on all the different assignments and the tj will help you i in the last couple of days i remember like the first day i was like surprised at

004how much i learned i feel like it's so much better to play in a band honestly than on your own you just feel more into it you feel more active and you just like want to play you know it's just making me a better musician every day and i feel like it's the best band camp i really love how we all come from obviously different teaching styles because of the different teachers so there's different things that people do know and they can help me out with maybe like during warm-ups stuff like that so i really great being around a bunch of other people that have the same passion as i do which is singing and yeah i just really enjoy it so on thursday we will put together a final concert of everything that they

005have been working on for the past two weeks so our full band our full chorus and full orchestra will perform but on top of that we'll also hear from some of our electives so the concert is their time to show what they've learned this week so to see the program grow you know when we started out we had two components we had chorus and band it was about 50 or so students so to be at over 100 and have that strength component this year has just been truly thrilling people really craved doing things together people really craved attending concerts and just experiencing music together making music together so it was really enjoyable to look out on that stage and just see those connections happening and to just see people finally be able to participate in

006that thing that they've been waiting for this was absolutely amazing i didn't know what to expect i wanted to see my grandson he plays the saxophone what they were able to accomplish in two weeks oh my god i can't believe it they i mean they sound so professional it's incredible to see the orchestra these are kids from all over and you think they've been playing together forever i kept thinking we'd have to pay for it i mean they really put a lot of money and time into the camp i was very impressed it's nice because it's kind of back to normal after the whole covet deal right so this is the first time that she's really been involved in a larger group activity with a number of other kids she was excited very like thrilled

007loved to like like it was an enjoyment for her to get up and be able to participate with all the kids here confidence level has definitely gone up i thought this was an awesome program especially since it was free it was the best vote that i ever cast as it relates to expanding the horizons for my daughter's opportunity she's a bit of an introvert and she was excited about this recital this camp did everything that i expected it to do and more i think we need to thank the citizens of pinellas county again for passing the referendum because this was supported and paid for by our referendum dollars for all of these students so thank you very much we'll now move on to introductions of professional and community organization representatives with mrs isabella mascarenas our

008public information officer good evening madam chair members of the board dr grego and staff it is my pleasure to introduce the following members representatives of community and professional organizations from the pinellas classroom teachers association we have nancy villardi president from the pinellas arts for a complete education coalition we have victoria hegedorn co-chair and at this time we have no members of the media present thank you thank you all right we'll now move to see if there are any amendments to the agenda dr gregor yes ma'am chair there's two amendments the agenda the first is 7.24 the superintendent's recommendation the administrative appointment to the principal lakewood elementary school recommending renee nellenbach currently assistant principal at lakewood elementary school and the second is 8.2 which is the approval of the mental health and wellness plan for 2021-22

009and this is the addition of our actual application the board is requested and also as the board discussed during the workshop a real comparison of not only school counselors but social workers school psychologists and so forth on there so we changed a portion of that so we altered it so that concludes the amendments very good thank you and i find good cause to to amend those two items 7.24 for the lakewood principal and 8.2 for the mental health awareness plan board members are there any items to be pulled from the agenda okay mrs edmond i would like to pull agenda item 719 please all righty so we will vote on that right after we do the consent agenda anyone else okay then do we have a motion to adopt the agenda as amended by motion

010to adopt okay mrs long mean the motion okay mrs kane may in a second all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you all right we will now move to public comment on agenda items and before we do that members of the public have three opportunities to address the board when we gather for a meeting the first opportunity is to speak during public comments on agenda items the next opportunity is when there is a public hearing most of which are policy but lastly after the meeting is adjourned we will remain for public participation when speakers may address items pertaining to the business of the district now tonight we have a separate meeting for the presentation of the proposed budget this meeting will be time certain at 6 30. and

011if you're here to address the budget you will have the opportunity to do so during the budget hearing not during this portion of the public comment at each opportunity for the public input board members are here to listen to you this is not a time for us to discuss or debate we will not take any formal action on information brought forward unless it is pertaining to an agenda item on which we're going to vote however the board and superintendent may clarify statements or refer the speaker to the proper staff person to help them work through any concern that's brought forward the board is committed to a standard of civility and decorum in conducting our meetings whether you agree or disagree with the viewpoints expressed by the speakers please refrain from showing audible support or disagreement

012we also ask that you assist us in maintaining a civil and constructive environment while confining your comments to the business of the district and refrain from profanity in temperate or rude comments thank you very much mrs christie do we have any speakers board members and dr grego we have two speakers for specific agenda items the first speaker is james michael shaw jr and he's here to speak on item 7.19 okay good thank you good evening good evening can you hear me yes good evening my name is james michael shaw jr and i serve as local council for the naacp legal defense fund i'm speaking as to agenda item 719 the interagency agreement with law enforcement we have to ensure that police don't replace teachers as the first responders to routine childhood misbehavior this agreement has

013to be vetted unintended consequences are unacceptable when those consequences can ruin a child's future unfortunately the proposed agreement requires all crimes even something as minor as stealing a stick of chewing gum to be reported to law enforcement and allows those officers to decide in the place of educators whether to treat that matter as one of school discipline or whether to involve the criminal justice system we know from social science research that turning police officers into school disciplinarians increases student anxiety creates alienation and distrust diminishes students faith in the legitimacy of the school and authority of the school staff and can end up causing rather than preventing misbehavior harsh disciplinary practices such as school-based arrests increase the risk that students will fail a grade drop out of school and become entangled in the criminal justice system

014law enforcement officers placed in school to often discipline arrest and assault black children at a higher rate than their white peers violating state and federal anti-discrimination laws although black students do not misbehave more than white students there were more than twice as many arrests of black pinellas county students than white pinellas county students during the 2018 and 2019 school years even though there are nearly three times as many white students than black students in pinellas county schools arrests and civil citations are often done for subjective reasons in florida quote unquote disorderly conduct is the third most frequent reason for school-based arrest were pinellas county's law enforcement agencies to refrain from citing or arresting students for quote-unquote disorderly conduct the number of civil citations and arrests would decrease by 45 percent for black students 12 percent

015for hispanic students and 19 for white students this agreement was prepared behind closed doors without meaningful input from students parents educators and community members once this came to light many local organizations including the pta the local naacp chapters lulac labor and a coalition of nearly 50 local church congregations supported common sense revisions however law enforcement officers vetoed most of the community supported changes and placed the agreement back on this board's consent agenda at a time when many families are out of town during the summer to be rubber stamped so we ask that you not approve this agreement and instead engage the community directly as to what changes the community would like to see and i thank you for your time thank you our second speaker tonight is nancy velardi and she's here to speak on

016item 8.2 non-consent okay good evening good evening pcta has met with the district about the plan for mental health upgrades for the upcoming year and expressed our belief that the current plan does not go far enough to meet the needs of the students after a traumatic year and a half many families suffer severe illnesses losses of family members and financial devastation was widespread many of our teens were called upon to take on responsibilities normally reserved for those with more maturity some by working to help support the family others providing child care for their their younger siblings even with the planned additions to the varied mental health professionals we're still more than double the ratios recommended by the american school counselor association the school social worker association and the national association of school psychologists many of

017our mental health professionals are already overburdened with caseloads far beyond what is understood to be ideal we risk losing some of these professionals because they've been unable to properly fulfill their duties and obligations to these children by giving them the individual time and care necessary it is recommended in the plan that schools encourage not to utilize mental health professionals in any other capacities as has been done for years they've been testing coordinators proctors and called to various duties far beyond the contractual requirement of other instructional personnel pcta believes we need to go further than encouraging schools to discontinue these practices we need to hire others to coordinate the testing and leave the mental health professionals to their appropriate calling our children have faced the same experiences we all have but they are far from having

018developed the necessary coping skills to handle that trauma even some adults have struggled with the negative impacts of the pandemic resulting in various forms of depression and anxiety our children are far more vulnerable by dent of age and they have witnessed and experienced those same fears and concerns it is our responsibility to be properly prepared to help them through this difficult time so that they're ready to learn learning loss will not be recouped until the various results of the pandemic are healed it is the necessary first step thank you good thank you madam chair we do have two more speakers this evening for specific agenda items all right the next speaker is chantal smith okay speaking on item 7.19 good evening good evening hi my name is chantel smith again and i'm requesting that the

019item agenda number 7.19 be tabled educators should write school policies not law enforcement because educators have been trained and taught how to how to teach our children how to discipline children properly and i send my daughter to school to be educated not policed ideally educators would write the policy and police could give input optimally the community would be involved so that the policies would be comprehensive fair and equitable as those are the community's children lastly i wanted to give an example of a suggestion for the verbiage that was given by the community and by community agencies that was stated that the children's rights need to be stated to them in a way that they can understand and that is that they didn't understand my daughter is autistic i can't imagine her being not told her

020rights in a way that she could understand and when you have adults that have confessed to things that they did not do because of the fear and intimidation and interrogation you cannot imagine how that is for a child so i think again this policy should be tabled i think that educators should write it with community input and police input as well that's fine but i think that we this needs to be revisited because i feel that our like again our children come to school to be educated not police we are sending our children to get a diploma not to leave with a record thank you thank you our next speaker is paula stevens and they will speak to non-consent item 8.2 good evening good evening madam chair school board members dr grego i'd first like

021to thank all of you for the job you do i know it is difficult and coming off a year of dealing with what we did last year i know hopefully it will be a little easier unfortunately not everything is back to the way we were excuse me so i also want to take a moment to go ahead and thank all those social service workers our school psychologists our school counselors our social workers they went above and beyond last year to the call of duty and we really i know in the plan that you will soon be looking at it looks like they've grouped together them as a mental health services and now have put them as a one to 197 which still look it looks good number wise but i am questioning whether or not

022that's going to give my school any more than one counselor because we're still about 650 so if you're grouping together social worker guidance or school counselor and school psychologist hopefully we'll have a full-time social worker and a full-time psychologist which will greatly help since we now only have them probably three days a week versus five but that still only leaves us with one school counselor for 650 kids it's not enough it is not enough the americans school counselor association recommends that schools maintain a ratio of one of 250 students per counselor that would put my school with around 650 with at least two full-time and a part-time guide or school counselor i know you don't have the bodies at this time but i would encourage you to continue to look at those numbers and make

023sure especially in elementary school if we catch them when they're young and their behaviors can be looked at and changed more easily then we might not have the problems we have in middle school in high school where you can give them the services and support they need while they're young and give them that second chance so and as some several speakers before me said please let them work with students and take away all the other responsibilities and let them do what they're here to do and help our students thank you thank you and she will speak to agenda item 8.2 8.2 okay janet cunningham there you go good evening good evening board members dr grego i want to say thank you for last year recognizing that we needed help and i want to thank you

024for recognizing that we need help now to deal with the mental health aspects that our students will be facing i know several previous speakers have spoken on this i want to take a little different spin to this as an ese teacher and a former social worker i went through and reviewed the 18-page document that you all put out dealing with the mental health services and my concern is there are multiple services that overlap now every one of these services that you have on this list is robust and helpful however we have a lack of staff to be able to provide the services and the staff that we do have is not cross-trained in the different fields i'm going to list real quickly the services if you haven't had a chance to read them that are

025on there each of these services will deal with students in tier one two or three or a combination the services are the pbis supports positive positive behavior supports restorative practices harmony social and emotional learning second step why try modular approach to therapy for children with anxiety depression trauma or conduct disorder resilience education training cognitive behavioral intervention for trauma in schools insights to behavior civil schools classroom management prepare crisis response oes bullying prevention trauma informed care check and connect culturally relevant teaching all of these evidence-based practices all of these positive and helpful for our students however we don't have the supports in place for our social workers clinical staff and or teachers to be cross-trained in these i deal with the students at the tail end of tier three in ese at a center when students

026come to us they may have gone through several different previous counselors and or social workers who have been trained in different aspects of this i would suggest streamlining these programs and specializing with our services so that we can meet the needs of our students not just our ese students but our students that will be returning after the summer and dealing with concerns and trauma please consider looking at what you have at this point and streamlining it for fiduciary responsibility thank you thank you is that it are there more speakers there are no more speakers okay then that ends the public the public comment to the agenda items all right so we will now move to the consent agenda do we have a motion to adopt the consent agenda okay mr dudley and mrs long so

027we have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously we'll now look at item 7.19 do we have a motion okay mr dudley do we have a second second all righty miss hein all right so we have a motion in a second now so we can put this on the table and discuss it dr grego i'm going to ask that since miss edmond pulled the item that we let her speak first and then we'll direct it to you okay this is edmond thank you i would like to thank everyone who provided comments and worked on the interagency agreement this agree this agreement includes several items that would not have been included if we did not discuss it during our workshops

028as well as solicit community feedback i have a few questions that i'd like to ask some of these questions i asked at the workshop my first question why would the board not include use of force miranda rights and search and seizures as suggested by stakeholders in this agreement yeah ms edmonds those are good questions and i'm glad you brought them up at the workshop but i think it's also good that we air those out here too so chief williams will will address each of these questions again and certainly to because they're good questions yeah good evening everyone yeah so the agreement includes information from all the agencies and each agency has their specific policies as it relates to miranda warning uses of force and those types of topics that you brought up and for that

029all to be included verbatim in this document would make it super long so the way that we handle that is through consensus so that we have the policy that is germane to all those topics so we don't go into individually how we each do miranda i know the question was just raised about being able to make sure that miranda rights are given to a student so that they understand those all those are built in to each law enforcement policy otherwise you would lose case and i don't want the public to get the impression that there are a number of interviews taking place with children and with kids to that to the degree in which it was depicted so simply because the specific language from each agency could not be added into this agreement that is

030why it's not there but each policy each agency has policies addressing those very issues that you brought up mr kopersky yes madam chair thank you thank you chief williams for that but just to add on to that since i also addressed this at the workshop for the board member's sake for the for the public's sake there were large sections that the ldf the legal defense fund of the naacp national offered in their red line version we met internally for multiple meetings and then of course we went to the other parties of the agreement which is law enforcement to see what they thought of some of the changes and this is what we came up with as a recommendation but specifically to those different topics you raised mrs edmund the search and seizure there was a

031large section in there that they recommended search and seizure in a public school setting is a very distinct area of the law one with which i'm very familiar as a school board attorney it is not the same as a law enforcement officer searching and seizing a property of somebody in the public the fourth amendment governs that probable cause and a warrant is needed in a criminal setting but with our special relationship with students often referred as to as in local parentis in the location of the parent the supreme court has given school officials and in the state of florida that includes full-time sros the supreme court has given school officials the authority to engage in search and seizure with only reasonable suspicion and that's a legal term of art and that's defined by case law

032but that's less than probable cause so what the ldf had offered and i understand why they offered it but what they offered would have provided more protections than what the law provides and so we needed to balance you know their recommendations with the need for us to currently engage in our current practices which are allowed by law and the supreme court in order to maintain a safe educational environment so surge and seizure is a unique area the other two use of force and miranda rights those in my opinion really purely are law enforcement related issues we have use of force in the public school setting but use of forces in the law enforcement realm is truly a law enforcement specific type of term of art as is the miranda warnings obviously and so in our

033opinion we did not feel that it was appropriate to include those in this agreement which would also bind our school administrators so i would not want principal williams or principal jones at some school to have to implement or monitor the use of miranda warnings among their students by a law enforcement officer and so those two issues in my mind specifically were law enforcement and as chief williams noted there are protocols and general orders among all of these law enforcement agencies and so if a law enforcement officer on our grounds violates somebody's miranda rights not only does that probably destroy the criminal or juvenile case that would proceed in the judicial system because they violated their rights but it would also probably lead to potential discipline of that law enforcement officer that's for the law enforcement

034officer and law enforcement agency to deal with and so those are just a summary of the issues that you raised mrs edmond okay chief it was mentioned during the workshop that there's a form that officers have to complete if they question or interrogate someone without parent parental permission can you elaborate on that's correct it's very important that if a child is interviewed at in a school setting for some type of crime that there is a person that's there that's representing the best interest of that child we'd like for that to be the parent and in some instances we're unable to to meet that because we can't contact the parent for one reason or another so it's guaranteed we have to guarantee that there is an administrator or someone within the school that is sitting there

035with the best interest of that child in mind and available for that interview so there is a form that we do in case in the instance where we were unable to reach a parent and an interview took place and i've been here since march 1st of and i've only had to have one of those forms done and it's not a form that an officer would want to complete because they will be facing some punitive actions because of the rules that we have in place of ensuring that there's someone there for that child thank you and it was mentioned earlier about the potential for america it was mentioned earlier of the potential for a minor crime like stealing a pencil being something that is an arrestable offense can you provide more detail about that i would

036be happy to because what the district and what we're working toward and what we've actually done as a result of the agreements that we've had is that we're making sure that the school administrators are involved and that the minor misconduct is handled through the code of student conduct and so the inference that officers would be involved with someone stealing a stick of gum i don't say it's laughable but it is really simplistic because the officer would not be involved in that's something that the school administrators are expected to to take care of and address i think what the attorney is relating to is that the statute is requiring now that because of successor and reporting on the safety of of students in our on our school campuses that those incidences all be reported because elsewhere

037in the state there are things that should have been reported that wasn't so at this point the inference is that everything's reported but i can tell you that from the sheriff and every chief that has school resource officers in our schools they will not be taking any action on those types of instances such as what was depicted okay and is there a reason why this needs to be voted on today yes the reason for this needing to be voted on today is because this is a an agreement that we've been working on for over a year now as you all know for those who may have not been as closely related to this as i have been back in 2004 we had an agreement that basically did exactly what we were just speaking of taking

038the officers out of school related issues and allowing the administration to take care of that in 2016 we also looked at strengthening that particular agreement and so when marjory stoneman douglas came around with the commission and there was state requirements statute requirements that we have this agreement in place and then secondly that they include certain items we decided at that time that it would be smart on our part to consolidate those agreements that we've had in the past because obviously they've worked so if you go back to 2013-2014 school year there was 633 arrests of students in schools there's only 180 days calendar days in a school year so this past year those arrests are down to 114. any arrests in any of our schools are too many i will stand here and say that

039but the agreement should be in place because it is an agreement between the school board and law enforcement there's a lot of hard work that's gone into that agreement there is some training that needs to take place next week that because of information that we've dealt with and including the legal defense fund both the saint petersburg branch of the naacp the upper pinellas county branch of the nwcp and a number of community members that this agreement again there's training that needs to take place there's comments that have been made about this is a step in the right direction by involving the community and absolutely it is but at the same time there's if we don't get this agreement made then a lot of the good the input that you all have actually suggested that is

040currently being approved by everyone it would be delayed and we won't be able to do that and monday's training that i have for every school resource officer and school resource deputy will we would not be able to touch on the topics that are very germane to this agreement that they would need to operate within such as not allowing a an officer to come to a school to interview a child of a about a crime that occurred off campus that was occurring where officers because the they knew the child would be in school they would come to the school to find him that's all changed if it didn't occur at the school doing it during school hours they're not being encouraged to come to the school to do those those interviews so those things that you

041say are good and i agree that they are and this is the agreement that will be revisited annually so if there's things that we need to look at and tweak and modify we most certainly do that but again i will say that this is something that the statute requires it's an agreement between the school district the school board and law enforcement and again with it being reviewed annually i think that these changes that we've made are good changes we will be reviewing it and it's very important that we get this agreement done are there any other questions i want to allow everyone else to weigh in if they like okay dr carr thank you and thank you chief for your thorough explanation and i appreciate the time that was taken during board workshop to address

042some of these concerns we many of us had the opportunity to be present for some of the other meetings that took place and one of the issues or concerns and it was also brought up earlier was the disproportionate arrest rate and i my question really is to mr kapersky regarding and to dr grego as well that perhaps while that issue might be beyond the boundaries of this particular agreement initially when the rule came into place that we would be required to have school resource officers in all of our schools at the level that we do now there was considerable discussion about how what the role and function of those officers would be in regards to enforcing the code of student conduct so my question would be perhaps in the future at a potentially at staff's

043availability and for us to potentially discuss at workshop to investigate the potential need for us to be explicit in other board policy and define the role and function for our administrators edification and behavior so for example to eliminate any possibility of an administrator or teacher or any school board employee utilizing law enforcement for enforcement of the code of student conduct so while it may not be pertinent to this particular agreement between law enforcement potentially there is a time when without proper guidance support training someone may falsely go to the school resource officer and ask them to enforce a mild a code of conduct violation versus a legal violation and the intention of of the officers in in addition to building positive relationships with our students is to keep our students safe and not to penalize

044them for something that is not a violation of the law so my thought would be in the future if that could be followed up and discussed further as something because it was an issue that came up from public comment from input and while it's not specific to this agreement just the follow-up so it happens that one thing before they speak and i'm very glad that you brought that up because i don't want anybody to be be mistaken that the public comment isn't and the public input isn't important because it very much is so and out of those public comments we were able to identify issues that are outside of this interagency agreement that should and must be addressed and there are things that have been put in place to do exactly that so if mr

045kapersky or dr greger would want to expound i can if you'd like but i know that there's items that we've identified that we have been working on and we will continue to and work even harder because just as there is a disparity in the graduation rate there are some issues that have come up as it relates to the arrests particularly of african-american males that's going to take the same type of zeal and attention not only from the district not only from law enforcement but the entire community whether you're a parent an uncle or whomever or even if you don't have children i'm encouraging people to become involved and really not sit back and just talk about it but let's come up with some useful solutions that we can all work together to make come to

046fruition so with that i'll be quiet and let me support you mr kapersky is there anything you'd like yeah i just have one comment and sorry dr gregor if i'm stepping on your toes but relevant to that there is and coming off of chief's comments there is a provision that we added as a result of reviewing the legal defense funds draft and that's on page three and forgive me for reading but it's very short it is the intent of this agreement that low-level acts of misconduct that do not pose a threat to school safety should as a rule not be referred to law enforcement and should as a rule not result in student arrest now that is not their language verbatim because we added some disclaimers and i'm sure they would like us to have

047taken their language verbatim but that's language that exists that would not have existed without their comments and we can go forward and train our own administrative staff using that principle thank you i'd like to add that the majority of the training that takes place where the sro and the school leaders principal assistant principals or sso they're they're two different jurisdictions but that is a major heart of what that training should be the student code of conduct should be handled entirely by the by the principal and the staff and where what your discussion though dr carr is real and it needs to be continually brought up and continually discussed and provided examples non-examples and so forth there's not an officer out there that wants to do just the opposite and likewise is not the administrator too

048so that discussion that needs to happen i want to remind the board that this agreement that came out of the marjory stoneman douglas is to take a look at things that perhaps as a state and a nation we learned that perhaps how to prevent such a tragedy to happen or to hopefully never happens and the things we learn sometimes is little things that perhaps don't get reported don't get reported and not that they have to be criminal or criminalized but their concerns that then all of a sudden bottle up and something happens and we look back at those issues we say why didn't someone consult with this person or that person all of a sudden the pieces get to get put together really fast so we need to all keep in mind that a lot

049of these recommendations came out of about a year or two of really studying what happened and potentially as the sheriff always says how to prevent hopefully prevent something from happening again and along the way as you mentioned dr carr we're going to need to train back and forth what does that look like is it an absolute every time or is there are there gray areas along the way and sometimes our guts as the school administrator says you know something's just not right here let me consult so information is good the end product needs to be to keep our schools safe from harm and parents send their students to school they expect them to come back to so thank you for the work and thank you chief for for this work too okay mr dudley my

050experience has been that sros and school administrators are pretty well versed in where they're supposed you know what the delineation is and i know that i know times have changed but there are certain items that sros won't touch because they are school related i think a lot of what you're concerned about is actually in vogue right now and they're doing that certainly as new administrators come on board and they need to be educated and all but i just don't want the public to get the idea that because a teacher feels uncomfortable about something and is a violation of some school policy to go to the sro mostly sros will tell them that's a school issue and you need to go talk to the administration and i think that they do a very credible job of

051that and they don't you know police officers they don't want to step on anybody's toes and administrators they sometimes i realize through frustration they may call to have something taken care of that is in their realm of discipline and whatever and they don't but i have i have found and during my time when that was there when sro started and i remember it was a kind of a feeling out process and all like that but my experience through in and i have a son-in-law who's an sro and we talk about this all the time and he's you know he will be the first to tell you that there are certain things that they can do and other things they can't like searching a locker and things like that there's a there's a certain protocol that

052goes on and i think that we are very well trained and i'm not diminishing the need for more training because we do have new people stepping in and all like that but i just didn't want the public to understand that you know this is not you know we're out to get them and that sort of thing chief can you elaborate on that or certainly i'll just talk about an officer that i used to work with he had a moniker not my job bob because he did exactly what you're explaining and what he should do and what every sro should do if they're faced with a situation where they're being asked to do something that's out of their purview something that should be handled by the code of conduct then the expectation is that they tell

053them that's not my job that's what you need to do that's that's why you're an administrator and so i can tell you that goes on and what you're saying is absolutely true let me just say for the public officers put on their uniforms to go into these schools to help mentor our children and keep them safe the last thing they think about in the morning when they get ready to go to school is that they're going to arrest somebody that's the last thing they want to do and the last thing they want to do is write a thousand reports so if somebody wants to report a stick of gum i also don't want to have anything to do with that okay so i got into i'm here because i love children and i love mentoring

054and every officer that works with me all the sros if they can't get along with kids if they don't like being mentors then they're in the wrong profession and they won't last long and i will see to that and i know that the sheriff and all the chiefs will see to that same thing again we meet monthly we have discussions about these types of issues and i can tell you that not because i'm in law enforcement but you do have a very well dedicated group of men and women that go out to include our school safety officers and our guardians that protect our students and make sure that when they either walk to school or catch the bus that they're able to go home that evening so they're not there to do anything other than

055they're we're not trying to create records or send kids to to prison we're not doing that's not our job that's not we're trying what we're trying to do now granted there are some things that occur that will will require that a person be arrested but we try to work through that and with the mentoring and with the the steps that we're putting in place here in the district from our equity standpoint with training on implicit and explicit biases to make sure that kids aren't being treated differently from talbot springs to lakewood everyone should be treated the same for the same same type of issue so i just want the public to know that we're not going to these schools we're not in these schools to arrest your children and take your children to jail we're

056there the opposite to build relationships all you all can remember your teachers that you like all you all can remember your school resource officers those people who've had impacts on your lives and that's all we're trying to do there's nothing nefarious about the agreement nothing nefarious about what we're trying to do we just want to get better at what we're doing to protect our kids okay thank you miss hein thank you i wanted to say thank you mrs edmund for the attention you've given to this since since the day it first came up and i really value and appreciate the way that you do thorough research and you systematically ask questions and i really appreciate it and i appreciate the work that's gone into it i appreciate the input from our community from the naacp

057from the legal defense fund from other individuals who have contacted us individually or who have participated in conversations thank you for caring and for giving that input you know i'd say also you know if you're curious more you've heard a couple of us refer to this school board workshop discussion that we had just a couple of weeks ago i recommend you watch it if you have any other questions or concerns about this it was it was a great discussion led by a number of those conversations sheriff gwaltieri was there chief williams was there our attorney and we had excellent conversations about a number of these concerns that came up so you know certainly please watch that i would also say you know we have this district monitoring advisory committee right who meets about about about

058monthly who's who's monitoring a number of items you know and then specifically one of our goals in the bridging of the gap plan about reducing this disproportionality in arrest and out of school says suspensions excuse me i stutter we are looking at this and as chief mentioned the numbers from 2013 and 2014 to to to today so i just want to say thank you for everyone who participates in that work because it matters and while we're going to potentially approve this agreement this evening keep participating keep keep giving your ideas keep giving your input keep keep keep talk about the you know keep keep on asking questions and i just want to say also that through this process i have had the opportunity to get to know chief williams to get to hear from our

059sheriff to hear from david kaprinsky our attorney and our leaders at the district and i've developed exceptional confidence in each and every one of them as well as in our principles and our sros and if you have an example or if something's going on with your child or with your school tell us let us know chief wants to hear about it please but i can't say any better than chief williams did about the reason we're here is is for our students and then i also chief i heard you refer to the community as a whole being involved in in making this world a better place and making our all of our children the best citizens that we could all be and you certainly live that by example with your party with your participation in a

060number of organizations in this community including the men in the making group that i was able to join you for and i just i admire you i thank you thank you again miss edmond for all of your work on this agreement and everyone on this board all right mrs edmund thank you again chief and staff in the community for your input i understand in section 8 the parties will have ongoing meetings and will at least annually review the agreement i would like to ask that community meetings be held at least twice a year providing advanced notice at least seven days as well as providing the community with methods of accessing the documents and the zoom link or whatever format that may be just because in the community meetings that we held there was some hiccups

061with that and as you mentioned we want to keep the community engaged and aware of what we're doing and you know lean on them for input so is that something we could do is that something we table for discussion we could certainly do that thank you dr grego yeah okay mrs long i'm sorry i just want to say thank you i like mr dudley saw the sros coming into the school and watching them evolve and at the end of my 35 years i was very impressed i saw a huge change yes they're policemen but they're starting to build relationships and i was at a rough school for 18 years that had a reputation our sro we went through three they were excellent there was one that had to be spoken to and you know he

062made some changes but as a teacher when i went back in the classroom using the s r sro to come in and teach lessons it you know or they would take the kids out to play basketball or football the relationships mean so much and the trust levels were coming up and i think that goes to you and the other officers for finding the right people for the job there are some people that they teach but maybe they're not meant to and then there's others that they were born in that instinct we need to always train if a teacher is writing a referral for gum and pencils we need to pull it back in and have a little discussion our society is changing we have so many agencies that can help with that's just uncalled for

063and i know it's not really happening in our schools that much if it is i would be surprised but again it's the it's the mentality i think with restorative practice people are learning to have those relationships and conversations and the more we have it the greater we will grow so thank you for what you do that's my pleasure really thank you okay so madam sheriff i may so what i'm hearing is that maybe twice not maybe but twice a year what we'll do is we'll give a status report not only to this board but also to the community which would then allow some input and suggestions along the way so the reoccurrence of that because we do that internally anyway so it's not that different so we'll just expand it to involve the community absolutely

064thank you i was here in 2004 when the first agreement was made and it was as much to make sure that all of the municipalities were doing the same thing as it was to start looking at what their role was and wasn't and as time has gone by we have we have added to we have changed we have perfected we have tweaked it we have made a lot of changes and then as we talked about earlier with the marjory stoneman douglas requirements that come in i think we have made progress every single time getting to where we need to be that doesn't mean we're there yet and that is why i think the continually looking at it every year is a very good idea but i don't want us to think that this is something

065we just yeah we had one in 2004 and then okay now we have to do it again now this has been been around we've made sure that the police and largo were doing the same thing as a sheriff's department when it came to how students were being disciplined or whether or not the particular law enforcement was overstepping their boundaries because there was a lot of gray area between what was the role of the school administration and what was the role of the principal so i mean the police officer so i think each time we review this we get better and better at it so i want to say i'm encouraged by and i support the annual review of it but i also want to say thank you for the hard work that went into this

066because we have been reviewing it all along for a year as opposed to doing a yearly review so thank you for everything that you've done i think this is a good document i will support it and i'm glad that you're going to be beginning the tree the training on this should it pass this evening and i know that our area superintendents will also be having conversation with the principals in the school so thank you very much my pleasure thank you all is there any other conversation any other items i see no other names all right well we have a motion and a second to approve the interagency agreement establishing the guidelines for a collaborative partnership between the pinellas county between the school district officials and law enforcement and satisfying the re requirements as set forth

067in the marjory stoneman douglas high school safe public safety act and subsequent legislation all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you all right we'll move to non-consent the first item on our non-consent is setting a public hearing and authorizing the advertisement of public hearing to consider the amendment policy 9270 home education this is the first reading do we have a motion okay mrs long makes a motion to approve second second all righty mr edmund thank you dr grego mr chair and school board members i'd like to call leanna eisen director of strategic planning to remind and to review the board of this clarifying language for home education welcome adam madam chair board members dr grego staffing community today we present the first reading of policy 9270 home education

068the district team presented the amendment to this policy on july at the july 13th board workshop and if approved today the second reading will be held on september 14th as we shared at workshop the district is responsible for evaluating and identifying home school students who may need special education or gifted services within a specified time frame however the florida law does not require districts to provide and the district does not does not provide these services to students unless the student enrolls in a district school recently the florida department of education's bureau for exceptional education recommended that each district's policy clearly state special education and gifted services provisions for homeschooled students so the proposed amendments to this policy adds two sections one clarifying eligibility provisions for homeschool students to receive ese services and another clarifying provisions

069for homeschool students to qualify for gifted services as well as the specified time frames for those evaluations in addition to these substantive changes and since posting the policy for today's meeting we've received feedback to further revise the policy to include gender neutral language which will be reflected in the second reading of the policy that concludes our presentation for first reading to set the public hearing and authorized advertisement for public hearing to consider this amendment board members are there any additional questions we did have this as a topic at a workshop so i think we did have some conversation and questions answered all right so i see none and so we have a motion by mrs long a second by mrs edmond to set the public hearing and authorizing the advertisement of the public hearing to

070consider amendments to policy 97 9270 home education all in favor say aye aye opposed say no it passes unanimously thank you we now move to request approval of the 2021 2022 mental health and wellness plan do we have a motion mrs long second and mrs edmond dr greg yes madam chair i want to first of all introduce donna sicilian our director of student services but also expressed the board recently as i've had conversation because every school district is approving their mental health plan is that many of our school districts throughout the state of florida use the template that miss sicilian donna has used and continues to really hone and i think it's the theme of this evening is that no plan is a finished plan as the state provides additional resources we then react to

071those as needed in our schools some of our schools need greater social workers and school psychologists and perhaps others and so we try to meet the needs of the schools to to their likings and that was really something we talked about as a group in the in the workshop not all schools are made equal not all schools have the same exact needs and we should provide some autonomy to school principals and leaders because they see those needs and so do the parents day in and day out and donna you've done a tremendous job of putting this plan together so i want to publicly thank you but go over i know we spent quite a bit of time in the workshop of this plan but maybe for the sake of the public and also our school

072board it's some of the highlights of the mental health plan thank you thank you dr grego school board members and staff i want to start by once again just publicly expressing my appreciation to this board to dr grego dr corbett lori matway and all of the leadership because even prior to the mental health and wellness allocation that the state of florida originated three years ago this school district has been committed to the mental health and wellness of its students staff and families and i think that we always i always want to start talking about a specific plan or specific funding stream by putting it in the context of that bigger picture and the commitment that we have and the way that we work with our community and in particular those agencies and organizations in the

073community that are charged with and funded to do a lot of this work and to cover cover carry the load of mental health in our community the marjory stoneman douglas act that was mentioned earlier also included the need for funding to each district for mental health and that's what we're talking about this evening is one specific stream of fundings plan we are required by the state to present a plan and there's some really specific parameters to that and that's what's covered in this plan it is not an all-inclusive what does pinellas county school do we have added factors into the plan that aren't funded specifically by this because of the synergy created by the funding and it's really hard to talk about what one funding source does without tapping into the bigger picture of what

074we do also just want to mention how much i just appreciate people that took time to come and make comments tonight i think this is the first time in the years that i've done this plan that we've had public comment and so i honestly appreciate that and encourage pc tay and others to actually talk directly to me at any point i would be glad to go over specifics hear feedback talk about the data used so that is very very encouraging to me because again the mental health and wellness of our children families and staff is a community issue it impacts the school you've heard me say more than you want to hear schools are a microcosm of society right so the things that happen out there happen within our walls and we do our absolute

075very best and you have an amazing team of school counselors psychologists social workers nurses prevention staff that work tirelessly to ensure that these things are being addressed within the role of the school and that primary role is to address the mental health and wellness and the social emotional learning so that students can engage and be learners and i did go over in depth at the workshop the elements of the plan for example the matrix which is new is required in the plan all of the things in the matrix are items that are available to schools we do not require any school to do all of these items schools work primarily with the prevention department who have staff assigned to them to go through their rubric and look at what are the needs of our school

076what trainings do we need what programs do we need to implement i don't know of any school that implements everything that's available to them one size does not fit all but we do have a process to help schools identify what would fit best provide the training and as we're able provide the staff to carry out that and also to train all of the adults that are in a child's life because we all have responsibility for all of our children including our sros you were just talking about sros i'm going out next week and talking with sros just want to make sure that you and our community know that this is not any one group's effort we are all working together could we do it better of course we could like dr grego just said it

077is an evolving plan i want to make this better that's why i'm here that's why i come every day so with that i would just ask that you approve this plan it beyond meets the elements that are required by the state and by the marjory stoneman douglas act i think it is a good example of the work that we do and our efforts to continue to support students good thank you board members dr carr thank you and thank you miss cecilia for your hard work facilitating the development of this plan to not only for compliance but also for best interest of our students i myself am a former school counselor and appreciate the hard work that goes into not only the development of this plan but the ongoing support of our students during this particularly

078tumultuous year for the variety of reasons in the way students were impacted and the extra work that was involved by you and your team to really provide support in so many different ways to address and meet the needs of our students i do appreciate the comments that were made regarding student ratio and looking at the whole picture and the combination of how individuals are allocated to a school so a school counselor and a social worker and a psychologist as well as at times mental health therapist who are supported by our community agencies so those combination of resources i really think it your articulation of the importance and value of our community resources as well and that what we don't explicitly provide ongoing therapeutic treatment to students within our schools that we are referring and advocating

079for students to receive that within our community and so it's very difficult to meet all of the needs and the hard work that comes to the desk of all of our student services to provide and direct individuals and families to the appropriate resources so i want to acknowledge the hard work but also recognize that your plan also did include some additional pieces to address the specific needs that are as a result of this difficult year and that i appreciate that you pointed out that no one is going to be doing all of the things within the matrix and that in addition to all of those pieces you continue to work to try and reduce the responsibilities i'll reflect back on a time when we first started doing assessments in the high school when we were

080doing those kaplan tests many years ago i think some some of you in the room remember that implementation and school counselors were responsible to be the test facilitators for all of those in addition to act and sc sat and now with our additional end of course assessment so i hope we will continue to ensure that our student services personnel are not utilized in that way things like class coverage and i know it was a difficult year with covid and everyone did more than they ever have before but i hope going forward we really will be guarded especially our new area superintendents in avoiding those those sort of situations where our student service personnel are pulled into situations that are completely unrelated to their function and expertise as student service providers so thank you thank you

081all right mrs edmund i would like to echo some of dr carr's sentiments and just in talking to you throughout the year and knowing that you went out and talked to students and we're going to include their feedback as it relates to the mental health training i think that's going to be invaluable as well as some of the discussions we've had about the various clubs and how students are taking ownership of that and spreading the word do you mind sharing or highlighting some of the some of those clubs sure thank you i would love to that's one of the points of pride that we have in pinellas county we have several clubs we have tried to consolidate some of the student clubs that have very similar like the safe clubs that are required through marjory

082stoneman douglas and then we have the save clubs which is students against violence everywhere we have a number of different clubs that really focus on peers and student peers reaching out dr grego and i recently were at an event with the governor and his wife where they talked about the ambassadors of hope program that's expanding we were some pilot sites here largo high participated in that and the focus there is really peer to promotion of mental health and wellness we have many schools and we've brought that to your attention throughout the year and i know we will again in the upcoming year that have been recognized nationally for the efforts and that is a hundred percent students they have a club sponsor which is a dedicated adult but you're right the students really are taking

083the lead and that's why we have to go out and listen to them i think i told the principals they said we don't want a 40 year old lady talking to us and i felt like i wanted to hug him because they thought i was a 40 year old lady but but their point was well taken they want to hear from their peers and so we have provided and continue to provide ways for that to happen so thank you for mentioning that our students deserve a lot of the credit here for the things that have happened the success with the sandy hook app the reporting app the training that we do and the number of times that they report and express concerns about their friends and their peers is it's heartwarming to see all right

084thank you are there any other comments all right seeing none we have a motion made by mrs long and the second made by mrs zeman to approve the 2021 2022 mental health and wellness plan all in favor say aye aye opposed say no it also passes unanimously thank you very much for all your hard work as well as a presentation all right we will now move on to items introduced by the superintendent mr chair and to the board i have a few items and i know we're on a timeline so i'll try to keep it keep it brief with the time certain at 6 30 for our budget first budget hearing so one of the things i'll open up to discuss is that i did share with you the draft guiding practices and protocols that

085we'll be talking with our principals and others as we prepare to open up the school year i just want you to be comfortable that we are in and employing many if not all the same safe operations that we did last year when it comes to keeping our schools safe we'll continue to have nurses in our schools to take care of any health conditions you know cyro tool is is on top of that and we'll continue to do that we'll continue to have separate clinic spaces for anyone exhibiting any kind of symptoms especially covet symptoms will continue to enhance the cleaning and sanitation protocols established that we did last fall we're not going to stop that we also have been working i want to thank and recognize mr herbeck for the enhanced air filtration and ventilation

086systems and filtration systems that we put into our school districts last year and we continue to to cycle those out we'll continue to do the same things in terms of the importance of hand washing and hand sanitizing along the way as you know this board has sunseted any kind of mask requirement and we're providing and continuing to reinforce that it's optional in in terms of parents and their choices will continue to emphasize that we'll talk with principals this thursday on that and we're also working with our pinellas virtual school in in terms of all let me back up in terms of our conversations with the department just to remind it all executive orders are sunsetted so a lot of the executive orders that deal dealt with my pcs connect and pcs they're all sunsetted so

087we're back to every back to quote-unquote i hate to say this normal in terms of the statutes so we are looking at mandy perry and mr hendrick is looking at ways to perhaps enhance some of our elementary only virtual school options to have some synchronous opportunities during the day for parents if they so choose and for students if they so choose so we're trying to finalize that it's a heavy workload but we're working on it and working on some sort of application but we'll see how that goes i will be in close communications with this board over the next two weeks as we have weekly meetings with the department of education we have weekly meetings with the department of health and every other agencies especially our superintendents association as we work but all things i'm

088very pleased with the progress that we're making as a school district and i believe that we're leading the way and our students and parents are anxious for our start date back on august 11th i do want to share as so many all of you know is that last thursday sarah painter the fifth grade teacher at eisenhower elementary school was named the florida teacher of the year and will represent us very well i want to thank all those who made the trip over to orlando mrs cook represented this board exceedingly well thank you sarah will serve one year as a christie mcauliffe ambassador for education so she will be working with the department of education she'll still have a home base here at eisenhower but she will be on the road quite a bit and she

089has taken that on i do have a brief two or three minute two minute i think video just to share with the public the excitement that took place last thursday so if you could pay attention to the monitor this week that we have been here has been amazing we've been celebrating with all the district teacher of the year winners and tonight is the culmination of that being named pinellas county's teacher of the year i've been able to speak about how i found joy this year in a year where we had a lot of obstacles to overcome and how we chose to look at the positive rather than the negative and on all the student successes that have come with that this year i'm excited i'm happy that my district my school and my family and

090friends are here to celebrate and i cannot wait to see what happens this evening the 2022 florida department of education teacher of the year is sarah ann painter i am so excited to get the honor to use this year to be the voice for all teachers across the state of florida and to learn and grow and bring things back to my district when this year is over i am really working hard to stop and take this moment in because i don't want to forget the way it felt tonight so there have been moments where i've been inside my head all day today but it's really i've been very reflective and looking around the room going i will never get to do this again that's her team from eisenhower we had quite a following there thank

091you for the support around their entire school district the times who covered that story so well i also want to say thank you to the board members who participated and thank you to all of our administrators we had our back to school leadership meeting yesterday i want to thank darlene lebo and clint herbick and mike hewitt and creative contractors for really hosting us at the newly renovated still being worked on though saint pete high school we will be having an open house probably later september october it will be a tremendous event i also want the board to know real briefly i won't go into details that we're having vpk registrations throughout this this school district as we're adding so many new vpk programs to our school district we had our embrace pinellas that's where all

092the new teachers in pinellas county get to come and spend a whole week and then go back to their school well orchestrated thank you to mark narkier and paula texel and the whole professional development department and and congratulations to several of our schools who were recognized by the district pta ptsas i'll name a few the outstanding administrator of the year kelly kennedy for oakhurst elementary school out of the box award i love the name of that award oakhurst elementary school also the pta student community service award largo high school ptsa membership plus award east lake high school ptsa local unit and county council program award o curse elementary and the literacy award oh curse it seems like oh curse really did a great job there with the ptsa we continue to have our recruitment efforts

093with as you see around we're making great progress as you know with bus drivers and teacher assistants and many other positions we're positioned very well to open up our school year our teacher positions or are dwindling vacancies excuse me vacancies are dwindling we are positioned better this year than many years in the past i want to thank our human resources department for really working tirelessly to ensure that happens board members over the next few weeks i know that we're not we're not able to wait for a meeting but i will be very methodically and very regularly communicating with you either individually or or through emails collectively and so look for that if you have any questions any concerns any topics please as we prepare i want to thank my staff as they work 24 7

094as we work so hard to get ready for a smooth opening our teachers come back next week and we're off and running so thank you so much that concludes my comments mr kapersky items introduced by the school board attorney i have no report thank you all righty thank you and we have a couple of school board members that have what i'm going to do is i'm going to recess the meeting give us a chance just to stand up for a second make sure that they get all of the recording things and then we'll come back do board reports board member items that are introduced and then eventually we'll do the public comment okay all righty so the school board will recess the public meeting to conduct the public hearing this hearing is scheduled for 6

09530 and we will be held to hold the tentative 2020 21 2020 21 22 millage rates and district budget upon completion of the hearing the board will return to the regular board meeting so with that this meeting is in recess two minutes one minute thank you i now call to order the tuesday july 27 2021 public hearing on the budget i'm going to read some opening remarks and then turn it over to the superintendent good evening and welcome to the first of two public hearings for the 2021 22 budget we are here tonight to review the proposed property tax rate and budget for the 2021-22 school year consider comments from the public and approve the tentative millage and the tentative budget the order of business and action taken tonight must follow very specific directions set

096forth in state statutes and we ask for your cooperation as we go through all this legally required format there will be two opportunities for you to speak this evening first you may comment on the proposed millage rates second you may comment on the proposed budget if you wish to speak you must register separately for each part of the hearing with our staff members and at the entrance of the boardroom after tonight's hearing the school board will continue to review the tentative budget we may make changes or reduce the millage prior to the next meeting but during the final hearing which is scheduled for september 14th we cannot raise the millage rate higher than what we tentatively set here tonight on behalf of the school board and superintendent i thank each one of you for taking

097the time to participate in tonight's hearing and at this time i would like to entertain a motion that we adopt the agenda okay we have a motion to adopt is there a second all right we have a motion in a second to adopt the agenda all in favor say aye aye okay and oppose say no it passes unanimously thank you dr grego and staff will make some introductory comments prior to the presentation and before we hear any comments from the public dr grego thank you madam chair and school board members i first and foremost want to thank you for your work in establishing and developing this budget and also your interest in assisting us putting it together as you know this budget is dry tied directly to our strategic plan which is extremely important that

098we have the resources and know-how and are all moving in the right direction consistent with prior years practice the budget was presented to this board in a very detailed fashion i want to thank mr smith our cfo and all of your staff for presenting such a detailed plan i don't know another board in the state that has that level of detail back in june 22nd and here we are at the end of july and at that workshop the budget was laid out as as i said in great detail and explained all of the functions and objects and i know you've met individually with several of the board members consistent with all with past practices we're going to continue to examine all aspects of the budget the budget is a moving document to maximize the impact

099on our students and our on our employees i once again want to truly want to thank this board for putting together and assisting this budget i want to call upon mr kevin smith the cfo to introduce the budget and your staff and so we'll go through the appropriate requirements for this evening thank you dr grego madame chair board members and staff our truth and millage ad appeared this past sunday in the tampa bay times which is legally required the format for the newspaper ad and the order of tonight's hearing presentations are prescribed by chapter 200 of florida statutes as mrs cook mentioned it must follow a specific format based interaction tonight the pinellas county appraisers office we'll send out proposed tax notices these notices will legally indicate the time and place of our second and

100final public hearing which will take place on tuesday evening september 14th the proposed intended budget that's presented to you tonight is based upon estimates right now as our books for the fiscal year 2020 2021 have not yet been closed at the second public hearing though the hearing book will reflect actual ending balances for year end 20 20 21. at this time i'll turn it over to miss luanne jordan who's our manager of fte budget and cost reporting to first present the proposed millage rates and she will subsequently after your actions present the budget ms jordan thank you mr smith good evening dr grego madame chair board members staff and community truth and millage also referred to as trim requires school districts to advertise their proposed budget and millage rates annually the district's 2021-22 millage is

101comprised of the general operating millage which includes the required local effort discretionary and local referendum the florida department of education determines the maximum state required local effort millage rate that must be levied by the school board to generate its local share of funding for the district the local referendum of 0.5 mills was initially approved by the voters in 2005 2006 and was approved for the fifth time in 2020-21 for a four-year period the proposed millage also includes the 1.5 mills for capital outlay a mill refers to the rate of property tax commonly paid on the assessed value of homes and business properties a mill equates to one dollar of taxes for every thousand dollars of taxable property value the rollback millage rate is the millage rate that would generate the same amount of revenue as

102last year if applied to the current tax roll after adjusting for new construction the 2021-22 proposed millage of 6.325 is higher than the rollback rate by 4.08 percent pinellas county's gross property tax value of approximately 106 billion dollars is an increase from last year's value by 6.6 billion dollars or 6.7 percent the proposed millage rate for the 2021-20 year of 6.325 represents an overall decrease of 1.59 when compared to the 2021 2021 total millage rate of 6.427 the required local effort millage has decreased by 2.77 percent the property tax revenue comparison reflects an increase in revenue of 30.6 million dollars over last year's proceeds this is the result of the increase in our property tax value the required local effort proceeds are increasing by about 13.1 million dollars the proposed discretionary millage will generate about

1034.8 million dollars more and the referendum will yield an additional 3.2 million dollars capital outlay millage will generate 9.6 million dollars more than last year under the proposed rate the owner of a two hundred thousand dollar home after the deduction of the twenty five thousand dollar homestead exemption would pay one thousand one hundred six dollars and eighty 88 cents this averages out to three dollars and three cents per day the taxable value of property in pinellas county reflects an increase on average of 6.7 percent for the year the florida legislature has set our required local effort also referred to as rle to 3.577 which is a decrease from the prior year's rle of 3.679 as a result some homeowners may experience an increase in their school taxes as demonstrated here as a result of an

104increase in property value and not an increase to our levied millage rate the rle is an appropriated amount set by the florida department of education the school board must levy this amount in order to receive state funding it's used for the day-to-day operations such as school staff and utilities the discretionary millage is used for general operations of the district and to meet additional costs due to inflation local referendum funds are used to recruit and retain quality teachers preserve reading art music programs and provide up-to-date textbooks and technology the capital outlay millage is the district's primary funding source for maintenance renovations new construction and equipment as advertised on july 25th at this time i'll turn the meeting back to the board chair to allow for public comment and for the motions necessary to adopt the millage

105rates thank you this is christy do we have any speakers to address the millage in support of the budget board members and dr grego we have no speakers for item five all righty thank you then i will entertain a motion to approve the tentative discretionary local millage local effort millage do we have a motion all right mrs long yeah mrs long indicated first would you be uncomfortable seconding okay good so mrs long made the motion with a second from mrs kane go for it please what's your motion approval of tentative discretionary local effort millage i move that the board approved the loving of a tentative discretionary local effort million millage of 0.748 mills as part of the total millage to be certified to the public appraiser and florida department of revenue all right we have

106a motion in a second is there any discussion all right we have a motion in a second to approve the tentative discretionary local millage at 0.748 mills all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you i'll now entertain a motion to adopt the total millage rates dr carr do we have a second and mrs kane second thank you adoption of total millage rates i move that the board adopt a tentative millage rate of 6.3 to 5 mills to be set and certified to the property appraiser and to the florida department of revenue the millage rates are as follows for required local effort 3.577 mills for discretionary local effort 0.748 mills for local referendum 0.500 mills for capital outlay 1.500 mils total tentative millage 6.325 mils this rate is 4.08

107percent greater than the rolled back rate all righty thank you we do have a motion in a second and i'm not going to read it again for fear i might read a number differently than you stated so if there's any discussion from the board okay all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously i will now send it back to you thank you mrs cook this portion of the presentation covers the district's tentative budget for 2021-22 the budget calendar is ongoing throughout the year during the course of the year budget updates are provided at board workshops and monitoring is performed through budget analyses and forecasts in the spring we typically have a better idea of what the legislative budget is providing for us whether we can expect an increase or a

108decrease in state funds budget steering committee meetings are held during this time frame primary primarily for capital outlay requests in july and september we hold two public hearings regarding the budget and millage tonight is the first of those hearings as mentioned earlier the second hearing will be held on september 14th certain parameters guide the building of the budget we strive to and have been able to maintain a 6337 ratio this means at least 63 percent of all expenses are for direct instruction or in the classroom and 37 percent are related to other areas such as instructional support plan operations and administration in short at least two-thirds of all funding goes toward expenditures in the classroom we're required by statute to maintain a minimum three percent contingency while district policy states we are to maintain a

109minimum five percent contingency this budget projects our contingency to be approximately seven percent at the end of the 2021-22 fiscal year we also budget so as to support our core curriculum and strategic directions the majority of our budget is in our general fund this year it's proposed to be approximately 964 million dollars the second largest funding source is capital outlay at 397 million the district's self-insured health fund is anticipated to be approximately 169 million dollars and represents the district's third largest fund the total proposed budget for all funds this year is approximately 1.6 billion dollars looking at the budget summary for all revenue sources you see that about 60 percent of the total budget comes from the general fund capital outlay accounts for almost 25 percent the combined total of these two funds comprises approximately

11085 percent of our entire budget the new year brings several legislative changes the base student allocation or bsa increased to four thousand three hundred seventy two dollars and ninety one cents this is an increase of fifty three dollars and forty two cents or one point two four percent over last year's bsa statewide funding decreased 100 by 103 million dollars or by 16.7 million dollars to pinellas due to decreased student enrollments during the pandemic a reserve of 464 million dollars for returning students has been put in place at the state level changes in the florida retirement system contribution rate are projected to increase district expenditures by about four million dollars total operating fund resources are anticipated to be approximately 964 million dollars of that about 510 million dollars comes from local sources which include the half

111mil referendum 333 million dollars come from state resources the florida education finance program or fefp is the general fund's primary funding source the fefp funding formula utilizes a combination of state and local resources to fund education looking at the operating revenue budget graphically you'll note that local sources represent about 53 percent of the total operating budget and state sources account for nearly 35 percent the remaining 12 percent comes from transfers and fund balance the operating budget is used to fund the day-to-day operating expenditures of the district it pays for salaries and benefits supplies and materials textbooks student transportation utilities maintenance and repairs viewing the distribution of our operating budget by object there's little change from previous years about 62 percent of our budget is spent on salaries and 21 percent on benefits in total 83

112of our operating budget goes towards staffing capital outlay funds include revenue from both state and local sources this fund reflects the revenue and expenditures for construction and renovation of school buildings and grounds the majority of these funds are generated by the local capital improvement millage which is set by law and limited to 1.5 mills no pico funds are expected this year for traditional district schools additional funds have been provided through certificate of participation or cops bonds the lease purchase financing of capital improvements through the issuance of cops bonds is a technique frequently utilized by florida school districts to finance school facilities an updated five-year capital outlay plan and facilities work program will be brought to the board at the september 14th board meeting changes will include the addition of the 2025-26 year our proposed capital

113outlay budget is approximately 397 million dollars this budget reflects 163 million dollars in new revenue and 299 million dollars in a proposed appropriations the special revenue budget is comprised of two major major categories of federal funds contracted programs and food service the total contracted programs budget is approximately 14 million 14 million dollars this budget starts the year off low and builds as the year goes on as we don't recognize the revenue until it is available to us included in this category are the elementary and secondary school emergency relief act and the corona virus aid relief and economic security act grants these grants are also referred to as esser and cares food service is a self-sustaining fund as it receives no financial support from the operating fund federal reimbursements and local collections are the primary revenue

114sources the proposed food service budget is approximately 51 million dollars the debt service fund is used to account for the payment of general long-term debt principal and interest this seven million dollar budget represents the debt service for cops bonds issued by the district previous debt associated with the state board of education bonds issued by the state of florida on the district's behalf in february of 2000 were fully satisfied in two thousand twenty twenty one the proposed self-insured workers compensation and liability budget of five million dollars accounts for the premium revenue and expenditures associated with the district's self-insured workers compensation and liability insurance programs the self-insured health fund accounts for the district's premium revenue and claim expenditures with a budget of approximately 169 million dollars the proposed budget and all supporting documents are on file in

115the office of budget and resource allocation this information can also be found online at this point i'll turn the meeting back to the board chair to allow for public comment and the motions necessary to adopt the tentative budget thank you thank you very much all right mrs christie are there any speakers for this portion of the budget hearing madam chair there are no speakers for item six all right good thank you very much so we will look at the motions now that are necessary to adopt the tentative budget do we have a motion to approve the tentative budget as presented all right do we have a second all right we have a second as well so we have a motion in a second any discussion all right so we have a motion and a second

116to for the board to approve the tentative 20 21 22 budget as presented all in favor say aye aye opposed say no it passes unanimously the next item that we have to address is the motion to establish the time date and place for the second public hearing miss hein you have a motion i do i move that the second public hearing on the 2021-22 district budget be held on september 14 2021 at 6 30 pm in the conference hall of the school administration building 301 4th street southwest largo florida thank you do we have a second second all right mrs long i mean second so we have a motion and a second to hold the second public hearing on the 21 22 district budget to be held september 14th 2021 at 6 30. that'll be

117time certain again in the conference hall of the school administration building at 301 4th street southwest in largo florida all in favor say aye aye opposed say no it passes unanimously and we have one more motion that we have to address to authorize the submittal of the certification of the tax value mrs emin i move that the board authorized the superintendent to advise the property appraiser of the military including the required rollback rates approved at the first public hearing held on july 27 2021 thank you do we have a second okay all right mr dudley second the motion all right so we have a motion and a second to authorize a superintendent to advise the property appraiser of the millage rates including the required rollback rates approved at the first public hearing held on july

11827 2021 any discussion all in favor say aye aye oppose say no and it passes unanimously thank you very much and before i adjourn this portion of the meeting i would like to thank you mr smith and your staff for everything that you put forward we spent quite a bit of time going through the budget literally page by page and explaining it to us so i appreciate the fact that the board was willing to roll their sleeves and stick with it and mr smith for everything you did to help us understand it prior to this vote thank you madam chair i appreciate the attention and the participation of the board thank you and with that this meeting is adjourned so i'm not giving you another break we're going straight into the next one okay so

119i am going to reconvene the july 27th 2021 regular school board meeting and with that we now move on to items introduced by the board mrs kane all right i'm on thank you so much i appreciate this opportunity to speak to the board and also to kick off the 2021-22 school year thank you as much as you may have been advised through email our legislative committee did have a meeting yesterday and i just wanted to keep the board apprised of what was happening now and moving forward we discussed our platform from last year we also made some dates moving forward for different items that need to be approved by the board but given that we do not have a board meeting before the due date for the florida consortium the greater florida consortium of school

120boards due date for our submission i wanted to go over that this evening we are putting together the rest of the platform for board approval i believe was august 24th i believe so the next school board meeting will be bringing forth our proposal for the board not only for our pinellas county legislative platform but for the platform for the florida school board association as well we had a number of items that we had for that we wanted to submit to the state for the florida school board association but for those who are unfamiliar the greater florida consortium of school boards includes only those school boards on the coastal areas of florida we upon looking at our platform not only from last year but also moving forward we came to the conclusion that there was one

121item that we would like to move forward for the consortium i'm going to pull that up for you now and that was on school safety and wellness this was on our platform last year and i do believe the year before but we wanted to bring it forth as a consortium item it is to require that public facilities other than k-12 schools are utilized as hurricane shelters and post-storm support to ensure schools can resume as soon as possible following a storm we thought that would apply to school boards on the coastal regions of florida other than that we'll have the rest of the items being brought forth at the next meeting but just so you all know we did plan that we'll be having another meeting on august 9th for any board members that want to

122attend and thank you dr carr miss edmond and dr grego as well as miss dole who are all at the meeting yesterday to go over all of that with that being said i'm looking forward to a successful year in 2021-22 last year we made it through of quite a tumultuous year and i know i spoke at some point in the year and gave some theater quotes for inspiration last year i brought forth the quote that i felt encompassed our year last year which was that necessity is the mother of invention from the play alice in wonderland but this year looking for it i know we're still in the midst of working so hard to get through the rest of the pandemic we are working together as a group we're coming together and i have a

123quote for this year where did it go i lost it oh no i lost it there it is okay i found it i found it you know why it isn't because it's been a rough year i did find it i'm sorry but this is a quote that even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise and it is from les miserables so as we continue to muddle our way through this pandemic i hope that there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for all of us as we move forward this year and we can hopefully bring our beautiful community of pinellas county together to always remain focused on our goal which is 100 students success in student education in pinellas county thank you all and good luck in the

124new year very good thank you mr dudley thank you madam chair am i okay well keeping with the same theme of you know things all things looking forward and being positive i wanted to bring the attention of not only the board but residents of saint petersburg and the entire county that we are very fortunate that we've had some olympic athletes that have are representing our community and i wanted to bring to light a special one not that they're not all special but it's a young man and bear with me i want to kind of lay this out a little bit and i think i've mentioned it before his name is brad snyder schneider was a swimmer at northeast high school and he went to naval academy and was kept a swim team there and upon

125his graduation you know they have a choice of what they want to do whether it be be a pilot be a navy seal or whatever he chose demolition and he was assigned to a navy seal team and on his third deployment something happened that he said he always guarded against but instincts kicked in fell in front of him tripped the ied it blew up and he went out to to help him and in the process one blew up and he's now blind and brad laid in the hospital and you know all those things going through his mind and i'll give you the short version a year to the day that he lost his eyesight he not only won a gold medal in the paralympics instead of world's record and he did it again the next

126day and the next day he got a silver medal well it wasn't done yet he went to that was in london then he went to rio or if i got it backwards whatever one was the sucker anyway and it was a record it was stood for over 30 34 years i believe and it wasn't even one of his normal events he decided to do it not only did he break the record by over 30 seconds and he said world record it'd be a long time without be broken and he won several others i think he's won five goals and one silver well the story even gets better this olympics instead of being one of probably the best swimmer in the world he decides that he's going to try something else so he gets out of

127swimming and he decides to become a para olympian i mean apparel a triathlon olympian excuse me and he made the team and he will be competing next week and if you know anything about the paralympics it usually occurs after the regular olympics the following week and i would strongly suggest that you turn them on and look guy is absolutely in coaching we call him an animal he is just he's a beast and just as nice a guy as you ever want but he never let his disability define him and unfortunately lost his service dog during the year and he's got a new dog but it's kind of interesting to see how it works running a triathlon and blind they swim they bike and they run so he has somebody that goes with him to do

128that but don't be surprised if he doesn't set the work or not too so anyway i just wanted to bring that up he's a great role model if you ever need a good public speaker i know when he's got a great sense of humor and i remember when we inducted him into our school hall of fame and we have a lady in the back that holds up a card gives you tells you how much time you have we give him five minutes he stood up there and he says i know you're holding up a card but i can't see it anyway he's got a great sense of humor and he's a great guy and so a little cheer if you saw the olympics last night you saw that little community in alaska that whole high

129school met in a gymnasium for that young lady a 17 year old that they won a gold medal and i think we can do the same for brad snyder thank you thank you all right dr carr thank you and thank you for that optimistic and positive story coach lisa i appreciate you mrs kane i appreciate your shepherding us through that meeting and i'm grateful for mrs dull coordinating the efforts in our legislative work group in addition to that i'd like to express gratitude to our district wellness i know we heard about our student mental health plan but also to our district wellness team they really have been very engaged and active with our staff and even here in the building ensuring that folks were getting their mammograms and skin cancer screenings and taking the time

130during the summer to reach out to folks and i appreciate them doing that department is so engaged at this time with all the hiring and i'm grateful to our that entire wellness team for their work and the rollout of limeade i'm i've got my water bottle right here so they thank you to that and i see mrs texel in the back communicate that to your team our gratitude i'd also like to acknowledge a great group of students who participated in a discussion i was able to take part in this afternoon who us one of our very own students who's interning under st petersburg deputy mayor to find out what things will look like for next year and to share how this past year went with them so it was it's always an incredible opportunity to

131hear from our students and to listen to their concerns and see how things went for them so i just am appreciative of them and i hope that with our new area superintendents i'm not sure who's going to be facilitating the students rights and responsibility group that i see dr gonzalez back there who the input that we get from those students monthly each of us is something that really informs our decision making and i'm i'm looking forward to having those back up and running again again dr grego thank you for the inspiring welcome back that took place at st petersburg high school and to you mr herbick for taking us on the tour during the earlier parts of the construction i had the opportunity to get up there in the bell tower and this time seeing

132the archive room and i walked into one of the classrooms next to it with the crown molding being refurbished and the attention to preservation that took place in that high school and as a former teacher i would have loved to have spent the day in that room teaching and i hope others will enjoy the opportunity to teach and learn there as that construction hopefully finishes in time for for us to at least those key pieces in the courtyard additionally i'd like to make note that there were several items within the consent agenda regarding some of our grant applications and the amount of work and attention to careful detail that went into place there i know our federal grants our idea and title iii elements were all plans were in there there are a number of

133plans and miss matway i know your team has worked long hours a lot of folks think that we don't work in the summer or there's some sort of break in the summer but in fact i think folks work extra time in the summer to ensure that things get off to a great start particularly in this building and of course this year with summer bridge at all of our school sites were incredibly engaged and then lastly i'd like to acknowledge the number of emails we received with concerns i know that you write to the board office or you write to us individually with your concerns regarding the protocols going forward into the next year and i know dr grego acknowledged that and the importance of us continuing to work with our medical experts and our medical

134team i just want you to know we that we receive your feedback and we are hearing your emails and reading your emails and we'll continue to to monitor the conditions in our in our county thank you all right thank you all right miss heinen thank you so a little over a week ago i think it was or or or maybe it was last week at pinellas park high school was the embrace pinellas which was any new teachers coming through pinellas county go through this you know several day training called embrace pinellas and i had to i had the opportunity to be there for the welcome pieces and i just wanted to share it was so inspiring it was wonderful to be in this room full of new teachers people who are choosing this profession there

135there are certainly young people fresh out of college who are who are looking forward to it there are there are there are people making midlife career career career changes also and it was just it was just wonderful and i'll you know echo dr grego's mention multiple times of it being a most noble profession and just echo or also share my own gratitude for all of those who choose this profession and then it was also mentioned the district kickoff that was held yesterday that was incredibly inspiring both pinellas park high schools and st petersburg high school are beautiful schools remarkable schools and it's just wonderful for me i'm i'm i'm the parent of two elementary school students so i have not had the privilege of being in a lot of our high schools and it was

136awesome to be in multiple of our high schools so i don't want to wish the years away but i kind of can't wait so thank you for the inspiration and the in in the leadership it's wonderful to be part of a district that really looks into the future and imagines education and drives education for everyone the way that this district does i am appreciated hearing all of that at our schools i'm so excited you know the staff is beginning to bustle our ptas are beginning to bustle i don't know about you guys our school had a uniform swap shop last night where the different uniform pieces are a dollar each lots of people came and so all those things are starting to happen at our school as we get ready for schools to start and

137it's just such a such such a wonderful feeling you know all all the wonderful things there i also want to mention as dr carr mentioned all of the emails and communications that we are we are getting around the opening of schools you know with the strong recent increases in coveted cases i know that a number of people are feeling anxious whether it's one way or the other and i guess i would just like to say that we are listening we do read we do listen we do hear we appreciate your discussions and i also want to say that we take our oath of office seriously to support the constitution you know part of that of course is to provide a common defense and the very next part is to promote the general welfare and then

138also that we are doing our research so there are a number of ways you can do the research for me in looking at the data the things that i'm most interested in is our county specific age specific data i find it frustrating that the state reporting system shifted at the end of may and there's not the same county specific age specific data readily available as there was so but i do appreciate our county i have been asking and they are providing some of that information with the recent increases in cases in our state of course people who are 12 and over have the opportunity to be vaccinated if they if they if they want to and you know i join our governor and i join our president in encouraging people to get vaccinated if that's

139their if if that's their own choice so the concern on the age pacific county specific part has to be that zero to 11 who who haven't had that opportunity whose parents haven't had that opportunity to make that choice for their for their family so i just again want to mention that this is something that i know we all care about and we all hear you and and we're paying attention and the other thing is talking to our schools and our communities and our families and hearing everyone's thoughts i've i've talked to six different elementary school principals in the last couple days to say you know how's it going how are you feeling how's your school community feeling because it's one of the things to hear things in the media or this or that but it's

140another thing to talk with people about how everything's feeling i just want to say thank you for all of the discussions and then also thank you to our district our leadership and our team who's who who is i know listening watching and certainly paying attention we are we are in the business of of healthy happy well-educated children i just wanted to share those things thank you good thank you mrs edmund thank you i will follow up on dr carr mrs kane and mrs heinz announcements just saying thank you mrs kane mrs dole for conducting the legislative platform i think it's important that moving forward we get our message out the sooner the better what we need in our district also several board members and i attended many of the same events and just seeing the

141faces of our principals assistant principals teachers support professionals it's really exciting to see how motivated people are for the beginning of the 2021 school year and yes last year was challenging and everyone that i'm speaking with they're excited about moving forward i'd also like to recognize pinellas technical college they had an open house as well as a graduation ceremony on july 17th and just seeing and hearing from the students that graduated it's heart warming you know we have great careers and great opportunities for students to learn in pinellas county and pinellas technical college is a great asset to the community and i wish and hope that more people take a look at what they have to offer also last weekend was the vpk registration event i like to thank mr feeney mrs ramsdale as well

142as all district staff that helped out with that in the early learning coalition just in talking with the parents who heard word of mouth saw it on social media or got a flyer from their church it shows that when we go out into the community and meet people where they are and have those resources readily available we're able to get we're able to support them better so i hope that we are able to continue more on the ground efforts collaborating with organizations to increase vpk registration throughout the district and then i want to talk about the let's talk virtual public comment that is available on the school board work website so if you select that you're able to have your public comments added to the minutes of our meeting and it wasn't on the website

143for quite some time but now it's back on so i just want you all to know that's available if you'd like to submit something for public record thank you anything else that's it okay all right all right go ahead i just want to say to the administrators the teachers the support staff everyone that's involved with children take a deep breath this year's going to be better i think you will be able to be calmer i know it was a rough year last year i saw it at home with my husband and he's done he did summer bridge and he is so excited about a new school year because of the things that his administrator has been talking about so it's going to be a better year and we're here to support you thank you for

144everything you do you know you're not just administrators teachers support staff you hold and build these children up and you do a wonderful job at it sometimes you don't get enough credit but from the bottom of my heart thank you all right now mrs long i think you took the words out of my mouth but as you give back as you can tell there was a lot going on this summer and we just hit on the highlights so i want to thank everyone who was working this summer summer bridge was very very successful and amazing and an awesome experience for the students and rather than going over each one of the items and dragging this out any longer than have to i'm just going to say let's look forward to a wonderful school year we

145welcome the administrators back yesterday and now on monday we will be welcoming back all of the teachers and staff at each of the schools and so we want to say welcome back we're excited to be starting a new year and thank you for everything that you do and then we have what like a week later 10 days later or whatever the students come back so students be on your best behavior give it everything you've got and make every day count so thank you very much all right with that dr greg dr corbett are there items that we have as board requests yes madam chair i have two first we have a potential workshop topic to have a discussion about better defining the role and responsibility of administrators especially as it comes to how they would

146involve law enforcement and the second one is we will conduct two community meetings per year to give a status report and solicit input on our law enforcement mlu that we discussed tonight all right good thank you all right i will adjourn this portion of the meeting we will have our public participation and then as always we will do our board evaluation following that time okay so with that this meeting is adjourned thank you very much all right miss christie do we have speakers for public participation yes ma'am school board members and dr grego we have 22 speakers tonight for general public comments and our first speaker tonight is brad decourt all right welcome okay good good evening madam chair members of the school board and dr grego and staff my name is brady cordy and

147my pronouns are he his and him i have been teaching at tarpon springs middle school for the past 21 years and in all those years i have never worried about going back to school until last year returning to school last year was a very difficult decision i had many discussions with my sons who had lost their mother only two years earlier and with that on their minds and their concern for me and my health they suggested that i either take a leave or retire which would have been a huge financial hardship for me and my family luckily i was one of the staff members classified as category one which allowed certain protections because of medical conditions without the safety measures put in place last year i would not have come back as we get as

148we return to school next week safety measures continue to be a major concern to me but is not only my health and safety that i worry about but the health and safety of my students my fellow teachers our staff administrators as well as our family members when we go home positivity rates for covid are on the rise and florida accounts for 20 of all new cases in this country when the cdc came out a few weeks ago and said if they said that if you were vaccinated you didn't need to wear a mask indoors they were relying on the honor system however there was a la there was lack of a system to monitor vaccine status among students teachers and staff just go to a publix or target or any other store and you know

149that the honor system does not work the vaccination rate nationwide is 49 percent while looking around the store you will see about 80 percent on mask the american academy of pediatrics has said that all students older than two years of age and all school staff should wear masks at school unless medical or development conditions prohibit use and just this afternoon the cdc revised their recommendation that ev and they said that everyone even fully vaccinated individuals in k-12 schools wear masks when indoors this is the science that we should be following politics should not be what determines our course of action and because of this recent revision of the cds by the cdc it would be not only reasonable but i feel necessary to revisit our district safety measures including wearing masks as being an option

150do i like my mask no will i wear it yes okay that's that's the science not politics thank you now remember the things that i said when i was reading about the public participation no audit no no audible approval or disagreement please we're going to be civilized all right our next speaker our next speaker is renee chia good evening good evening first off i'd like to thank the board and dr grego for the opportunity to address you today my name is renee chia i'm a resident in pinellas county living in dunedin what brought me here today is the need to address comments that were brought up in the public comment period of the june 22nd meeting by brant robinson mr robinson made many comments about critical race theory he asked the board and superintendent to

151write and sign a joint statement that one denies critical race theory is being taught and two allows him some form of permission to continue teaching crt in his classroom mr robinson during his remarks made the offhanded comment that to his knowledge critical racism theory is not being taught anywhere in the nation i'm here today to tell you that statement is categorically false the word game being played here is irrelevant call it crt or whatever you want it still marxist indoctrination of our youth so let's call it what it is marxist rabble or mr for short he's right about one thing mr is broader more embedded and more nefarious than crt alone the goal of these poisonous ideologies is absolutely to discourage critical thinking they use fallacious circular and backwards logic attempt to gain compliance and

152to silence any opposing viewpoint through the use of intimidation we moved here last september from california four years ago when my son was in eighth grade there was a curriculum switch this switch was never discussed to parents it was deviously woven into existing curriculum in english history etc so that school boards and teachers like mr robinson could claim there was no change but there was a massive change and there was no accountability i thank the state of florida and governor desantis for providing an avenue to accountability for the parents to any parents present or watching pay attention pay attention to this board pay attention to what the teachers are actually teaching your children if they're using words such as equity social justice restorative practice or using phrases such as examine deeply the history of this

153country or starting 8th grade english class with all white males raise your hand the second amendment was written so that white men could have guns if your child is being taught in english class the blm national anthem and chant and being told writing is virtuous your child is being taught mr if your child is being taught about transgenderism and sex education and being shown how to properly put on a condom with the use of an anatomically correct dildo instead of a banana your child is being taught mr the worship and teaching of perceived reality has no place in public school i urge you to deny perceived reality and replace it with actual reality it's shameful to be an adult and stand in support of twisting young minds and teaching children to hate themselves each other

154and their country i caution all of you and the parents out there based on what i've seen and heard here mr is already being taught in your child's classroom in pinellas i encourage you not to sign any joint statements supporting inaccurate facts and divisive rhetoric and instead focus on teaching children the objective truth and providing them the tools they need for life success thank you okay if this continues i will ask you to leave i've asked you now twice not to make any auditory agreement or disagreement with the speakers please all right our next speaker is lee bryant good evening good evening good evening chair cook vice chair long members of the school board dr grego and staff my name is lee bryant my pronouns are he him and his and i'm speaking on behalf

155of myself i've been teaching in pinellas county for more than 25 years along with a few other subjects i have taught american history honors and regular american government honors and regular economics honors and regular law studies and ap comparative government i can say that critical race theory is not taught in high school middle school or elementary school in the state of florida or pinellas county critical race theory is taught at the graduate level in some universities and in law school critical race theory is designed to help scholars determine whether systemic racism exists and if it influences law and public policy unfortunately some culture warriors are now labeling any discussion of race racism or discrimination as crt in an attempt to make it toxic they're here to bully teachers to stop us from teaching accurate history

156they would have us downplay or ignore things like the real pain of slavery and the jim crow laws the genocide enforced removals and massacres of first nation peoples the discriminations against women jews irish italians poles greeks hispanic middle eastern americans and asian americans in texas these culture warriors are even removing dr king's i have a dream speech from the school curriculum we cannot look at the feel good stories of history we need to look at accurate history the good the bad the ugly or we cannot grow as a nation and its people again racism a critical race theory is taught in law schools and in some universities not in the elementary middle or high schools of florida we are trying to connect with our students using a different crt culturally relevant teaching where we look

157at our classrooms and our methods and ourselves so that we can connect with our students in their worlds and perspectives how do i as a white southern cisgendered male middle aged i mean shadow dancing by andy gibb was the number one song when i was starting my senior year how do i connect with students of all backgrounds and walk of life i do it through introspection hard work looking at the biases of our schools our classrooms our curriculum and ourselves so that we can reach all of our students that is the real crt in our classrooms and i still have a dream thank you okay our next speaker our next speaker is david happy welcome hi welcome my pronouns are the same as that guys i got note from the because i knew i was

158coming to speak to you i got a note from the pinellas community patriots and a couple of the parents patriot groups that wanted me to tell you that if you attempt to mask our kids we're calling on social media connections of which they think the reach is somewhere in the vicinity of eighty thousand to call for a massive parent student on enrollment and i'm thrilled tonight to hear i've been coming your meeting for probably 15 meetings now super thrilled to hear some of the focus getting back on the kids we must be getting close to election season i'm thinking but i'm very glad to hear about the health and wellness initiative there's a lot of parents out here that think that the union and the school board have contributed significantly to the net largest negative

159impact on the students over this last year so your vote to affirm the health and wellness is awesome because we kind of have to fix what got broken here over the last year i wanted to tell the people that weren't able to hear your workshop because even though your workshops are captured on zoom you won't share those with the community so what was covered in the last workshop that people need to understand that's going to be coming up at the next workshop and then probably voted on thereafter by our representatives is a discussion that they want to have about limiting the total number of speakers that are able to speak you actually successfully got rid of a couple tonight by the delay in the meeting so well played limiting the amount of time people can

160speak limit the topics we can speak on and they want to talk at the next workshop that they're not going to broadcast to you all about the potential to even eliminate video footage of comments and portions of the meeting so that's what's coming up at the next workshop we'll get some video of the next workshop we'll then watch the next meeting after this one where they may be voting on these issues but as a community we need to be aware of what our representatives are doing the other thing is i heard a great podcast called the pirate podcast and it was talking about critical race theory in pinellas county schools critical race theory to those of you that are watching this is in pinellas county schools there was training this summer on culturally relevant teaching

161in pinellas county schools so you can change the name you can make it whatever cute crt you'd like to make it but you need to understand that culturally relevant teaching training this summer we have copies of the training materials that have all been forwarded to the florida department of education there are five teachers in pinellas county that have taken a vow so critical race theory is not being taught in pinellas county right track with me here there's five teachers thank you very much speaker our next speaker is sweet okay good this thing evening all right all right good evening as dave spoke i couldn't help but see the confused looks on your faces you know we're not dumb when common core went away because it got it got called bright futures for the sunshine state

162we knew it was common core culturally relevant teaching wasn't even a phrase until people caught on to crt and crt is being taught in more than just the curriculum caprice i remember your eyes when i was asking about the maria edmonds and i asked if they were just looking for another brownie to hand that award to i found the information out and that was yes if you're the only mexican in the school in pinellas you get that maria edmonds awards regardless of whether or not your grades are good i found this out they give it around regardless my son was touted around two days of his school as a smart hispanic he was judged by the color of his skin and not by his actual heritage and he was touted as a smart hispanic when

163he's over 50 irish and german my goodness but even more so listening to some of your stories like i mean mr dudley we have you on camera falling asleep so it's nice to know that you're still awake in here but when dave says that you guys are trying to make more changes it is because the elections are coming up and the reason you're trying to limit our speaking is because we had 107 we had 107 speakers come and keep you guys here for seven and a half hours i get it you don't want it again but the whole point of public access is so that we can come and voice the problems and then you would make changes instead of limiting us and even mr grego had one of those confused looks on his faces

164and you were talking about the limiting of the speakers the last okay i want to say two meetings maybe three obviously i might be wrong but we were told when we walked in that the limit would be to 50 speakers and i was like you know we only have 34 today but if we had more it would have been nice to know that you would have been able to use the strong arm of your police force to make sure everybody else left after the 50. but you should know that hillsborough county did that they had people physically removed from their building because they didn't want over 50 speakers so you know the sunshine laws are put into place they say that of any meeting of two or more of you guys we have a right

165to see and have public comment on and i doubt that's even happening because like you would even tell us if you were going to lunch and if you go to lunch with somebody what are the odds you wouldn't talk about business you know these rules are being circumvented and like you had those two people leave it's just a way to silence us but if you silence us here if you take away our ability to approach you in a professional manner that leaves only going to the publics where you guys shop going to public arenas where we know you're going to be and protesting there so you need to think about that before you try and take away our ability to come here and approach you and limit what we can talk about because if your

166husband's speeding or you're falling asleep or if you're babbling and crying at the end of a meeting any judge jury counselor would say that if you can't keep your composure at your office that's a sign of mental health distress crying thank you our next speaker is amber simmons our next speaker is nick wright good evening i love coming here when i get a chance to come here it's a comedic show sometimes however today i had two things to talk about and one of those things i decided against and instead talk to you in fact thank you for the leadership that you provided us last school year when you gave us the opportunity to stay safe by mandating the wearing of mass like brad i'm a person with a health issue so i wore my mask

167all year i was told by my wife don't go to work retire stay home whatever but i went to work because i believe that educators have to provide education for our students so i thank you providing the opportunity for me to go to work to do what i do best and work with our students to build up the next generation now on behalf of those people who those teachers who could not be here today i want to implore you to once again provide that great leadership you gave us last year and mandate again the use of mask we know that florida is one of three states that's providing 40 percent of the delta covet cases in our hospitals nationwide and that's because of politics as we move forward with this new school year i'd implore

168this board to once again help us to stay safe by mandating the use of masks in our classrooms and our school premises thank you thank you our next speaker is kevin smith welcome good evening i'll go ahead and i'll try i'm going to quote a lot of different things so a lot of this won't be my own words first off the president of the florida education association andrew sparr has stated the people to best make decisions as to what should happen in school districts are in fact the elected school boards the teachers and staff the health officials and the community what about the parents all right let's see john hopkins study found zero cova deaths among healthy kids i do not have a date on this google it let's see from npr february 2021 child

169psychiatrists warned that pandemic may be driving up kids suicide risks cnbc june 2021 suicide attempts among adolescent girls surged more than 50 percent during the pandemic cdc says again we keep quoting the cdc so let's listen to everything the cdc says i don't have the name on this one february 2021 child suicides rising during lockdown hamilton i don't have a date on this one number of youths in hospital after suicide attempt tripled over four month period under covet 19. so first off i want to say do not require the mass of these children if you want to wear one wear one i some are some aren't everyone in here isn't dying it's optional all right and according to all this abc just today or yesterday abc action news claims that the positivity rates are climbing

170yet the fda has announced that the cdc pcr test for kova 19 has failed its full review emergency used authorization has been revoked in a class one recall the most serious type of recall all measurements based on pcr testing should come to an end along with if we do optional and everything like that which has also been mandated by the governor to not or has been ordered by the government to not mandate mass on the kids let's not segregate these kids they're already having a hard enough time so let's not make them feel any weirder or different about whatever choices or any decisions that they make in their lives or their parents make for them okay the vaccine is still under the emergency authorization use until 2023 fact is available to anyone over what 12

171or whatever now at least adults who want it they can go get it you can go get it almost anywhere in walmart publix sam's they're all advertising it you can go get it in a study of approximately 10 million chinese individuals there was no asymptomatic spread out of the deaths that have occurred about 80 percent of those people are obese and about 80 of them are vitamin d deficient i got extra weight on me too so i'm not excluded from this okay fauci even admitted in 2020 in his private emails that the particles were too small for masks thank you our next speaker is ginger bringle good evening good evening board members and staff dr grego hello everyone and yes we are all looking forward to the new year just want to throw that out

172before i get started and i'm here for a couple of requests that teachers have been making mainly one that came up at the end of last year was kind of an unintended consequence that i don't know if you're aware of so they asked if i could bring this up to you so last year because of cobit 19 not just the illnesses but also quarantines the district made a decision to wave attendance in the way that it impacted grades makeup work final exams and so forth and at the time is a great idea because we did have a lot of students out off and on throughout the year but unfortunately there was no distinction made between the students who were out because they genuinely needed to be and students who decided hey great no penalty i'm

173out of here and left and didn't come back for weeks and weeks at a time and so what happened was we had students showing up last week of a grading period or the last week of a semester demanding all of their makeup work so that they could get it done that week it happened a lot and it was very stressful for teachers who are already overworked last year and overwhelmed it was stressful for administrators who had been trying to find these students all year and get work with them and bring them up to par and so like i said it was an unattended consequence but it has definitely happened we can't teach if students aren't there you know that you're all educators and so we would like to see the attendance policy reinstated and advertised

174that it is reinstated so students are aware that they need to be there we need we want to see their shiny faces in front of us every day and so you know in the past we had if they were out certain number of days excused they could make up work using those same number of days obviously a teacher can provide more time right teachers have that option they may know more that's going on but if it's paul if that policy is returned i think we'll have much better attendance this coming year so that would mean labeling absences in focus so that they don't say pending anymore they say excused or unexcused so teachers parents and students can plan that makeup work and preparing for exams in case they don't get to exempt them so we

175would like that changed as well and before i go just wanted to quote that culturally relevant teaching was made popular by dr gloria ladson billings in the early 1990s thank you and have a wonderful time i hope to see you some of you next week during preschool thank you thank you our next speaker is nancy vilardi good evening again hello there again at the closing of the last school year we were all eagerly anticipating a return to normalcy for this year unfortunately it doesn't appear we're getting our wish all the way it's no secret that the coveted numbers have ri have are rising drastically here in pinellas and across the state the positivity rate has jumped from less than two percent two weeks ago to a dizzying 14 percent over the past weekend and now

176it's leveling off about at 12. the case numbers are climbing the hospitalizations are climbing our own dramatic uptick for the summer session reflects that of our community you can understand that this sudden change has caused some concern among your employees during preschool we have a district-wide training arranged as is traditional for pcs this event seems to be an overwhelming concern for many employees considering they will not be among only those they work with at their individual sites they're very uncomfortable mingling with so many different people from different sites while the numbers are escalating we should provide virtual options for those who are most at risk and eliminate large crowded gatherings as much as possible the family's first coveted leave should be reinstated as well as the special coveted sick leave bank for use by people

177who may become sick or who are asked to quarantine due to exposure the family first leave has been extended by our president until september 30th and it will still provide the tax benefits to the employers who utilize it we have total local control over the sick leave bank and it should be made available at least for the first quarter or until our community coveted numbers come back down we may be restricted by the state's orders regarding masking and proof of vaccinations but the protection of the employees and students under our care are still our responsibility constitutionally so and our allowable safety protocol should be back in place plexiglas should be available for use in classrooms where physical distancing is impossible hand sanitizer and disinfectant should be readily available to all who request it all covet

178sanitation protocols reinstated filtration fresh air exchange need to be properly monitored monitored truly monitored and anyone should be free to view those filter logs without having to go through their administration as president of pcta i feel a responsibility to my members and i feel sure that you share this obligation to protect your employees by furnishing a safe and healthy environment in which they can perform their duties for our kids i trust every available safety measure will be put into place to ensure the continuation of the high quality education every child deserves thank you very much thank you next speaker is mary grino good evening hello school board thank you for allowing us to speak i came here with one purpose and i have since developed another purpose but in the light of everything that's been

179happening i just wanted to be known i was on the website today for the school board and i did see a lot of crt and i was disturbed by the language and i thought this really isn't anything different than i had already thought it was anyway and i was thinking that our governor had said that there wouldn't be crt in our schools but that was the that was the thing that i wasn't really looking for and then i was shocked by it but what i actually came to say was i'm glad to see civics becoming something that's very important in our schools that was my primary purpose for coming and when i don't know who spoke it here earlier about what would with the high school at the mayor went to the mayor's office in

180saint pete as a you the know is totally escaping me thank you intern i was thrilled because i really think to teach civics and all through the different levels of school to be able to teach civics to teach the rights and the responsibilities of our citizens begins in schools and my oh i got to admit to it my great-granddaughter is starting school this september well i guess august and i'm just you know i said okay if we are really teaching these kids how to be an american citizen we're not throwing them out into the field without guidelines without the ways and the means of knowing how to be a citizen i tutored pakistani women they were so thrilled and when i was going over everything for that test and i took a lot of civics

181i couldn't answer some of those questions myself and i thought oh my goodness and these these women pass these tests and you go and you see interviews on the street of our college students they don't even know the three branches of government for the love of pete and these are our citizens you know these are the people who are going to be running our nursing homes come on and so at any rate thank you for civics thank you our next speaker is patrick mugen good evening hello oh sorry good evening it'll pick up your voice okay that will you know like some of the other speakers and like the previous speaker i came here say one thing and feel like now i'm going to say another perhaps you remember me and if not you might

182remember the many times that you have said that i am a good teacher that you have rewarded me for being a good teacher that you have agreed that i'm a good teacher and continue to allow me to serve my community you know yesterday i got a phone call from dr shedrick my principal at pinellas park middle school and he called me to tell me that there's been a change in the schedule i'm a history teacher i teach u.s history mainly but this year i'm also going to be teaching civics and i was delighted to find out that i was also going to be teaching civics this is something that i have dreamed about doing for long before i was a teacher i faced a lot of challenges growing up i faced a lot of challenges

183in my young adulthood i worked a lot of jobs i got a lot of debt i didn't go to college immediately i struggled i struggled the way i see my children in my classroom struggling and my children in my classrooms struggle in ways that i could never understand for a variety of reasons but when i found out that i was teaching civics that elation did not last long the fact of the matter is at this moment surrounding our civics curriculum surrounding this drama over critical race theory which is being conflated with culturally relevant teaching which has been around for years i am concerned that by teaching the truth and by teaching the standards and by teaching what i know is right because i am an expert in u.s history i'm an expert in civics that's

184literally what i'm an expert in that's why you hired me that's why i've been doing the job that i've been doing for the past six years going on my seventh that's why my students consistently consistently get high test scores just this past year through all my kids had to go through my uss3 students absolutely crushed that final exam they absolutely crushed it they deserve praise for that for going through what they went through but i worry that this board is not going to protect teachers like me from people who are ill-informed and don't understand the purpose of these standards thank you our next speaker is anne-marie weather oh yeah okay can you hear me you can pull it down a little bit and good very flexible yeah oh there you go okay great hello board

185dr grego staff thank you for having us so i had it all written what i was gonna say and then i sat here so if it's a little disjointed please forgive me there's just more i had to add and some i could take out so i am the mother of a moving up middle schooler and an upper elementary school student pinellas county i know and i now see that you are getting a lot of pressure from parents that are fearful and i was hoping i wouldn't have to come again but i'm glad i came as an involved and caring parent i wholly support the mask recommendation approach for children whose families choose to have them wear masks and for staff and teachers as well hearing the teachers today in fact if that's what makes them

186more comfortable then please like i really encourage people to do that i do see that numbers have increased no one is blind to that however the rate of infection versus the rate of severe cases especially in our age children is still very minimal in fact i have two children friends at home that have coveted right now they have a sniffle and they have a headache both of them i had cove in the beginning of june they have it less than me so i guess my point is to still say that children yes there is more right now but the symptoms are what i've seen less and also in the data as you gain pressure i might remind you that you now have your own set of data miss hine you had commented on you want

187specific data to our age group and that's actually one thing i was going to say was all last year your tracking system was your set of data collection how many of those students actually gave covid to their other classmates how many of them got it from home how many of the kids that got sent home on quarantine ever develop symptoms you also have your summer bridge data which is your new set of data of children that went unmasked so i encourage you as you move forward and you're telling us decisions will be made over email don't worry we're watching it i highly recommend you're all very intelligent people but i just wanted to bring it up that you have your own set of data you don't need florida you don't need pinellas county you have

188your own oh i talked off track and it went away so this school year startup is very different we know a lot more teachers and staff are vaccinated we've again we've proven through summer bridge and again i still agree with a low tolerance for ill children coming to school period i've always been a proponent of that if your kid is sick i mean it really does help everyone to just keep them at home so i was going to talk about keeping up sanitation but dr grego has already said that is already in the plan and i appreciate that you know as we move forward i'd like to make note again that we've led the way and our third grade fsa scores have shown that yes we did decline by two percent but this year i

189think we can move forward and thrive thank you thank you i do want to clear up one thing you said decisions would be made via email that's not going to happen we will have to be together to make any decisions the email is to keep each other informed of what's coming in from parents whether it's pro or con when it comes to masks so i just want to clarify that our next speaker is paula stevens and good evening again good evening again as i listened to earlier in the meeting i know dr grego you had mentioned that the protocols would be updated on the website because that was one of the concerns i was going to speak about was that the pcs guiding principles are still dated from july 9th and i know teachers are

190coming back next week a lot of teachers have already begun to set up and move things and so that was just kind of a concern as to where where we are in this process because i notice we're not fully here back to pre-covet you know the doors you know are closed seats are spaced about three feet apart and so that was wondering if my concern is just please model what you're asking us if we are back to a full business as usual then in here please model that for us and i also after listening to several speakers come up and talk about crt i was one of those who took the culturally relevant teaching the equity training over the summer best thing i took and i thank you for offering to that as teachers as

191part of that bridging the gap because it is needed but i also think we need whether it has to come from leadership explaining to the public what that is and why we're doing it and that it is part of that court order that's part of that and it's just i really hope and i know colleagues have spoken protection for the teachers because there is a lot of misinformation out there but it's making sure that if we are teaching the things that we have learned in our equity training and our culturally relevant teachings that we're not going to be called to the carpet and disciplined for that so please keep that in mind as we move forward because just here tonight you're hearing a lot of the confusion that is out there so that's all i

192have thank you thank you our next speaker is colleen parker good evening good evening it's been a while since i've spoken to you last year i was a category two teacher i was in the classroom for the entire year i kept my mask on i stayed in my cocoon and my students were very conscientious everybody's talked about the increase in everything and i think that you're in a very difficult situation it's almost a damned if you do damned if you don't require mass don't require masks exactly what you can do of course the solution is easy but it's not people would get vaccinated then everything hopefully would be better but then you get the group that are under 12 and the under 12 can't be vaccinated yet and that affects the elementary schools now why

193bring this up is because two things happened this summer that affected me one is my grandson's friend that friend's father died within the last month that friend lived about a block and a half away from my daughter and this father was 49 years old he died at home of covid the thing that's more important or more of an example that concerned me is i have a friend whose grandson went to summer camp he came back from summer camp and through contract tracing they told the parents go get tested and all of the all three of them came back positive they lost the smell taste and the dad ended up getting pneumonia going in the hospital and was almost on a ventilator he caught it from his son who caught it at summer camp this is

194scary how do we predict how how do we protect not just the staff not just all the teachers and everyone who works for pinellas county schools and the students but the students who catch it and because this via the variant the delta variant that's out there is so much more contagious so you're in a real pickle okay how do you figure it out because florida's red pinellas county is red it's tough i'm gonna ask for two suggestions first i was lucky to get vaccinated because you worked with pinellas county health department i got one of the first vaccines and i appreciate that and i know the schools have nurses maybe if you have the students that are 12 and older with parent permission if need be notarized to be able to get the vaccines at

195school and the other thing the other thing that i would suggest and i can picture it happening because there's a lot of anti-masters is not for kids thank you our next speaker is elizabeth fox good evening good evening timing is everything right so i get to come up and maybe speak to some of the fears right there's been a lot of drama up here oh my god you know miss pilardi was very dramatic in her presentation to you all everybody's worried about the positivity numbers going up are we only testing people that are showing symptoms then they're likely that the positivity numbers would be going up as opposed to just testing everybody and their brother i don't know the stories of these people that she shared it's tragic that this man died but i'm sure

196there's a little more to the story than just you know he got covered and died at 49 and he either didn't get the right treatment or he had some underlying condition we have not seen children being vectors of this disease the numbers are not out there as was quoted earlier john's johns hopkins did research there was like one kid in the nation that died from covid that didn't have some other totally serious disease right so i'd ask you to to follow the numbers don't listen to the cdc because they don't even know what they want or what they think it changes when whatever way the wind's blowing the cdc changes their recommendations so you can't really follow the recommendations of a of an agency that can't be consistent right actually look at some science some

197real science take the drama out of it by no means should we be giving vaccinations to children in school no way know how that is the worst idea these vaccines are not tested or there are no long-term studies for children we don't know if they cause cancer fertility issues whatever we don't even know that for the adults but the adults can make their own informed if they get the information choice children cannot and their parents should not be making their parents can make that decision if they want to give them the vaccine but i would venture that most parents that actually look at the science and the information will say wait my kids are not at risk they aren't spreading the disease to everybody they're not putting me at risk i think i'm going to

198hold off and i think you'd get a lot of pushback if you start giving vaccines in the school i'll just tell you that right now as far as the critical race theory i have an idea why don't you open up that culturally relevant training to the parents let them see what you're teaching the teachers about culturally relevant teaching i'm sure that they i would love to see it and i don't even have children in the school i have grandchildren there but i'd like to know what the teachers are how the teachers are being taught to teach them it's very interesting to me that will get rid of some of that mystery or misinformation or whatever so thank you for your time good thank you our next speaker is karen baldino good evening my name is

199karen baldino and i am a kindergarten teacher at skycrest elementary i'm here tonight to speak about my 20 20 20 2021 school year was it easy or fun for my students and i to wear a mask all day no it was not i needed to use a voice amplifier so my students could hear me we did our best and thank goodness we did because at the end of february my class was the first of our school to be quarantined due to a positive student case yes i teach kindergarten it was not the first student case but the first class to be quarantined i believe that we that there were no additional covet cases from that corn from that particular thing because we were wearing our masks i will tell you while it is not easy

200or comfortable to wear masks at school it is even more difficult to teach students while quarantined not all students had access to an ipad or a laptop i lost count of how many texts that i sent to guardian phones with links and lessons i also received many texts with questions and concerns everyone students siblings parents and grandparents worked to help keep all learning yes it was hard but with positive support and encouragement our kindergarten class got through with new cases and variants on the rise we must be safe a change in mindset is needed and we can do it we can be safe by wearing masks washing our hands and being kind thank you thank you our next speaker is patrice perry good evening good evening thank you for the opportunity to be here on

201behalf of my children and other children who do not have a voice i thank you for your service to the great teachers the great staff and administrators and the children of pinellas county we all are a team you have to recognize that if there were no families in the schools there would be no need for school jobs or there would be no school board so we have to realize that we all are team would you consider creating a detailed agreement between the school board and our families like you have with law enforcement when it comes to improving the disciplinary issues that occur in our public schools unfortunately my son has dealt with staff and administrators in pinellas county who have displayed bad behavior once one teacher snatched his phone out of his hand after yelling

202in his face and was not truthful when she when she told the story to administrators they believed her and not us and no action occurred against her another another teacher would not defuse the situation that he asked her to to deal with when it came between him and another student the other student initiated a fight between my son and the other student and the fight occurred he afterwards he was called to the office by the principal and had to write up a statement without my knowledge all i got was a voice message saying that he was suspended from school the other student was allowed to go back to class and unbeknownst to us we really don't know what happened with the student from what we were told the other kid the other student was able

203to come back to school i'm saddened to to learn that the legal agreement was passed unanimously with so many great areas of should the school board and law enforcement may have discussed this subject matter for over a year and the agreement may have gotten better but it was without much community input perhaps maybe by email but not verbal or not in person input our children deserve a black and white not great agreement that's not better but the best you have to offer our kids deserve to be loved and respected and taught in an environment where teachers can be like second parents like they were when i used like i used to have when i was growing up thank you thank you our next speaker is janet cunningham and good evening again good evening board members

204once again my name is janet cunningham and i am a high school science teacher and i would like to take this opportunity just to give you all a chance to reflect on the word science in your minds and i do this with my high school students i ask them what is the definition of science and quite often they can't answer matter of fact they never can answer they can give me examples but they cannot tell me what science actually is i've heard a lot here tonight about following the science how things aren't science what is science the science is good the science is bad all sorts of different words thrown around but i doubt even with teachers in here unless they're a science teacher they can define what science is that's a homework assignment now

205thank you miss edmond for coming to the rescue last school year and providing the graduates of my school with a school board member who recognized their achievements it was a difficult year last year i work in a small school and there were a lot of protocols out and my students were not able to have an in-person school board number and this edmond was able to videotape a greeting for them which was a wonderful personalized touch thank you dr grego and school board members for keeping us safe last year as a level one teacher with pre-existing issues i was able to teach all year in my classroom simultaneously and not become ill thank you for saying dr grego we are going to continue with the enhanced cleaning protocols and with the filtration and what we can

206do to mitigate the rising numbers numbers are data they're not science science uses data thank you for taking care of our students and thank you for being able to listen to all sides of the concerns that are expressed here what i want to make sure that we walk away with and this is to the school board members and for the audience as well teachers are there because they care they have a passion for teaching the students and they want to make sure the students the staff and the administrators remain safe please continue to do what you have done to keep us safe and please recognize what science is and do follow the science thank you the next speaker is trinia cox good evening i'm trinia cox and i'm currently serving as the first vice president

207of the saint petersburg naacp and i also serve as chair of the district monitoring advisory committee which is a judicial committee that provides oversight regarding the quality education of black students but as the first vice president of the saint petersburg naacp i certainly want to give you our concerns regarding the interagency agreement we understand it passed earlier today and we were not able to be present to give our reservations however i do want to acknowledge three things for your consideration one we want to thank chief luke williams for his willingness to engage in a community engagement process that we had not seen in earlier years we certainly want to thank you luke for doing that we really do appreciate that i'm going to ask that you and others listen very carefully and honor the request

208of our school board member ms evans that we have an annual review as to how things are going because one if it's going well and we consist and we can acknowledge that success meaning that their school arrests are going down that the disparity between black and non-black students in terms of arrests are narrowing then we can say we can salute that we can celebrate that and if it's not we can hold all of ours all of ourselves accountable for that not happening secondly i want you to recognize that it's about stakeholders working together childhood development proper socialization the rules and regulations aspirations towards life goals building resiliency the ability to be inclusive and conduct problem solving activities these are great skills students must learn and must practice it must be reinforced and we all have

209a contribution to make parents yes they're the first teachers but many times they are not equipped to do the job schools you should have a evidence-based emotional learning program that will help children learn self-control conflict resolution non-violently that's important for students to learn very early and to recognize their feelings and communicate those schools can do that schools can also recognize that children's misbehavior is usually indicative of some other kinds of things going on some family dysfunctionality some lack of skills not learned some modeling they wish they could see that you and i know they're missing that's where the wrap-around services come into play so we need those social workers donna sicilian out there we need them out there we need those that mental health wellness we need to make certain those services are being accessed

210when they are needed we all have a role in their development thank you thank you the next speaker is caitlin nothing good evening hello board members if i interact with you are you going to interact back with me no no why isn't there any plexiglass here and where's the sanitation specialist that was here every school board meeting last year you don't have an answer for that you can't answer me okay well anyways my name is caitlin nothing and i'm running for school board district 2. lisa kane i'm coming for your seat for years the american people have been lied to manipulated and preyed upon and saved on by their elected officials every two or four years we watch this pony show of our elected officials and hopefuls lie manipulate and make empty promises to make

211things better we don't need better we need the best all at all levels of government on both sides of the aisle but things aren't getting better in fact it seems they're getting worse it's dismal that you miss hine tote that you honor your oath follow the constitution have you ever have you reviewed the constitution lately do you know about the first amendment freedom of speech as a citizen's right free of a citizen's right for freedom of speech do you know about the 14th amendment of citizens right to privacy and equal application of the law the past year you silence ignored and took away a student's individuality your job is to serve the people you represent to ensure equality and education not equity 100 student success right tonight we have sat here and suffered while you

212pat yourselves on the back for what a great job you've done and a year full of obstacles perhaps i'm the first to tell you this but you're actually not doing a good job my campaign is not a promise of change or to make things better but it's a promise of accountability and transparency i will be dissecting budgets inspecting curriculum and insurance insurance i'm sorry could you please stop the clock so we don't waste any of your time so you can finish it we have a policy that does not allow political candidates to engage in campaigning or discussion of their candidacy at the public speaking opportunity so you may certainly i let go that you mentioned you were running and that's fine but it seemed as if you were getting into the platform of your campaign

213and so that is not allowed under our policy 97. it's interesting you can interact with me and apply the to apply the rules but you can't interact me with me when i have a genuine question about why there's no plexiglas or your sanitization specialist right here yeah and i'll stop talking about my campaign i understand the rules now that it's been explained to me as i watch the school board bring motions and every single one pass unanimously i'm truly baffled do not encourage creative expression do you not encourage dissent from your mainstream narrative or are you scared to stand for truth and righteousness even if it means standing alone that's what you didn't do last year lisa kane you're all patting yourself on the back for this meeting yet parent dissatisfaction is at an all-time

214high parents are the direct representatives of the most pop most vulnerable part of the population the students the voiceless in this situation my name is caitlin i'm a concerned parent and lisa kane i'm coming for your seat thank you our next speaker is barbara do mutual and if we didn't get that correct you can share your i'm barbara dumochel hello good welcome and well i just want to start off by saying that i'm a grandmother and there's two philosophies there's two sciences one is right and one is wrong so one is being suppressed and censored and i am in touch with i'm connected with scientists and some of the top scientists and doctors in the world and a microorganism a virus and a bacteria is a microorganism a microorganism cannot go through i mean it's

215i mean it goes through a mask it's a microorganism it's common sense number one also the vaccinations as the other ladies stated are totally unproven untested and it the numbers are already in that they are harming people harming young people and young people should never be vaccinated they don't have a need to be vaccinated their immune systems are strong most of the people that have passed are compromised in one way or another it's all about building your immune system up and that is all that information is already out there vitamin c garlic zinc president trump recognized a couple of the other therapeutic things that are absolutely effective and are being censored and denied hospitals my daughter is a doctor by i mean a nurse by the way and in her hospital she worked in a

216covered wing and she said they had to write down her co-workers had to write down people died of covid when they didn't i mean this is all out there you guys watch the news but you there's two different news channels you know one is being censored and the other one is i don't know what it is but i want to just read one more thing i'm teaching while teaching our children about things that they shouldn't even be thinking about is just common sense and as a parent a grandparent we are we're not going to let it happen we're going to be building charter schools we're going to just pull out and you you already know that i'm sure so it's just common sense you can't teach a young child so just think back when you

217were seven or eight years old and somebody came to explain to you why white people and black people and asian people are different it's like you know when my kids were little they had friends in every race and my i had all races at my house overnight all the time i love being a parent in those days i didn't have to work so i mean it was just wonderful to just present evil to children is wrong you have to overcome evil with good teach them good things teach them this is what we really need in schools is family relationships and how and relationship skills thank you our last speaker tonight is cynthia smith cynthia smith here there she is good evening good evening this summer has been a lot different than the last few months

218for alicia she's actually able to be a child she's actually allowed able to express herself freely and not worry about being bullied heard lady a few before me say something about she doesn't want kids that wear a mask to get bullied well how about let's keep the other kids safe that aren't wearing a mask for them not to be bullied it works both ways with the bullying thing you know for those that haven't heard alicia's story she was bullied because she is a supporter of a certain candidate and because she wore a t-shirt a hat and a mask supporting who she wants there were other children at her school that did the same thing but none of them got bullied my daughter was not kept safe she was physically attacked six times and i pray

219that this year since you have passed new policies like the one if you continue to become a bully that you go to a secondary school secondary schools are not bad because my son not for bullying went to a secondary school they found out he had a learning disability there and it helped him to get a better education because the teachers are trained better and they're able to see things in a different light than a regular teacher who doesn't have the training so it's not all secondary schools are bad for those people parents i think oh secondary school because my kid but no there may be an underlying reason that their child is being bullied or is bullying excuse me and it could be that they have a learning disability or they've been bullied themselves but

220which does not give them a reason to bully so i hope that you guys keep in that in mind when you're going forward and if you call an emergency meeting to mandate mask we need to also make sure that they're going to be policies in place that teachers don't sit there and allow whether you wear a mask or not to be bullied the children and the administration all need to be held responsible if you make the mass mandate we need new policies for the bullying for the crt yes i think parents definitely need a workshop where we need to be able to have access to it and as far as wearing a mask i still think it's the parents and the child's decision you know you guys have the information i don't have to go

221on and on about it but please keep all of this in mind and i understand you have to do both sides but remember we are the parents of the children and we should make the medical decisions have a good evening good thank you well that ends this portion of the public participation but before everybody goes i would like to say thank you to each of you for coming and sharing your thoughts sharing the information that you think we need and doing it in a respectful manner and following our procedures so thank you very much and have a good evening you