001good morning and welcome to the August 24th 2021 regular school board meeting which I now call to order the invocation this morning will be given by Pastor Bob Martin from the St Paul United Methodist Church in Largo he will be joining us via Zoom following the invocation we will have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Vice chairman Mrs long and the national anthem will be performed by the St Petersburg High School pitchforks under the direction of the coral director David lawhead so is Pastor Martin on Zoom he I am there okay please stand thank you for joining us glad to be with you let us come together in prayer loving God even though we yearn to live without fear we confess there are times it just overwhelms us when troubles come we can become divisive
002and doubt doubtful and too often those feelings can contribute to our not working together but being apart covid-19 and its variants are on our mind and we confess that we have differing opinions on what steps to take let not the politics of the day be what leads our decisions but let your command for us to love our neighbor be what determines our destiny we pray for the overwhelming number of students and staff who have been infected by this horrible virus and ask your safekeeping over them so that their recovery would be quick and complete let the hopeful work begin today with our school board and the parents in our community Empower our board to lead courageously and without fear as they place the safety and well-being of our children and staff first may we continue
003to be a people of Hope as your promise to fear not remains on our mind and on our lips Lord in your mercy we pray amen amen pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all you see by the what sooud we through the still there for the good well this is our first meeting since the school year began and I know staff students and families were very excited and anxious to get the year underway so let's enjoy some of the sights and sounds of the first day of school for the 2021 School 21 22 school year we your teacher sir come with me big guy all right we'll move on all right we
004will have the introductions of professional Community organization Representatives with Miss Isabelle mascarenas our public information officer good morning good morning Madam chair members of the board Dr grego and staff it is my pleasure to introduce the following representatives of community and professional organizations from the penila classroom Teachers Association we have Nancy valard president from the penila arts for a complete education Coalition we have Terry Marx joining us virtually members of the media and attendance are 10 Tampa Bay Bay News 9 ABC Action News Fox 13 creative loafing and wmnf thank you good thank you Dr grego are there any changes or amendments to the agenda there are two amendments to the agenda Madam chair one is I'm pulling the item 7.13 the renewal agreement with Community Tampa Bay I've asked Miss matway to just review
005the contract with them not a not an issue or problem you'll be seeing that in a future board meeting and the second is 7.19 that's a purchasing agenda summary and I'm adding there a purchase item with a partnership that I'll explain later on Bay care Wellness services and this Bay care will be partnering with us to provide covid rapid testing for our employees I'll explain that later those are the two amendments to the agenda good thank you very much and I find good cause to add the item to 7.1 n the item for with Bay care Wellness board members are there any items that need to be pulled Mrs Edmond I would like to pull agenda item 7.2 and 7.14 7.2 and 7.4 all right anything else all right then do we have a motion
006to adopt the amended agenda I motion to adopt all right Mrs long made a motion do we have a second second okay M hin has a second all in favor say I opposed say no and it passes unanimously all right we will now move to public comments on agenda items before we do that members of the public will have three opportunities to address the board when we gather for our meeting the first opportunity is to speak during public comment on the agenda items the next opportunity is if we have a public hearing most of which which are policies lastly after the meeting is adjourned we will remain for public participation when speakers May address items pertaining to the business of the district at each of these opportunities for the public board members are here to
007listen to you this is not a time for us to discuss or debate we will not take any formal action or information brought forward unless it's pertaining to an agenda item however the board and the superintendent May clarify statements or refer speakers to the proper staff person to help work through their concern the board is committed to a standard of Civility and decorum in the conduct of our meetings whether you agree or disagree with the viewpoints expressed by a speaker please refra refrain from showing audible support or disagreement we 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 and intemperate or rude remarks thank you Mrs H do we have any speakers for agenda items thank you
008madam chair board members and Dr grego we have one speaker for the agenda items okay and it is Mark clo all right all right but that's our only speaker yes ma'am okay so we'll wait for a minute so he was in a room he was in the overflow room and was not told that was happening okay then we will wait I think we'll do something different is another speaker and we that would come first let's go ahead and while M Mr clo is coming up he'll have an opportunity who's the next speaker our next speaker is Julie vain okay welcome hi there how are you she's speaking to item 5.1 excuse me thank you I'm speaking to procedural changes I attended the workshop madam I'm sorry I apologize Miss is it vain or vau vain
009vain I apologize so on our agenda we always have agenda item 5.1 that is the public comments on agenda items it is not an item that is going to be passed by the board this is a time for you to speak to items that are is going July 13th Workshop minutes sir like to speak the July 13th Workshop minutes okay the July 13th Workshop minutes is an item item 7.2 okay so we'll reflect that and you can continue speaking about 7.2 thank you very much we'll start we'll start your three minutes over obviously thank you sorry I just came up the stairs so didn't know I'd be speaking right away I was pleased to be able to attend the July 13th workshop and U was very informative and I recommend all members of the community
010attend workshops because you do learn a lot the reason I wanted to speak to that consent agenda item 7.1 on the July 13th Workshop was that there was a lot of discussion by the board about changing the speaking requirements and you all did not come to a consensus but I wanted to let you know that I really felt that it was important that the community be able to speak before the board and that they be able to be heard and that any kind of limitation on the speaking before the school board whether it's limiting the time prior to the meeting to speak or whether it's limiting the how many people speak to a particular item or if there were a certain number of speakers you all talked about if there were you know more than
01120 speakers they'd only get a minute if it was 30 speakers the most concerning thing was you all pointed to Hillsboro County Schools as like a standard to look at and I was very concerned with what's been happening in Hillsboro County Schools I thought they're not so many to look at so I really would like you all to just continue the way we are the community knows the way it is and anything you do at this point to shut down speaking is just another kind of just lays more grievances on the community for what we've gone through the last year thank you very much thank you all right is Mr clo up here good morning morning Mark lutho Largo 724 3 and A5 million for Jacobson Tech High School now here it is another big
012mistake and what's happening when you make these bad buildings we have a headline that was just in the paper adults are failing us on climate when you make the buildings the wrong way as you're doing again here this is a column by thunberg and some other young people that are stating that you're not doing what you need to do for the future of the young people high performance passive solar buildings over two decades I've been bringing the science here you don't come close if it was a dark game as I've said before not only are you missing the Bull's Eye you're not even hitting the board the headlines keep coming Stark warnings for the warming planet un report spells out dire consequences of climate change this column by these young people make note of this
013latest report and in the New York Times report they state that there'll be one two coming next year and they're going to explore more fully strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming well a great starting point would be high performance passive solar school buildings which is where you should have been many years ago when I first told you about this when will you listen thank you are there any other speakers yes okay yes ma'am we have an Marie weather speaking to agenda item 7.13 all right good morning good morning I didn't realize we could speak on meeting minutes the 7.13 was pulled no one oh yes 7.13 was pulled from the agenda it will not be something on which we're voting today the meeting minutes from the workshop 7.13 the meeting minutes
014whatever 7 point okay that would be 7. one two two two 7.3 7.22 okay sorry okay so I just since there is this opportunity one of the things I had a question on was Sarah otoul went you know showed all the slides the recommendation of the FLD recommendations on quarantine times and it was my understanding from those slides that was maybe what we were going to do which was students for any exposure reason four days take a test pop negative come back or seven days don't test come back however word on the street is that's definitely not what we're doing so my question is why did she present that if that's not what we're doing what are the actual protocols that's really all I have do you respond to public comment or on agenda items
015generally we don't Dr greo is there some clarification that is Sarah OU here I'm Sorry Miss OU gave the decision tree we're working with the Department of Health there's no doubt every school district across the State of Florida has been pretty swamped with that we're catching up with those things but the rules that and the protocols that she expressed are the rules from the Department of Health okay and that's what we've adopted and you don't have to answer me because kids are being told 10 days 20 days no parent that I've talked to that has kids in quarantine right now have heard the four or 7 Day at all I send it to them from here and they're like well that's not what we were told at all so just I don't you know that's
016all just BR we get some clarification and make sure people are aware of what it is all right thank you and just for clarification sake that was the August 9th just for the record it was the August 9th Workshop not the July 13th so is what I was just told so okay any other speakers no ma'am all right so we will now move to the consent agenda do I have a motion to accept it all right Mr Dudley made a motion to approve with Mrs long seconding all in favor say I oppose say no and it passes unanimously thank you we will now move to item 7.2 with miss Edmund you pulled it a point of clarification just a second do we have a motion no that for this we're 7.2 do we have a
017motion to accept item 7.2 motion okay Dr Carr do we have a second second okay Miss hin all right miss Edmund point of clarification the speaker that just came up she was speaking to the August 9th special called Workshop so that wasn't specifically to the agenda item that was mentioned so I want to make sure that's reflected in the record thank you and then for this item one speaker referenced it earlier but at that Workshop there was a discussion regarding annual review of policies and procedures for for the School Board office I would like the record to reflect however the board decided no actions would occur and further discussion would take place during another Workshop I believe that stakeholders should be aware of the discussions that are occurring in our workshops and be able to
018provide feedback so I am encouraged enaging people who would like to provide feedback on the way of work of this board to submit their responses via email things that were included were not streaming comments after meeting has been adjourned length of time for speakers to speak a deadline to sign up for for each speaker to speak per category no advertising and limiting the number of people to speak after adjourning the meeting among other things so again if you have an opinion I suggest that you s submit that to this board that was my comment okay and if they do have an opinion they will have an opportunity to speak to it two times because it would be a policy change and so it would be part of the agendas for this meeting the conversation that
019happens at the workshop would just be what do we bring forward and it can be amended in between during that month so there will be two readings for that so they'll have an opportunity two times to speak to that at at a board meeting thank you Miss Cook I think it's very important that we are clear and transparent to the community absolutely all right any other comments on 7.2 all right we have a motion by Dr Carr and a second by Mrs Miss ha Hine all in favor say I opposed say no and it passes unanimously we'll now move to 7.14 do we have a motion to approve and 7.14 let me read it to you is a request approval of the renewal agreement with the juvenile welfare Board of pelis County for data deliverables
020do we have a motion Dr I mean Mr Dudley 71 in our AG 7.14 is the renewal agreement with the juvenile welfare board 7.14 is approval the approve the renewal of the inter agency agreement for student data sharing with the Office of the State Attorney six circuit court and the juvenile welfare Board of pelis all right I have a non-updated so that was my 1.3 all right so 1.4 do we have a motion on that yes okay Mr Dudley do we have a second second all right Miss Hine all right Miss Edmond thank you can someone share or provide some of the history regarding this policy or this inter agency agreement I know that the statute was reference that without consent of the student or the student's parents release personally identifiable records or reports of
021a student to parties of an inter agency agreement among the Department of Juvenile Justice school and law law enforcement authorities and other signatory agencies for the purposes set forth in this rationale below I think that it would be great for the public to hear of the work that has occurred with the jwb as well as the role that the court plays in this inter agency agreement thank you all right Dr grego Who would you like to have it okay Mr kerski would you addresses please yes thank you madam chair Mrs Edmund these two agreements that are now 713 and 714 after the one was pulled they are related and so I'll speak to them in tandem these relate to the sharing of student information between the district and different agencies in order to prosecute the
022TR Andy Court program as you know Florida law provides for a court proceeding when students reach a certain level of egregious absences or tardies they end up going through a truancy Court at the 49th Street Courthouse in the juvenile justice system and I used to go there myself and so the state attorney which could theoretically charge a parent with educational neglect which is a crime needs to have have information about the students in the program as well the juvenile welfare board and all of its funded agencies need information on students who are in that system in order to provide these social services and assistance that the family needs or that the court directs that they must take advantage of and so these documents these agreements have been with the district and they are with every
023other District for for decades at this point point and Florida law does allow for the sharing of this information and it is with the intent to assist the student in the Juvenile Justice System whether Tru Andy or otherwise to provide the necessary services and supports to help that student and their family okay all right Dr Carr and in the past and you can correct me if I'm wrong did we not also have an internal evaluator who also facilitated did data sharing with jwb in order to develop program evaluation for but that data was not student identifiable data is that correct that's my understanding we might need somebody else to speak more to that from our research and accountability department but I do know that's my understanding we would share disaggregated data so that they can
024evaluate some of their programs but we would not give them the student identifiable information we do have a way as you know Dr Carr to to align student data to a particular student but in an anonymous fashion and then track that so that an outside agency or a researcher could see the efficacy of various programs that researcher would never know the identity of the student but they might have a masked Anonymous ID where they could track that student over time and then compare the students in the program and the students out outside the program and do with that whatever they do thank you but that's separate from this item so this is a different piece from that because I know there was some question about isn't that what we've already done with but this is
025actually student identifiable data and it's different from evaluation of a program or a research request that is correct and obviously in the context of the Juvenile Justice System system and providing services to students and their families identity is necessary okay Dr grego yeah I know we were talking about the Juvenile Justice System but just because the juvenile welfare board was brought up they're tremendous Partners a lot of their strategies are the same as ours we're we're into early literacy reading programs how to continue to have students on Gray level by certain grades and so that information as Mr kerski very well articulated is is so important to be shared back and forth in terms of how effective are some of those programs after school programs summer programs communitybased programs and so forth so that's that's
026it and I know these two got switched back and forth but that's a separate item with the juvenile welfare board I also want to thank them for the great work that they're doing with us in Partnership okay okay Mrs Edmond thank you Mr kerski for providing addition information and to what Dr grego just mentioned the juvenile welfare board has been a great partner with this District in light of various concerns that occur as it relates to information sharing I thought it was important to raise this question do you know if providing this information leads to students being targeted for for certain offenses or is it just what you said the court is involved in case they're needed to intervene with the parent that is certainly not the intent of these agreements the intent of these
027agreements is to provide support to the students who have you know poor attendance and other issues and need support through the jenile justice system because they are minors the school system is intricately involved because they are also in our system for the most part that's that's as much as I can speak to thank you very much Mr Kari okay any other comments or questions all right so we have a motion that was made by Mr Dudley and a second by Miss Hines to approve the renewal of the inter agency agreement for student data sharing with the Office of the State Attorney sixth circuit court and juvenile welfare board pelis county all in favor say I opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you all right we will now move to our non-consent we'll start
028with item 8.1 request approval of the agreement with the Arts Conservatory for teens for August 25th 2021 through June 1st 2022 we have a motion motion okay Mrs Kane and a second second Mrs edman all right Dr grego yes Madam chair and the school board members it gives me great pleasure to renew this agreement with the Arts Conservatory for teen teens I know Alex Harris is here with us today but let me turn it over to Lori matway our associate superintendent for student services and Community Support Services and thank you Dr grego good morning Madam chair board members Dr grego and staff it really truly is my honor to be here again to talk about the Arts Conservatory for teens it's hard to believe this started in 2009 I don't think Alex and I could
029possibly be that old but we have been partnered for quite a long time and working to ensure that the program was successful Dr Alex Harris and Herbert Murphy started this program as I said in 2009 Alex is an awardwinning recording artist and producer his passion is to provide opportunities for marginalized and disenfranchised youth to grow and develop through variety of creative mediums such as dance acting chorus Visual Arts and video production Dr Harris's doctorate research was a qual qualitative study that investigates the impact of interdisciplinary comprehensive Arts programs on the self-efficacy of underserved teens in urban communities and congratulations Dr Harris their mission educate Empower and enrich the lives of Youth and teen in our communities by fostering creativity through Arts education professional theatrical Productions career guidance healthy living and leadership development their learning goals
030are to provide professional training in the Arts with a focus on building character through problem solving and emotional intelligence leverage resources that contribute to improving the behavior and self-esteem of Youth improve overall academic success and enhance Arts culture for students in April of 2021 Dr Bruce Jones professor and vice president for research at Howard University conducted an external subita of assessment of the ACT program in his report Dr Jones wrote based on student respondent results there is no doubt that act plays a vital role in their outlook on life learning and interest in in education the impact thousands of teens have been teens have been served since 2009 improved attendance and behavior and academic performance Logistics following this board's approval the program will begin again this year at John Hopkins Largo oakr and Tyro middle
031schools we hope to begin on September 6 following your approval they will serve over 100 students per school and the principles are excited to welcome this program back face to face at their schools for this coming school year and at this time I'll turn it over to the board for questions for myself or Dr Harris okay board members are there any questions or comments Mrs Edmund I was just about to say I don't have a question or I have a comment and I just want to say that I'm thankful for this partnership and for the work of Dr Harris and act seeing this work on full display in the community I think this is again another great partnership and I'm looking forward to seeing what the outcomes are of this meeting thank you right anyone
032else Miss Hine I would just like to Echo that hi Dr Harris hi Alex it's very nice to see you I'm very grateful for the work that you do throughout our entire Community I too have been able to witness it a good bit and I just want to say thank you thank you and I think both of them have spoken on behalf of the entire board we're very very grateful for this partnership and what you do so thank you thanks if there are no other questions I we can make comments each one of us could say how much we appreciate it and how much we've enjoyed it but if there are any other questions okay I see no other questions so we have motion by by Mrs Kaine and a second by I think it's
033Miss Edmond okay can't even read my own writing to approve the agreement with the Arts Conservatory for teens for August 25th 2021 through June 1st 2022 all in favor say I oppose say no and it passes unanimously as well thank you very much okay we'll move to item 8.2 request approval to wave the attendance portion within policy 5420 point3 reporting student progress and class ranking a high school for the first semester of 2021 22 do we have a motion to accept a motion okay Mrs long second okay Mrs Kane Dr grego yeah Madam chair and school board members I so I'm very grateful that this board serves with a level of compassion with students especially given this conditions and Mr Henrik is bringing forward something that this board waved the last two semesters last year
034so we're asking for another time of this first semester and we'll see how those conditions are after this so Mr hendrik thank you Dr grego good morning Mrs cook board members I'm Kevin Hendrick associate superintendent for teaching and learning and it's my pleasure to bring to you this item on the non-consent agenda as you know we have final exams in our high schools for all courses it's part of student grades it's in policy 50 42.0 3 part of that policy outlines the exemption policy that allows students to exempt exams under certain circumstances one of those circumstances is attendance and students who have four absences or fewer are eligible to exempt exams if they meet the other categories which also include an A or a B in the course there are other Exceptions there are sometimes
035you have to take it first semester but not second and things like that but last year in first semester and in second semester we asked you to wave the attendance requirement and allow students if they meet the other requirements of the exam exemption policy to exempt those exams we did that in accordance with our district protocols encouraging folks who are not feeling well or have any kind of symptoms to stay home and come to school only when they're well so once again this year we're asking you to wave the attendance portion only keep all the other components and this request is for first semester thank you board members any comments or questions we did do it last year and I think it's imperative that we do it again so that we don't have people coming
036to school sick and they know that they can stay home because I know getting out of an exam is very important to a high schooler and so they will do almost anything to to get there so waving that will be very very helpful so that we won't be having students come sick so if there are no other comments we have a motion and a second to approve the to wave a attendance portion of policy 542 0.03 reporting student progress and class ranking for high school for the first semester of 2021-22 all in favor say I I oppose say no and it too passes unanimously thank you thank you than all right I request adoption of the proposed pelis County school board's 2022 legislative platform do we have a motion motion okay Mrs long and miss
037Edmund a second okay all right Dr grego we're going to send this straight to our chairman of our legislative committee Mrs Kaine if you will present this for us absolutely thank you so much it's with great pleasure I bring forth this discussion of our legislative platform for 2021 we our thank you to all the members of the legislative committee thank you to miss Edmund and Miss Carr as well as Miss Dole who has helped us put together this platform I've had the pleasure of being on this legislative committee for three years now and this year to set as chair we're very excited about some of the initiatives we're able to include we met three different times in order to discuss this trying to align our platform with our strategic directions that we created in our
038district strategic plan so when you look at the plan we have six areas that we have put on here that align with with different areas of our strategic directions starting with high quality teachers and Innovative programming some of this Remains the Same from previous years as some items were're continuing to put forth in our legislative platform for pelis County and some of them are very specific to penis County where we have high quality teachers Innovative learning we have multiple items there that you can see we have early learning and voluntary pre kindergarten so the expansion of our VPK program we are asking to expand to full day programs for students throughout the county and we are very excited to bring forth student internships and apprenticeships and additional Workforce Development these two items are very specific
039to pelis County programs and we're excited to bring them forth as they'll expand upon the internships appren apprenticeships industry certifications and District P pipelines for entry level certified employment not only in Early Education we have a new program for Early Learning in the classrooms combined with student internships as well as Workforce Development as we continue to add more certifications for our adult Learners as well as our high school students we also have some items under student safety and school buildings is there anything else you wanted to add Miss no we covered it okay fabulous is there any questions on how we came to these or any that you wanted to add as a board okay Dr Carr I just want to say thank you to you Mrs Kan for your leadership and facilitation of the
040meeting in order for us to develop this and dull and her team for working with us to to develop this it was an opportunity for us to identify concerns or barriers or opportunities within our strategic plan and work collaboratively with our legislators and I look forward to our upcoming meeting with them so thank you for your leadership you okay senman Dr Carr just took the words out of my mouth thank you Mrs Kane thank you staff I'm also looking forward to our delegation meeting I think it's important that our platforms are aligned with our strategic plan and that we are engaging our stakeholders or our legislative our legislators so again thank you okay good anyone else thank you all right so we do have a motion with Mrs long and a second with miss Edmund
041to adopt the proposed penis County school board's legislative platform for 202 too all in favor say I oppose say no and it passes unanimously and thank you all for your hard work on that okay items introduced by the superintendent thank you madam chair and to the school board and to the public I want to thank everybody for a smooth opening it was calm it was smooth we didn't know what to expect but I could tell you that our staff my staff visited and touched every single school that first day went in into each each and every school and we continue to work with our leaders I also want to thank our principles and assistant principles coming back off of last year it was a difficult challenge but I could tell you they rose that occasion
042you saw in that video I always start my school year at transportation and want to thank our bus drivers I get out there at 4:30 or so in the morning one morning but they're out there every single morning and people don't realize that the work they do and the hours of which they do that and the smile that they provide our students it's no secret that transportation and bus driving and across the state and Nation you hear National stories of that I want to recognize t- Mark and Mr herck because they've been recruiting bus drivers and even last week we're still working very diligently to try to close a gap of about 30 drivers I'm going to be honest and so we are right now looking at a contract that we've already implemented with ALC
043schools to take a look at handling about 10 or 11 routes that we have very specialized routes with our ESC transition programs that they specialize in which will free up about 10 drivers we have another recruitment class that'll be graduating in a couple of weeks of another 11 graduates that they will be taking to the road supervised initially at first and then we're looking at another 10 or 11 and ALC to take a look at some of our EAS programs or some of our longer runs that take a lot of time we feel like within the next few weeks we're going to close that Gap but that's with a lot of recruitment in this current employment condition in in the community and even throughout the state and so really when you look at a lot
044of districts and the shortage that they have our 30 is I feel very good that it's going to be it's going to be eliminated but what it's doing is causing double runs in in buses is causing late buses but students are getting there but we see we see an end in in in sight with that so I just want to say that I'm going to report back on September 14th of the progress that were made perhaps with that with with that contract not perhaps with ALC so that we can expand our partnership with them and eliminate any gap of driver needs that we have as you know there's been a lot of talk over the last few weeks in terms of you know the it was mentioned earlier about school districts and the Department of
045Health being able to keep up with the line tracing and quarantining and there again another system strained and so we did meet with the Department of Health we met for an extended period of time because it became clear that as we opened up last year versus opening up this year is that they were not able to really have the capacity to confirm the cases do the contact tracing verify vaccinations and staff so we huddled late evenings weekends and created a system that we have a covid person at each and every school we've trained that those individuals last Friday and also again on Monday for those who couldn't make one or the other and we're going to look and examine this over the next 30 days I've in touch contact with the Department of Health it's
046not a desire to take this over but it's a desire to really ensure the health and safety of our teachers our faculties support staff and our students and families so you could see and many of you saw that there's a new dashboard that has been put live this morning actually it's pcsb.org covid9 cases it's a very powerful one it's a very we ju we just we worked on it completely I want to thank staff for working seven days a week to to move this issue because normally it wasn't our district that was controlling all of these things but now we have taken on a lot of responsibility and that took us to not wait but rather to to work when we had to work so you'll see that new dashboard we're going to grow with
047it's not perfect but it is a whole lot more robust than than ever before and you're going to see some of the real Dynamic aspects of it and so that parents and faculties and others could see where where we're at we've held as I mentioned two training session TI's work to update the internal reporting dashboard we've modernized it we've updated to make it very smooth for teachers and for assistant principles or that covid point person at the school site we believe that this year it will be actually smoother than working with with seating charts that seating charts that today are accurate perhaps tomorrow's not and the back and forth move movement of just having someone go into that classroom and assess the situation key to all of this though is the importance of providing our
048employees bus drivers food lunchroom workers teachers principes support staff everyone all of our employees a an access to Rapid testing and so we can confirm a negative or we can confirm a positive and I want to thank Dr threadgill again and Dr Cho but we are opening up actually two sites with Bay care that you'll you I mentioned earlier in the amendment to the agenda we've been on the phone with them as late as yesterday finalizing those plans I believe they're going to open up tomorrow and they will be specially serving all of our employees the one the bay care will be at the old Curtis Fundamental and this will board members this will go out on an email put push for all to all employees later today if if it hasn't already but the
049old Curt is fundamental behind Clear Water intermediate in the media center we're setting up a we're setting up a rapid testing site we're also going to be setting up another one with Bay Care at walta penel service center and we're going to determine the hours we're going to certainly make sure those hours are long enough so that our employees can get there outside of their work hours in addition to that community health centers for pelis this is not only our employees but our employees are going to be welcomed there it will be at High Point that's on 1410 58 Street very close to the juvenile welfare board in fact and also the second site that they're opening or is open now is the Center for Health Equity and that's in St Petersburg at 2333 34th
050Street that site's open seven days a week from 9 to 5 so we have four sites and Dr Cho is planning on Contracting another site a fifth site well it' be his third site with our two sites with Bay care in the clearw area it's kind of mid midc count a little bit north county because he's got one in the South and one one around the panel's park area so our employees be able to go and get a rapid test in 15 minutes and determine where they're at and the whole goal here is to keep people not only keep them employed but also and keep them not employed but keep them at work but also let them have a peace of mind if they so choose to have to have a test the our efforts
051in in terms of Even in our school sites I'm very pleased but our efforts in terms of masking continues to highly recommend the use of mask we've had posters morning announcements the reminder of students for the current conditions we choose and we're working very diligently to educate our young people and educate our teachers about the pluses and minuses but really pluses of of becoming Mass especially during this time period weekly principal home calls that principles are doing newsletters social media and so forth I want to thank Beth herendine and her entire Communications Department for really pushing this message out also the area superintendent and chief transformation officer has been very busy working with principles as we as we do we're continually assessing each and every activity as you know I announced last week that our
052back to school nights that we held as we orientating parents to come into our schools have been requested to go virtual the uneasiness of putting three times the number of people into a classroom there's better ways of doing things and so our Mantra is let's let's use Common Sense let's let's be intelligent about this and let's see where we can leverage and still have the same type of meetings with parents and others and if a parent wants to meet with with teachers and others we could still we're still doing that we're still doing all of these things but that particular event we're doing and I also want to remind the board and to the public Mr herbick has done a fabulous job of air filtration systems over the summertime and in opening the school we're
053also completely cleaning our schools each and every evening deep cleaning disinfecting not only the School classrooms but also the buses we are still and people ask me the questions did you still remove the essential Furniture yes is the answer we haven't pushed it back so that we can have the greatest distancing that we can have hand washing towels all of those things are still a top priority we have them well stocked in our warehouse and the plan operators are well informed in terms of how to get more so that we have each and every one of those supplies in in each of the classrooms we are encouraging outdoor spaces if you go into any of our schools you'll see more picnic tables with umbrellas than ever before because people are using those outdoor spaces like
054Miss Miss Hine you mentioned that during during our Workshop and we are still maintaining even with a shortage of nurses we've been very successful to have a nurse in in every single in every single School we have you know based on I think it was Miss Long's suggestion we've launched this Clinic card social media campaign to ensure that your clinic card is up to date simple thing but I can tell you it now that I described and what I described what we were doing at the school site that is really critical and very important that we do that so we have this campaign going on about the clinic card and it's working it's working some other news unrelated to covid is that we had a very successful superintendent round table with the penal Educational Foundation
055last week we had 60 plus business partners I want to thank Dr berer for still moving forward with those roundtables and we highlighted in our district our FSA testing results the panel early literacy initiative the preap programs in our Middle School Navan best standards that are rolling out Mr Henrik is doing in in K through to in ela this year and then the rest of the grades in math in ela next year and we also talked about our Sr fundings and the top it off Sarah painter the Florida teacher of the year addressed that group too in addition to that we had our first meeting the inaugural meeting with the staff of the national postsecondary strategy Institute national network this was The Institute that I mentioned to the board that we in penel County were
056invited to join the very prestigious Institute we invited on June 14th is one of the more Innovative school districts when it comes to working with students High School Middle School students to prepare them to go to college or careers after graduation and we're paired with some other school districts such as Baltimore City Public Schools Denver public city schools and about four or five others throughout the United States that we're we're truly learning from and to end off you know the colleg and career and and everyone has to at least have that opportunity and that's that's 100% Student Success I want the board as you walk in and out of this building to know that our Communications Department updated those banners that we put up a few years ago with new students new classes new new
057schools representing the schools throughout the State of Florida and outside and I'm really proud of those students and they're proud to see themselves up there and we keep rotating those students so please take a look at those banners as you enter or exit our school building that concludes my comments Madam chair all righty fine thanks just a minute M Kane is this for your report or a question okay all righty M long Dr Greg may I ask a question the computers have they been passed out to the students yet yes you know yes we're in the process of it many of the schools I'll give you I'll get a report to this board but we did review that last Monday the majority of the schools is completely out some were waiting as the we were
058looking at the back to school with parents this week so some of were waiting so I can really affirm that within the next two weeks the entire district will be taken care of so parents don't have technology they can use their child technology to meet with the back to school nights absolutely yes yes but we're we're developing different ways of a school was going to wait for those and now we're doing it virtually we'll just develop a different pickup drop off typee of of way we're not going to let that go though yeah thanks for the question thank you okay any other questions all right thank you all right items introduced by the attorney I have no items today thank you ma'am good all righty and board members we'll start if you have a report
059Mrs edman I am not gonna well I have a report however I would like to just thank my colleagues for participating in the workshop and the discussion we had before school although some of the outcomes weren't what was preferred we are here today and at the board Workshop I asked the board to challenge the Department of Health Rule and Implement a mandate I provided information about hospitals being strained in the need for us as a board to help everyone should be aware by now the CDC and the AAP are recommending Universal masking as well as many of the parents teachers and medical professionals right here in our community that have reached out we have received emails from doctors nurses teachers lawyers and parents advocating for us to protect the children in them we have heard
060from a member of our district Co team at our Workshop where she stated facts the Delta variant is more contagious than the variant of covid-19 that was present last year it's as contagious as chickenpox according to Dr Dumas a pediatric infectious disease specialist at John Hopkins All Children's Hospital there are Nur nursing s shortages low hospital beds and long Co which is a term used by medical professionals to describe a group of symptoms that Linger on for months after the person has tested positive and includes respiratory issues immune system system neurological challenges it's considered a life altering disease under Section 504 we don't know the long-term impacts of Co the more we allow the disease to spread the more variance that are going to occur Dr grego just mentioned several steps that we are taking
061to help mitigate and help support our schools and teachers however I believe that we have to do more more vaccinated people can still catch covid-19 which is why there are recommendations for medical professionals for all people to wear masks pelis county has a positivity rate of 20.6% children account for one and four new cases in Florida hospitals are still strained people are getting extremely sick and some are dying Educators and support professionals are being quarantined and there are not enough substitutes based on our dashboard that's live today thank you again staff and Dr grego for all the work that you did to put that together there are almost 3,000 people in quarantine I am asking the board to take a vote today to hold a special meeting by Friday August 27th to implement a 90-day
062emergency mask policy reviewing it every dirt 30 days similar to the emergency po policy implemented last year and challenging the rule of the Department of Health there is too much at stake to sit idly by and let this virus burn through this is a public health issue we need to do something people are really counting on us we don't have to wait on pelis County government to implement a state of emergency we have the ability to implement our own emergency and Mr caperi can speak to all of that when we have when I finished also at the workshop Mr kerski advised that the district would not be held liable if someone caught covid got sick or even worse died again we have a duty to provide a safe learning environment for all students we have
063to keep our staff safe and again if the community cases are high and that's impacting our classrooms we have to do everything that we possibly can to ensure that people are safe and if that's implementing a mass mandate I think that's the right choice so that is my ask of the board Mr kerski do you mind advising on what next steps before we go there you have a motion that you were going to break you wanted us to vote on having a specially called meeting to yes have a mask mandate for 90 days would you state it so that we can get it I would like to make a motion that we hold a special called meeting to implement a mass mandate for 90 days reassessing every 30 days challenging the department of Health's rule
064this the only opt out would be a medical opt out and if students have IEPs 504s they could be Exempted as well the policy that I'm asking for is similar to what you all had last year I was in the classroom as a teacher mask on my child children everybody's children who attended pelis County schools had the mask on this board again okay sorry let me yeah what we're trying to do is get the motion so the motion is to have a special meeting okay to require a mass mandate for 90 days reassessing every third of days and challenging Department of Health ruling okay do we have a second second all right we have a motion and a second to have a specially called meeting to implement a mask mandate for 90 days reassessing every
06530 days to challenge the Department of Health and you first time said with an opt out for IEPs in 504 a medical opt out medical opt out all right now Mr kerski thank you madam chair so with there being a motion on the table the policy and the law regarding a special meeting states that a majority of the board must agree to have have that meeting I don't believe you needed to have a motion to do that but there is a motion now on the table you could just go through and determine whether a majority of the board wanted to have that special meeting but now that there is a motion on the table with a second the board cannot take any action until they hear from the public so the law and our policy
066is that anytime the board passes or votes upon an agenda item the public must be heard on that and so just as if we heard from the public on agenda items at the beginning of this meeting this is now essentially becoming a new action item that was not contemplated before the agenda and the meeting started today so you can have your debate but then before voting on the motion you must hear from the public so if I could speak a little bit more to you know the process then but I just wanted to get that out there so in as I said in order to have a special meeting you would need to have a majority of the board would agree to that and then Dr grego would work I know that has been stated
067but an agenda would need to be prepared the notice would need to be given a special meeting requires 48 hours notice we would give that as as quickly as we could and I'm sure that it is not going to be a secret if that motion passes that we would be having a meeting and so the word would be out and then that then that would occur if the majority of the board wants it to happen a couple of things since I have the floor that I just want to say first of all Mrs Mrs Edmund I appreciate I think I try not to speak in absolute so if I said that we would never be held liable if somebody had covid then I think I misspoke but I don't believe I said that but I
068said it would be very very difficult for somebody to hold the school board liable for what they believe was damages that we caused and that is in part of course because of the covid immunity bill but also with the difficulty ining causation in other words where you caught covid in the school versus another site just had to say that and then secondly the way you phrase the motion I must advise the board that is my opinion that goes against Florida law as it stands right now with the medical opt out and so that is being challenged right now in court as we sit here today there is a hearing that is in the second day in Tallahassee and so that is expected to wrap up tomorrow I expect that whoever loses that preliminary injunction hearing
069will appeal immediately to the First District Court of Appeals Broward County Schools is also going to be filing a rural challenge against the Department of Health rule as my understanding it would be sometime before the end of this week there are at least two other lawsuits of which I'm aware that relate to this issue and we are watching those very closely so with that Madam chair unless there are any more specific questions that's what I have to provide at this point okay I do have a specific question on in regards to this what we are voting on is whether or not the board holds a special meeting not the mask mandate but but to accomplish that since that just applies to the board as to whether or not we hold the meeting just as we
070did with you know legislative platforms and things like that and the past or our Representatives do we have to have input on this particular agenda item also having said that knowing that when we have that meeting then we can we definitely have public input yes it's it's my opinion that we do need to have public input because this is a board action under 2860 1114 and to use an analogy when you vote at your organizational meeting in November to ad a schedule of meetings for the next 12 months we take public input on that and I see this as no different than that right okay and the other question that I have procedurally is once members of the audience have spoken on this do they also have the opportunity to speak during public input or
071public comment that's a very good question because the way our policies are written and let me back up a little bit and explain so by law the public has a right to speak on items that the board is going to be voting upon by law the public does not have a right to speak in general public comment on non-agenda items the board has adopted a policy that allows that and so you do have more leeway on how you frame the discussions of after the meeting on non-agenda items and the way that the board has adopted that policy is that time is res to discuss General items of the business that were not addressed during the meeting and so I would say that to the extent that people want to speak about whether or not the
072board should hold a special meeting that they cannot speak after the board meeting however I'm not foreclosing the idea that somebody might speak generally about mass and M mitigation measures and that does not relate to whether you should have a special meeting because that is the proposition on the floor right now okay thank you Miss Heim I think I have a question a clarification at this point so what what is the appropriate order so now that there's a motion in a second do we share comment first does the public share comment first generally you what you've done in the past is you hear from the public and then you have your debate and then your vote and again to use an analogy you hear from the public on agenda items at the very beginning of
073the meeting before you even discuss any of those agenda items and so I think I had pushed it to give my general report but things have changed since I pushed the button so I'm happy to let this process continue to unfold as appropriate all right so then with a motion in a second we will hear if anyone from the audience would like to speak or would like to sign up to speak do we need to take a break for the to sign up to speak yeah I I would suggest the board take a short recesses but Madam chair before you recess and before people leave the room I would caution the public that what you allowed to speak on at this point is not masks generally but whether or not the board should have a
074special meeting before the end of the week as proposed by Mrs Edmund not necessarily before the end of the week especially called meeting I'm sorry I thought her motion said by Friday by Friday well okay I'm out of town so you'll have to got that's fine okay so we'll recess for five minutes e to order once again if yall please take your seats I'm going to read one more piece actually from our policy on public participation just so that we're all on the same page right now board members are limited to an open form of the First Amendment purposes and your exercise of your first amendment rights of freedom of speech in the context will be recognized and protected and subject to reasonable restrictions as to time place manner Applause are per permitted when we
075have special recognitions but not during this portion of the meeting and again I'm going to quote that or I'm going to say that we welcome public input and each one of us listens as people come but again I'm going to quote the policy to ensure the expedience and expedient and orderly process of the board meetings the chairman May interrupt or terminate a speaker when his or her statements are not relevant exceeds amount of time is abusive threatening defamatory obscene profane loud interruptive or otherwise in a disruptive or disorderly manner the chairman May order the removal of a person interfering with the expeditious or orderly process of the meeting provided the chairperson first issues a warning that continues reference with the orderly process of the meeting and it will result in removal nothing here is intended
076to limit anything that anybody says we are just asking that you respect each other as well as the board meeting as well as the board members and we will be very happy to listen to all of your public input and comments if you disagree with the speaker please keep that to yourself if you agree with what a speaker is saying please keep that to yourself unless you want to give a thumbs up or or let them know that you agree but we're not going to take any signs of disrespect or disagreement or anything like that this is an opportunity for people to share their input and we hope that you will do it in a respectful manner thank you we begin with our first let's call speakers to it at a time so that the
077second person can be prepared and ready to come up and so that may help move things along a little more quickly so who's our first speaker and then who's who's on Deck board members and Dr grego we have 29 speakers our first speaker is sweet and our second speaker is IET gal okay so we'll hear from sweet first and then Evette good morning morning I can move this right yes just said paperwor that I couldn't mess with the recording mat we can still hear you with that all right so just in upon hearing that introduction of the wanting to call a special meeting I do find it odd if not just a little bit comical that when you issued your mask mandates we all came in here with our masks even though the county commissioner
078office allowed us to approach the bench without a mask people were still removed even a veteran was removed for taking off her mask to try to just speak and then remove you know so you know when we followed the mandates that you put forward because they're not laws we did so respectfully we came in even though parents were trespassed just trying to take it off before they left the room so the fact that you're trying to call a meeting to break the law that's what makes it a little bit funny because we all respected your mandates mandates again so you're calling a meeting to break the law not break a mandate when we followed your mandates when we were here everybody did but what has happened is everything got changed because the numbers came out
079that's what's coming out you know you can cite case rates but they're no longer citing death rates on the news anymore because those numbers don't scare people anymore just the case rates so what has happened is people who still want to protect their kids still have the right to put them and do what they think is going to do to protect their kids but what is happening here is egregious you don't like how the laws have changed and how the mandate's not there so you're ready and willing to break that law when what happened to the parents here that broke that mandate they're not even allowed to come in here and speak up for their kids anymore because they were trespassed trespass from a public building that I'm told is private which is another just
080mindboggling thing but again you're trying to call a special meeting to break the law because you don't agree with it where's our police force to pull you guys out you pulled us out when we weren't following a mandate but what do we have for you guys you're going to think that it's okay because other schools are following in line or because the governor's only going to take one month of your pay and we all know I mean this should be a second job it's a public servant thing but probably most of you this is your only job but at $54,000 a year who can't you know have their savings to to be okay with that one month that they're going to remove so I know that the governor's threat threats are empty on you but
081what you're looking at is going against the law to force something on people that already made a choice for their own kids and their own family when we couldn't even violate a mandate on our way walking out the door so I don't know how you can sit there and feel Vindicated validated that you're okay you know we can't talk about anything else but you take care of your own house before you try to tell what other people should be doing in our houses because we do know a little bit about what's going on in some houses thank you thank you next good morning yeah so I wanted to come here and say I absolutely disagree with you guys calling another meeting to enforce mask masking our children and preventing them from breathing oxygen weall have
082to understand what the numbers are and the numbers speak for themselves statistically the children between ages of zero and 17 have a 0% chance of dying from this I have the numbers right here that was printed on 812 from the CDC right here okay all Sexes between the ages of 0 and 17 354 deaths with covid with okay that's a statistical number of 0.0055 825 per cases we're in a case demic right now there were 46 4.2 Mill million cases in the last 18 months these PCR tests are going to expire because guess what right now they can't differentiate between the flu and the covid so what are we doing and we're testing healthy people these are facts these are stats and y'all can fact check me on this but to pre prevent people from
083breathing otin to call a special mandate to break a law do you not think that Governor Dan santis cares about our children we care about our children but it's not your job to put coverings over our children's face right it is not y'all's duty to do that so it's our duty as parents to what we put in our children and on our children not you guys you're not supposed to keep our kids safe we do that if you're going to start mandating the food that they put in their bodies we have a childhood epidemic of obesity we have a heart disease issue that's what's going on in our country we have a suicide epidemic the girls between the ages of 12 and 17 have a 40% increase in suicide because they're alienated from their friends
084and family let's keep it to the this is our problem not to the meeting not the masks the meeting so I discourage you guys talking even getting together to adjourn for another meeting to decide whether or not we want to mask our children that is my choice to whether I put a mask on my child it's not yours so please stay with the law and what what the governor proposed thank you thank you the next two our next Tuesday speakers are Eric weather and Ann Marie weather good morning good morning in regards to the motion on the table I'd recommend I'm speaking against that I'd recommend tabling that until the next meeting when the findings from the ongoing legal issues are kind of more clear thanks okay thank you good morning again so I am
085as well also offering my opinion that to call a special meeting while that is not illegal asking the board to vote on something that breaks the law is inciting the board members to break the law and frankly if it proceeds I would offer the idea of a recall of certain board members that are promoting breaking a law okay let the lawsuits play out then maybe you won't be breaking a law I will not argue against anything that is following the law but when you are trying to break the law it's gone too far thank you thank you our next two speakers are Brad rosenheim and ha kadavar you go welcome thank you my name is Brad rosenheim and I'd like to thank Capri Edmund for the motion to have this special meeting and for the
086second as you get ready to discuss this and to vote on it I want to make sure that you're all aware that approximately two weeks ago I started Ed a petition on change.org for this very reason to have a special meeting to talk about what was happening with this pandemic as we approached the school year in which it seemed like the school board and the superintendent were completely unprepared as it developed quickly to this date we have over 3,000 signatures on this petition there's another petition that specifically asked for mask mandates which has over 2,000 signatures I think it's important for you all to know this because you've been hearing the voices of people that are frankly coming in with a lot of misinformation they want the same thing that we want they want the
087safety of their children and I I applaud them for for their vocal nature I myself have not wanted to come to one of these meeting especially as the numbers went up for fear for fear of being in a room with people that were not masked as as we as we let things down now Dr grego you mentioned during the workshop about your neighbor and how she thanked you for her choice I want to just Compare the numbers that we're seeing in these petitions to that of of your neighbor I'm glad that you speak to your neighbors but I think it's important to open your eyes to what the community wants we're we're split right now I agree you all are in a position of power and it's constitutional power right Mr kerski can give you
088legal advice on on on the executive order which is being challenged there are other counties that have been brave enough to have this very meeting before their school year started and they have taken action okay there are more kids in the hospital right now than there ever have been during this pandemic and yet we're sending them off to school hopefully later you'll hear from my daughter my daughter is here today so is my son because they've been to school for three days this year before they had a covid encounter so far they've tested negative I'm not at work today because I have to stay home and take care of them I've emailed you all this I have not received many responses and I don't know if you're paying attention but there are thousands of people
089in this community who would like you to take action and I applaud this motion for an extra meeting an emergency meeting thank you thank you hello my name is Dr kadavar and I'm a family physician which means I've been trained to treat both pediatric patients and adults I also have a master's in public health and finally I'm a mother of two children in penel County Schools we are in a medical and Public Health crisis both adult and pediatric hospitals are overrun with covid patients my patients that need non non-emergent yet life-prolonging and symptomatic control procedures are not able to get them done because of this last week I admitted a patient to hospice because of this we need the opportunity to discuss all the measures afforded to us to help help limit the spread of
090covid for the health of our entire Community I am speaking on behalf of myself and my physician pediatric hospitalist colleague who is at home taking care of her two children she is not here to share her story of how despite working all year in a hospital along with her husband and sending their children to school all last year none of them got Co after one week of being back in school without a mask mandate both of her children have covid she is not able to be here to share her story but more importantly she is not able to be at the hospital to take care of the people within this community that are sick so I ask you to please have this meeting so you can discuss all the measures that we can take into
091effect to help protect our children and our entire Community thank you thank you our next two speakers are Steph Johnson and Tammy Kaplan good morning good morning thank you so much for having us here and letting us speak I'm really thankful this year that my two daughters got the opportunity to go to school and we had the choice and I know that there's a lot of data out there and everybody argues good and bad data and so I only go by what I see and what I know and because there's so many stories out there and what I know is that the smile on a child's face is one of the greatest healing elements in in the world and I think that you're all up there because you believe that as well and to to
092keep our children from seeing these smiles and to keep our children from communicating through smiles and frowns and disappointment and all these other emotions that you're probably viewing on my face that you would not view had I had a mask on I believe that this meeting should happen I do not believe that masks should be mandated in any way and I believe it should be our choice I appreciate the opportunity to be heard thank you very much thank you good morning hello can you guys okay first of all thank you Capri I do appreciate you bringing this up and one of the things that I wanted to say was going back to comments that Dr grego had in which he talked about what we need to do this year is work with common sense and
093I also feel that we need to be making our decisions based on information and not fear and outside before the meeting started it was a crazy you speak a little louder they've turned the mic up but we're still almost hearing there we go yeah I mean before before the meeting outside just getting in here it was very crazy a lot of people yelling and screaming all kinds of things that I think what we need to do I think we need to have the meeting because all voices need to be heard and we need to be able to sit down and talk about this I am of the personal opinion that it's not actually a law because I personally feel based upon my knowledge and understanding that the executive order that was made was not constitutional
094that's my that's my opinion whatever but in lie of that I do feel that having this meeting is something that's extremely important because we're not just talking about whether or not kids are dying we're talking about kids being sick we're talking about kids missing school we're talking about community members we're talking about people who have IM autoimmune disorders like myself we're talking about people who have cancer we've already lost a teacher this year we lost teachers last year an 8-year-old in Tallahassee just died recently we don't H it doesn't have to be this way we know that with masking while it would be wonderful if me wearing my mask protected me 100% that would be great but that is not what the data suggests that's not what the CDC says that's not what the AAP
095says masks protect an infected person from infecting other people I would love to feel that the mask on my face right now is going to prevent me from getting sick because I have six autoimmune disorders but it's not and I feeling though over are the most important thing that we can do not permanently because nobody wants to wear the masks nobody wants to wear them permanently that's not the point the point is how do we keep our children safe how do we keep our communities safe so I do feel strongly that you need to have this meeting you need to talk to doctors experts epidemiologists infectious disease specialists and see what they're saying I don't believe that the CDC and the AAP would have changed their guidance as they did did if it wasn't absolutely
096crucial and also like the other mom up here my youngest was in school I think she's missed six days of school so far because we got sick and my I've got another daughter who's already missed four days and another daughter that I don't even know it's it is it's insane and yes my family has immune problems so that is an issue but at the same time if everybody was wearing a mask thank you our next two speakers are Christian streker and Denise Del Brun hello good morning apparently if we're on one side of things we can say how we feel up here but if we're on the other side we're only supposed to stick to about the meeting right cuz I watched the lab coat doctor tell her whole speech she read her speech that
097was prepared for later and then the lady that just went read her speech that was prepared for later so there's a little bit of bias going on so I'm going to stick to what we're actually talking about right now about the meeting thank you and we knew this was coming that's why everyone is here we knew you guys were going to try to pull some stuff we're prepared for it we knew you guys think you're above the law we already seen that so we're ready we already know it's coming I don't think you should do it I think we should wait and see what unfolds with the lawsuits you know let the dust settle we are doing better than other counties I know Hillsboro is doing much much worse than we are so maybe their's
098made more sense but right now the data suggest that it doesn't make sense here so I am against the meeting but I understand we already knew it was coming let's wait for the lawsuits and see what happens thank you good morning thank you for allowing us to speak my name is Denise Del Brun I am a mother of two pelis County Schools students they are 10 years old and unable to get vaccinated I am also a register nurse and the wife of a physician member cook I was not here present vocal enough for you because I was at home taking care of my children while my husband worked 16-hour days in a hospital I would also like to share with you the social worker at our school she gave me permission she says this is
099about The Mask meeting I am asking excuse me I'm asking that you have a meeting thank you and discuss mask at our school our social worker if you are speaking you have permission to share my story I tested positive 10 days after starting work at an elementary school I am fully vaccinated and I have covid and have had covid in the past I wear my mask everywhere and go please stop the clock I am doing the best I can when somebody says this is about the meeting I am trying to give everyone the same amount of leeway and yet excuse me I am trying to give everyone the same amount of leeway as well as keep them within the parameters so if you all would please cooperate with stating why you believe we should or
100should not have a ma the meeting then we're good I am not trying to be biased one way or the other I am going to do the best I can and at the same time I'm humid and at the same time I am trying to listen to what the people are saying so please please try and cooperate Madam chair if if you don't mind my adding to that yes it is very difficult to distinguish between the need to H to advocate for a special meeting or Advocate against having having a special meeting without giving the rationale exactly and so I understand that people may be speaking to notes that they already had if that's the case then we do not expect to see them after the meeting but for them to explain why they oppose
101or advocate for a special meeting I believe that does include some of the rationale that they have okay and I will ask for your help as well thank you all right you have two minutes and 4 seconds so a social worker I tested 10 days after starting work at an elementary school I am fully vaccinated and have had covid in the past I wear my mask everywhere and go almost nowhere that has that has a significant number of people accept to work I was I was in numerous staff meetings and districtwide trainings this previous week where people were not wearing masks I was working at school the day I tested positive but I had no symptoms thankfully I was wearing my mask the entire time so I didn't expose any students but we are a
102tragedy waiting to happen again this is not pseudo science these are children they are minors and they don't have an option I have the option you all have an option they don't it is your job as elected board members to take their safety as the number one reason why we should or should not have a mass mandate thank you thank you our next two speakers are Mark kutho and Nancy valard call yeah we could do that Mar CL well I believe you definitely should have a meeting to determine whether or not and I think you should decide on mask good decision on your part they do work and they shouldn't be any hesitation any hesitation whatsoever you heard the doctor speak there needs to be weight put behind that thank you good morning hello I
103see no harm with having a meeting to have a discussion it is your constitutional responsibility to do so which is the highest law in the land the Florida Constitution puts the law the responsibility for the safety of your employ employees and your and the children that they teach squarely in your hands so obviously calling a meeting to have this discussion again as things have worsened makes perfect logical sense any death is too many we've already lost one employee I attended his funeral I do not want to attend anymore this year and certainly not those of children please at least have the discussion thank you thank you our next two speakers are cibil phalo and Annette Wy and after the first person speaks if you'll call the next one we I think we can move it
104along good morning good morning thank you for I'm double masked because I have a vulnerable member in my family forgive me if my voice shakes I have three children in the wonderful public magnet schools I also work in healthcare but I'm here to talk about the real reason why I'm so passionate about holding a special meeting to consider the mask mandate my child Anna she was my second born and she died on a ventilator while my husband and I watched helpless as a parent who has lost a child to rest illness and one that works with vulnerable children I implore you to follow the scientific Community every child's life matters so when someone tells you the survival rate for covid in children please think of my daughter Anna who would be among the most vulnerable
105think of the children who have long-term Health impacts and those who have died of covid a preventable disease my family does not have the option to homeschool or virtual school and we trust that your amazing public their amazing public school will do the best that they can to protect them they can't do this without your support masks work and they literally save lives so please hold your special meeting immediately to mandate masks in schools and protect our community thank you thank you our next or just one more after this and we'll just keep rolling them one at a time okay and welcome to you good morning hi I apologize I left my regular glasses in the car I came with the speech and I am so grateful for Capri Edmund and those of you that
106support this mask hearing because I come today to speak to you on behalf of children I am a 35 your veteran of pelis County Schools I never thought I would be in a movie called The Hunger Games of where May the odds forever be in your favor to those of you shaking your heads in the audience I've buried family I've buried of coworker last year I have co-workers right now who are fighting covid I have children students that are fighting covid and quite frankly the statistics about child death is incorrect because in the 500 days when Des santis you're addressing the board not the closed the schools there were 500 days until July 21st of this year four seven kids died in 22 days since he unconstitutionally bullied us into no mask mandates four kids
107have died one was a third grade child in leyon county and that teacher is devastated I came here to Res design today because I will not participate in the endangerment of children and quite frankly reading the comments to the Press from some board members is quite infuriating because there are children dying there are people dying and the TVs are full of people that didn't vaccinate or believe in this and they wish they had and superintendent I look at you with all respect and I say I have no confidence when you go on press conferences with Ron de santis so I pray that you allow me to continue teaching because I'm a darn good teacher my parents burning my phone up vote to have the meeting our students you might not see if they're not handicapped
108that they have an underlying condition but they do and I won't participate in this and sanity when did we not decide to take care of children to our politician thank you I understand I understand the next speaker will be sioban Goram thank you no after you yeah you're next thank you okay can you hear me okay I don't know how to yeah they'll turn it up a little bit when you start to speak okay my name is Michelle na I'm here as a parent of two ele school students as a business owner and employment lawyer in Clearwater and who wants businesses to stay open and employees many of whom are parents to keep working and as the wife of a teacher who worked in this district for 14 years until leaving the classroom this year
109I am here to ask you to please vote in favor of having this meeting to discuss whether or not you will reinstate a temporary mask mandate to protect our children to protect your employees and to protect our community cases are several times higher than they were at the start of the school year last year when you wisely implemented a mask mandate all we're asking is that you do the same thing this year not forever but as a temporary measure while the cases are surging again I am getting daily mess me from friends about kids testing positive about kids being quarantined these constant I mean you've heard it from these other people these constant absences from school are far more disruptive than masks could ever be this room has more social distancing than my kids first
110and fourth grade classrooms do and with the delay in reporting the confirmed cases that we're all aware of masks provide a vital layer of protection for us all Universal masking works we're not new at this anymore we're 18 months in nearly all of you are in masks we know that they work but they work when everyone wears them please listen to The Experts listen to the American Academy of Pediatrics the experts in Children Health listen to the public health experts bring in at this meeting bring in local experts who can tell you what the hospital situation is like what the public health situation is like and listen to them for the meeting yes at the meeting I'm I'm a lawyer you don't need to act because you're afraid of litigation litigation isn't scary it's fine
111we do it you have a constitutional right to govern schools in this County I have a different legal opinion than your lawyer and that's fine we can let it play out in the courts this issue is not decided we have several counties who have chosen to implement mask mandates even in the face of the executive order we ask that you consider doing the same we can get through this surge if we do it together we can get these young kids to the vaccine my kids can't get vaccinated yet and I just I'm just hoping they can get there without catching covid first please vote in favor of a special meeting I support Miss Edmond in her motion and please consider implementing the mass mandate to protect students teachers and staff thanks thank you the next
112speaker to follow would be blle Davenport good morning good morning thank you miss Edmund for making this motion I respect I respectfully request that you vote in favor of a special meeting to discuss requiring masks in school this is an important issue a community issue that deserves the careful consideration of the school board unplanned quarantines will be measurably more disruptive to the learning environment than wearing masks we are asking for the opportunity for the choice to send our students and our children into a safe learning environment I noticed that a number of you are wearing masks today I would ask you to consider the reasons why and apply them to our community thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Carla Rudolph good morning good morning first of all I want to say
113thank you I don't envy you I definitely respect you for volunteering to to lead especially during a difficult time and that includes making difficult decisions I wholeheartedly ask you to hold a special meeting to discuss the mask mandate as laid out by Mrs Edmonds and I'd ask you all to vote in favor of that mandate I've been hearing other people mention how an executive order is not does not carry this is not the same as a statute passed by the legis ative branch and finally to anyone citing statistical cases I would invite you to go to those 354 parents who lost a child and tell them that their kid doesn't deserve better they can't see their kids smile anymore and that to me is a nightmare so thank you again and I just implore you
114to do what is right thank you the speaker to follow will be Bruce poppy good morning good morning you know I don't want us to look and seem like we're enemies here I think we all want what's best for the kids but there's a lot of stuff that's hard to decipher what's true and what's a lie I'm not so sure having a second meeting is going to do any good for you guys or for any of us because people are blinded to the truth and I loved it sweet thank you for saying what you did it doesn't seem to make sense to have a meeting to decide if you're going to break the law there are cases why not just wait you know patience is a virtue I don't think we need to jump into
115things she talked about the last speaker talked about 350 some kids who died that's in all the United States for a year and I feel bad for that but more 8,000 some people die in the United States every day there are a lot of other things going on besides the covid and if we want to come up here and speak about emotions and a lot I hear a lot of emotions there's a lot of fear those emotions shouldn't guide your life you should use your Noggin your your conscious mind not your subconscious mind and explain things with your conscious mind and facts if you can't do that I think that's a clue that you're living by your emotions and you're not being rational so if any of you Caprice if you take all that stuff
116that you said you I mean I it's sounds like there's a lot of fear and I think there's a lot of fear in a lot of people and I and I'm guilt I'm guilty of all of this we all are none of us is perfect I get that but if you lead your life by your emotions if you can't take what somebody says and say okay explain that to me with facts and proof and list it out and make it into a logical statement then you're going by your emotions and I think you need to question what you're doing God doesn't want us to live like that he wants us to reason and I have a feeling that through all of this there's a lot of lies being thrown around especially on the TV you
117you have to really discern and if you can't discern I mean if it's true say yes if it's a lie say no if you can't discern ask the one he knows what's going on it's really hard to get the truth from a lot of people and there are doctors who are saying on one side they're saying oh no no no that's okay just do all everything they're just following the mandates following everything and then there's doctors who are they know the truth of what's going on and they're afraid because people are being censored and there's lies and they're afraid to speak out and then there's the doctor there's the doctors who have everything to lose those are the ones are speaking out and they're losing it they're losing their license because their truth is being
118censored and those are the people I want you to listen to because they have everything on the line those are the people who are speaking the truth why else would they I don't have kids in pelis County school syst thank you thank you the next speaker to follow would be Nikki Gil good good morning good morning Bruce poy from denan I am V vehemently opposed to the I mean just so understand the motion is that you want to have a meeting to talk about breaking the law we've talked about that even Mr kerski said it's unlawful this has been a seemingly ongoing problem with the school board going back to last year when the executive one of the executive orders came out and they decided that it that did not apply to the penel County
119school board so they kept the kids in the mass for another two months and then conveniently The Mask mandate expired on the last day of school so I'm vly opposed to this board taking criminal criminal unlawful action which been done all over the state you know three or four other comies doing the same thing and they're just thumbing your nose at the you know hierarchy of authority that you're stepping on stuff that you don't know yeah there's a lot of fear you know even the the gentleman who did the invocation when we started he mentioned fear from the very beginning but he forgot to mention that God didn't give us a spirit of fear but a power of love and a sound mind so I mean it it boggles my mind that you guys want
120to continue to go down this criminal road but I do understand for a certain reason you know we spoke ear somebody mentioned earlier one of the board members that you know it's important for openness and transparency you know for the public if we're going to be open to transparence the criminality that are in some of your families is what needs to be exposed we're not no no we're talking about the talking about the meeting I'm talking about you guys wanting to have a meeting that is Criminal and unlawful in nature and I understand where that's coming from because there are so you know people need to be understand what's going on in some of the households on this board you know it's a there's a criminal nature criminal nature I understand I mean I don't
121want to have somebody making decisions for my children stop this Mr poppy can you please stop speaking for a moment you need to speak to whether or not the board is going to have another meeting I am speaking to the whether I know but you continue to refer to another M family and that has nothing to do with whether not have another meeting I'm just say yeah it has everything to do with because the person making the decision or making the motion is a criminal and unlawful motion that's what you're wanting they're wanting you to do is participate in criminality and unlawfulness if you if you know I don't want to get into the M you know I have a whole other speech that I could do on the mass thing but no it's it's
122the unlawful and criminal nature of the school board that is driving us crazy and there's so much Divergent science that nobody can agree there's fear on this there's you know this and that there this whole situation is meant to divide us and I'm not going to participate anymore you know I don't have kids in the school but yeah so long as you guys so long as you guys are confiscating close to 40% of my property taxes to fund your criminal Enterprise I have a voice in what should be done so I'm I'm not you know happy and I am vly opposed to any meeting to engage in criminal activity or the furtherance of criminal activity on the thank you the speaker to follow will be Tiana CRA okay good afternoon hello can you hear me
123my name is Nikki gal I'm from St Petersburg and I have a kindergartener in a magnet program in St Pete thank you so much Miss Edmond I'm sorry for my voice quivering but thank you so much for putting that motion in and Miss crane for your seconding of it or was it Miss Hine I'm sorry but anyway I just wanted to say thank you for that and please have this meeting and the reason why I want you to have this meeting is that I have a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old and my children are not eligible to receive a covid vaccine they probably won't be able to until January at the earliest so my daughter's only means of protection right now is wearing a mask in school per the Florida Department of Health's most re recent
124weekly report the covid positivity rate in our community is over 20% and you know at the end of the school year last year it was it was a lot lower is under 10% and that's when our kids were wearing masks and it wasn't as transmissible covid wasn't at the time so you know since March 2020 our students have sacrificed so much to mitigate the spread of covid older students ended their High School careers in Virtual schooling endless opportunities to conduct with teachers and friends in person were lost a lot of students fell behind parents had to miss work and many had to drop out of the workforce to homeschool their children or Virtual School their children but you know last year thanks of the maske wearing and the mitigation strategies our students and teachers were
125able to safely return to the classroom these children sacrificed for our community now is their hour of need despite all the scientific Authority and evidence pointing to the need for maske wearing we're collectively shrugging our shoulders I do urge you to have this meeting my 5-year-old shares a table with three other children she wears a mask daily but the child who directly faces her who is much closer than 6 feet away more like 2 and 1 half feet away face to face with her does not there's no plexiglass barrier between the children the only thing potentially protecting my child from Co is her mask but we know that is insufficient her fellow students must also wear masks the teachers and other staff members must wear masks children teachers staff and bus drivers are falling ill
126people who are opposed to masking children often mention the relatively low mortality rate but what we should be talking about with children is morbidity they're long-term effects we all know about long covid children get long covid too they get hospitalized with covid they get tracheostomies they get myocarditis they can have a whole host of serious health consequences some of them long-term and yes some of them do die so please call this emergency meeting this is not about political ideology this is about public health my child is only 5 years old the current policy of the school board forces her to be responsible for her own safety and health in an unsafe environment you can act now to change that because you have been empowered by the citizens of this County to take this into your
127own hands thank you so much for your time thank you the speaker to follow will be Crystal calron welcome hello let me just start off by saying last I checked my children are your are mine and not yours oops you do not get to make any decision to force muzzle my children or any other medical decisions for that matter this it that is my decision I do not co-parent with any of you or any other part of the government whatever happens to my body my choice or does that only apply to abortions if you decide to defy Governor's orders or laws then it's only fair that we as parents defy your mandates see how that works fair game right you are teaching our children that laws and orders don't matter what you and every other
128school district is doing in Florida is doing is illegal you need to stop using our children as political ponds stop with the political bull crap last year there was no difference between masked and unmasked kids you know more kids die from the flu every year so why didn't you or any other District mandate them for that why because it's all a political Ploy this isn't about our child safety you know it I know it and everyone knows it stop trying to push your leftist bull crap propaganda and are you in favor or against the meeting being held I mean obviously you know I'm against them so thank you the speaker to follow will be Jamie jooin welcome hello I'll just keep it short to say that I am in favor of a meeting to discuss
129reinstating the mask mandate the pandemic is worse now than it was last year and the school board need to meet to discuss the best way to keep our students safe thank you the speaker to follow will be Deborah Lewis hi thank you for having us here and to allow us to speak perhaps I don't really understand how this all works but we're having a meeting to discuss whether we're going to have another meeting to discuss masks it just seems to me everyone's here I'm not at work because I want to be here to talk about why I don't think that you should be forcing my kid to wear a mask in school I've taken the day off work I'm sure other people here have taken the day off work I mean why can't we talk
130about this right now why do we have to have a special meeting to talk about this not only are we talking about breaking the law but if we're going to schedule a time to break the law why don't we just break it now I'm not in favor of this breaking the law at all or having a special meeting thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Pam maon yeah good afternoon H Hi how are you good I respectfully come before you and I've got a teacher who is my daughter and a granddaughter in your school district so it's very important my mother died and we believe it was because of Co but we cannot prove it because of the lack of care and cremation so I come before you and I resent the
131fact that I respect you all but I resent the fact that we're calling a meeting to break the law you guys are in charge of our children and we all teach our children to stand with the law don't break it you know the most important thing is we've got the CDC this last week filling out an article about how they feel that the masks don't a don't help the children so read that article and help with the science and help us understand a lot of this and get rid of the politics the politics are this is against the law mask mandates are against the law in the State of Florida we stand by by the law our children are being trained by us as parents and grandparents follow the law don't break it I respect
132you all to make a a wonderful decision I thank you and I appreciate you hearing I don't want this meeting thank you thank you the speak the speaker to follow will be Patty pyote good afternoon good morning everybody and I appreciate you can you hear me yes I appreciate you giving us all the opportunity to speak to this issue it's a very important one I'm Pam maon I am the parent of three children and grandmother of eight so I'm pretty busy lady even though you know my actual children are now no longer in the public school system I still felt it was a duty to come here and speak to the issue of this potential Mass mandate that you want to entertain doing and I am against the law I mean I'm against the meeting
133I don't think it's necessary I think it wasts taxpayer dollars when you could be deciding something else the way I view this mass m this we do not have a mass mandate law everyone talks about don't break the law there's another bill that was signed into law in Tallahassee recently and that's the parental Bill of Rights and what does that do that puts the parent it clears up the fact or this this noise about parents responsibilities they have the responsibility to be the final Arbiter for their children and I think most of you would agree and I like the fact that I see some of you wearing masks and some of you not wearing masks I've done research too on you know being a retired a registered nurse and having participated in clinical trials in
134in within the field of oncology I'm very much a data cruncher and still the number one cause of deaths in children is our accidents it's not Co this variant yes is appears to be more highly transmissible but the mortality rate in children without comorbidities is not as High cases we hear about cases cases cases and that is what is freaking people out and I can understand that the thing about the other issue with the mask and I know I'm not supposed to be speaking to the mask specifically but the Journal of the American Medical Association just re recently published an article about how children should be unmasked given the fact that there are higher concentrations concentrations of carbon dioxide that they found was at least five times higher after child war in Mass for only
135three minutes with a mass mandate we're looking at what five days five hours per day now I'm going to get off of the Mask I know that's going to be for another time but I see no reason why why parents do not have the right to choose for their own children whether or not they should you know wear a masks they certainly choose what what they serve them at dinner time breakfast lunch and that's fine too that's a parental responsibility I would like to in closing add that those who would trade well this is actually a quote from Thomas Jefferson those who would trade Li us Liberty for security thank you the speaker to follow will be Amy marrow okay and good afternoon hello can you hear me yes ma'am all right thank you for
136giving us the opportunity to speak I'm here to enforce my rights and in Florida this is our right to choose for our children I just want to say that I am not in favor of any additional meetings on mass mandates I just want to say that I have an immune system situation going on cuz all last year I went through chemo and radiation and I'm a Survivor so the bottom line is it's my responsibility to protect my body and I do so by staying healthy eating properly and doing what's right so that I can stay healthy with a healthy gut and immune system my doctors say be careful I wear the mask where I feel I need to wear the mask and I take the responsibility period if people around me want to wear a
137masks more power to them but I think it's every individual's right and we all must be healthy and stay healthy and it's our right it's our responsibility to do that and it shouldn't be on anyone else you know enforcing that to us so I thank you and I don't believe in massman another meeting thank you the speaker to follow will be Julie vain good afternoon good morning I'll save my lengthier comments for later but thank you Miss Edmond for your motion I support the special meeting to decide on a mandate Mas in school thank you the speaker to follow will be Karen Perez hello everyone good afternoon can you hear me sorry thank you again for time to address the board I am a opposed to the special meeting for the mass mandate request motion
138that was approved the parents Bill of Rights HB 241 was signed into legislation with the 2021 legislative session and went through all the procedures appropriately and then on top of that the governor signed executive order 21- 175 on July 30th I'm going to read a portion of that executive order so you understand what the governor's standpoint is and where you all are directly opposing the governor the state legislature and the parents of this community by bringing up this issue again by voting on having a meeting to break the law whereas on this is just a portion of the executive order whereas I on June 29th 2021 I signed in a law HB 241 the parent Bill of Rights which prevents the state its subdivision or any governmental Institution from infringing on the fundamental rights of
139a parent to direct the upbringing Education Health Care or mental health of minor child child without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve compelling State interest and that such action is narrowly tailored and is not otherwise served by less restrictive means whereas pursuant to federal law Florida law all parents have the right to make Healthcare decisions for their minor children whereas many school districts are scheduled to begin the classes on aug August 10th Which is less than two weeks away and within four weeks virtually all public schools across Florida will be underway therefore immediate action is needed to protect the fundamental rights of parents to make health and educational decisions for their children whereas Florida Statutes mandate Florida Department of Health to adopt rules consultations with the Department of Education governing and
140controlling the preventable communicable diseases including procedures for exempting children from immunization requirements and the State Board of Education did as you all know speak to that on the 18th I believe it was whereas fundament pursuant to section 108 d32 Florida Statutes statute state if the bo State Board of Education determines that a district school board is unwilling or unable to comply with the law the State Board shall have the authority to among other things withhold transfer of State funds discretionary Grant funds discretionary Lottery funds or any other funds specified as eligible for this Purpose By the legislature until the school district complies and I want to stop at that point just so I can have the comments that if you have people saying just take the litigation you all are endangering our financial well-being here
141in this school board and in the county and is your fiduciary responsibility to not take an action that you know will bring litigation and I very much opposed to this action thank you very much thank you the speaker to follow will be Ryan lesie good afternoon good afternoon my name is Karen Perez and I'm against this meeting I think it's not only unlawful I think it's also flouts the face of natural law which is that parental choice is a is a thing it's a natural law you have a child for nine months you give birth to it the government doesn't then tell you I could tell you what to do with your child it doesn't make any sense another thing is I would like to ask if you do have this meeting that there be
142different sides proposed from medical experts because I just went through this like deja vu last week at another emergency meeting and it was very one-sided the medical advice never once did I hear a peep about the psychological repercussions of putting children in masks for up to n9ine hours a day about the physical repercussions other sicknesses because people have examined those masks after eight hours and the bacteria and filth that resides in them that children constantly breathe in are an issue the lack of oxygen and the hindrance of learning and attention span the social repercussions of trying to social distance children that don't really understand those Concepts and really shouldn't be subjected to them when there's such little risk statistically I would like to see those kinds of things acknowledged or even even discussed whatever the
143outcome may be I feel like this is always a very one-sided issue like I said I painstakingly sat through an emergency meeting last week that only presented one side of the story which was very disappointing because at the heart of all of this it's a piece of cloth or it's a medical device but even on the box I would also love a medical expert to address that it says it does not protect from covid-19 if you were to vape and exhale you would see all the smoke come out of the Mask those are micr particles so we need to address pragmatically what this is all about if it really does work if this is really political or if this is really a preventative measure because our children's lives are on the line you and I
144did not have to endure this kind of political climate when we were in school we got to see our children other children laugh play we got to touch taste we got to do all that kind of great stuff that seems so simple then it's so complex now and kids who don't have that who grow up with that without that I'm sorry just think about what that's going to do to them you know we can't fathom it probably because we didn't H we didn't have to contend with any of those things when we were children we got to be free so please you know I beg you that even if you do have the meeting to to take these things into consideration it is not that cut and dry thank you thank you Mr lesie is
145not in who is the next person it was Ryan lesie he's not present maybe nothing can you give us your name okay we'll pass today thank you for Ryan he'll pass today oh okay thank you and after Ryan mie rosenheim followed by Shalia SJ good afternoon hello so just to be clear and undirect Rec it would be great to have this meeting to discuss the mass mandate I would strongly encourage you in the meantime to talk to doctors to visit hospitals to see what a child's sick with covid looks like so that you have a good mental picture of what it is that you will be discussing and voting on we all agree that the numbers are way worse than last year so I don't understand why we are doing way less than last year
146that's all thank you thank you just the speaker to follow would be Matalin Meyer okay good afternoon good afternoon dear members of the board my name is Dr Shaya SJ and I'm a pediatrician in pelis County I've been practicing for eight years and I'm here today to show my support for the meeting that was brought up earlier I am not here to debate opinions I would like to share what we're seeing in the hospital as just a background and rationale for why it's important to call experts in a meeting and to discuss what's happening with our children with covid-19 so last year when the pandemic began I will admit I was a little bit taken aback and possibly relieved that it was not affecting our children in the same way as it was in our
147adult counterparts but as we fast forward a year and a half later and the Delta variant of this virus is truly wrecking havoc in the current environment that I work in we've now had to place special covid units with children that are sick yes we call them cases but I would not recommend that anybody would actually want their child to be a case that I have personally seen and taken care of many of these cases can be like the adult counterparts with respiratory illnesses many of them are actually new cases with neurologic complications we don't know what to do with to be quite Frank and we went from basically thinking that we dodged a bullet to now having these entire covid units for kids I don't know what else to really say except that I
148really need people to come to the hospitals and see what we're seeing and all all the while my health care Workforce is the first time in eight years I've had to turn children away from our hospital and I will tell you that is heartbreaking and it's because of Staff it's not just beds and all of the medical equipment that people talk about our staff is so tired and I really really need to advocate for them as well as someone had mentioned the case positivity rate for children in penel county is above 20% I feel like this is unacceptable and having a meeting where we can actually discuss with experts there and discuss the science all sorts of information that's out there we live in a world of information overload and I totally understand that but
149we can have a rational conversation about at least temporarily doing something that like masking that we know works for our children we did it last year I don't know why it's a big deal to be able to discuss doing it again in a time where we're surging and I really implore you to think about who you'll invite and being able to get a agree like a broad perspective Ive but discussing just the facts and discussing what we're experiencing in a local setting with Physicians present so thank you for your time thank you the speaker to follow will be Dr Akada Hopkins good afternoon hi good afternoon my name is meline Mir I am a board-certified pediatrician and a pediatric hospital medicine doctor in St Petersburg and I'd like to advocate for the meeting that was
150proposed by Miss Edmonds in the strongest of terms for the last 18 months I've been caring for infants and children infected with covid-19 and over the last two months in our community we have seen an exponential increase in the number of covid positive children as well as an extraordinary increase in the number of those who have become sick enough to require hospitalization I have personally taken care of babies as young as 3 weeks old who have been infected with Co these children have come to us dehydrated and requiring oxygen they have had inflammation of their hearts and their blood vessels and significant injury to their lungs some have died and even at one of the largest children's hospitals in Florida we don't have enough staffed beds for the number of sick children that we're seeing
151the Delta variant of covid-19 has impacted children in a way that just wasn't seen with the alpha variant earlier in the pandemic the are not or the measure of how contagious a virus is three to four times higher for the Delta variant than it was for the alpha strain this means that many more children are being infected and those children are becoming much sicker than we ever saw before as we await FDA approval of the covid vaccine for children under 12 years old the single best line of defense to keep children safe is universal masking in schools as a pediatrician I believe it is imperative to their educ ation their development and their mental health that children remain in school but the only way to do that safely is for teachers and children to wear
152masks as a means of containing their respiratory droplets and avoiding infecting one another let me be clear masking is safe and effective there is no credible scientific evidence to support claims that it affects kids breathing that it increases carbon dioxide levels or that it impacts language development negatively scientific data does however support the fact that mass decreased the transmission of the covid-19 virus so I urge the school board to have this special meeting to discuss what can be done to keep our children safe every child I care for in the hospital is someone's daughter someone's little brother someone's best friend these children are depending on us the adults who care for them to do the right thing and to keep them safe please join me in doing exactly that thank you thank you the speaker
153to follow will be Sawyer rosenheim good afternoon hello good afternoon we are all here today for one reason to ensure the health and safety of all of our children my name is Dr akshada Hopkins and I am here today as a mom to a kindergartener and a third grader in the penelas County school system as well as a local pediatrician thank you for the motion for a special meeting I'm in complete support and here is why we are a diverse group all of us here and we must coexist like the painting say outside of this boardroom coexist work together seek to understand and weigh the risks and the benefits so here are some reasons as a parent to had both kids in virtual school last year my kids all of us know the benefit and
154the need for in-person schooling with the rising numbers delayed quarantines education is being disrupted and we need to talk about it I anticipate our schools will utilize more resources by means of contact tracing pivoting instructions and staff getting sick and our resources systems and people are overwhelmed and exhausted thank you Dr Greco and for the teams for diligent efforts in in working with the health department but there's more work to be done it's not clear when the lawsuit will be settled and the problem is we don't have the time or the resources on our side to gamble with our kids mental and medical stability the Pediatric community has seen this variant impact more kids and in a more severe way with a potential for longer side effects specifically neurologically and developmentally and this meeting can
155provide a venue to hear from Key stakeholders about this thank you and I hope you choose to role model how to navigate this unprecedented situation with bravery and humility our medical community and our children need the time that the masking May provide to be able to care for your loved ones even though masks may feel like a persistent reminder of the pandemic wearing them is an important way to control the spread preserve our resources and keep our kids in the classrooms so let's put it all on the table and we need to work together and coexist with this meeting thank you thank you I think you're going to get some help with the microphone hold on just a second and the speaker to follow will be Jay Richie Hello hello my name is soya Rosen
156time and I am in favor of the meeting I can't be safe when I'm the only one wearing a mask that's like me a 10-year-old driving on the freeway that's dangerous like a room packed with people with no mask those are both dangerous a mask mandate would reduce the spread and you could still smile with a mask like I am right now you can protect us that is your goal without a mandate you will not be helping us thank you thank you who's our next speaker the next speaker is Christina Ashmore followed by followed by Stacy Davenport good thank you thank you welcome thank you good afternoon thank you for taking public comment today regarding holding a special meeting with with respect to mandating mask in our school system I am a pelis County resident
157with two children in elementary school one is seven and the other is 10 my youngest has a history of asthma issues and I'm not only concerned for him and my daughter who have not been given the opportunity to be vaccinated but also for their friends and our community while I realized the death rate is low the thought that a simple mitigation method that were to protect our most precious gifts is not being used frustrates me my kids understand that they are wearing a mask to protect their friends what my kids are having an issue understanding is why aren't my teachers and my friends trying to protect me and also you wearing a mask prior to the school year I asked my kids pediatrician her thoughts on masks in schools her response was simple my kids
158will be wearing a mask I spoke with several parents at our school whose kids have tested positive with at home test and Rapid test when they called to tell the school they were told these tests don't count and they will only do quarantining after the Department of Health confirms a positive PCR test this is ridiculous and on top of this the Department of Health is seriously backlogged so by the time the Department of Health calls the school to to confirm the positive case the child that is currently quarantining will likely already be back in the classroom and other children will be sick and hopefully none dead I don't want this on my shoulder and you shouldn't either maskin schools worked last year there were no quarantine or isolations at my children's schools these unplanned leave
159of absences are A disruption to the classroom don't be afraid of the threats from our governor your job is to not only educate our children but to keep them safe I support you and our community support you thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Cynthia Smith okay and let's call one more because and then Stacy Davenport good thank you hi welcome Eileen long Miss C Miss Kane we had an emotional year last year with my daughter Alicia I am not for having another meeting for the mask you guys know Alicia's story and what she went through last year I think having these masks and Alicia was not the only one also hides the identity of the attackers who forget she got death threats she got physically assaulted six times it was such
160a roller coaster for all of us last year I pray that you guys make the right decision that not only that it's our rights as parents to make these medical decisions if you allow the mass mandate you're taking that away what are you going to try to take away from us next what is the government going to try to take away from us next it's our right I chose to get my kids vaccinated I could choose to use my religion preference not to get them but I choose to get my kids vaccinated with the chickenpox one I do not choose the covid vaccine I do not choose to mask my children my daughter by the way Alicia she was 2 and a half weeks old I know it's like to have a child with breathing
161problems she contacted RSV she was in the hospital for 21 days both her lungs collapse and the doctors told me to call the chaplain cuz she wasn't going to make it so you want to talk about respiratory problems sit there for 21 days with RSV Co is not RSV they are two different viruses I still even though my daughter has problems believe that she has the choice whether or not she wants to wear a mask or not I believe it's my choice as her parent because I made her medical decisions I made the medical decision for the doctors to keep fighting for her to give her oxygen I didn't make the choice to say okay let's just call the chaplain and give up I made that choice none of you did the government did not
162make that choice you do not have the right to take my choice away from my child to wear a mask thank you and as you see we had a board member that left and went to the back there are speakers in the back so should a board member need to leave they can still hear the comments okay who else do we have the next two speakers will be Demetrius Maris and Amber alichi you have the hardest job of all of us reading the names you're doing a good job hi good afternoon hi first of all you don't we don't need to have mask mandates masks don't work whatever the want the scientist over here to say my son all year last year was coming to back home with rust all over his face and I
163really I don't understand from one side we are the parents we say give us the choice give us the choice to choose for our kid and from the other side we have the other parents no mandate everything why why we just need choice you want put two masks on your kids you can put three masks on your kids you can do whatever you want we just need the choice thank you very much okay so you're opposed to us having the meeting also yes of course thank you the speaker to follow will be Jack Lopez welcome afternoon I would like to say no to your special meeting for masks we should respect and obey the laws as they stand those being the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the State of Florida which clearly
164outlines and protects our rights to bodily autonomy the executive o order by our governor DeSantis and the parental rights law which protects parental rights to make all medical decisions for our children you should also respect your Florida Department of Education even Dr fouchy proved in his research prior to 2020 and stated at the beginning of this pandemic that masks do not prevent viral transmission we recently discovered that the CDC buried a study that proved there was no difference in transmission between mass and unmas schools there should be no meeting for you all to discuss how to break the laws as they stand and how to dishonor parental rights thank you thank you the next two speakers or the speaker to follow follow will be Richard Carroll okay good afternoon good afternoon everyone thanks for having
165this agenda item I'm up here my name is jacn Lopez I'm the mother of two penis County school children hey winter we're speaking now you can say hello hello and anyway I'm speaking in favor of convening a special meeting to hear this the conversation about mass and my reason is maybe a little bit different and we heard some doctors earlier talking about the crush that our pediatric WS are feeling right now both with covid patients but other patients as well that need life-saving measures the compassionate thing for us to do is use all the tools in our toolbox we do know that mass work there is I'm not going to talk about the data you can all figure that data out for yourself it is publicly available but Mass are most effective when everyone who
166can wears one does wear one it's because it keeps the germs from spreading and it also prevents you from ingesting or otherwise inhaling the germs so my request is that you do have a special meeting we it is predicted that this current Delta is going to Peak in September it's possible vaccines will be available after that for the younger children what we can do now is buy our doctors and our most ill children a little bit of time by using all the tools in our tool boox thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Sharon Mitchum good afternoon hello boys and girls my name is Richard Caroll my wife just texted me because she couldn't be here because she's been at the other meetings all last year when only about three of these
167people that are wearing masks were here talking to you because none of them had any concern last year when we were trying to get the parents Bill of Rights just approved so we can be here to say hey it's our choice it's our choice we want it to be our choice I don't care if any of these people wear masks I don't care if their kids wear masks I don't care if you wear masks I don't care if anybody in this world says to get the vaccine if it's not for us it's not for us it's not the masks it's not for us that's all we want is the option to say Hey listen it's not us I pulled my kids out of a private school that decided three days before the school year started
168that they were going to put masks in place guess where they went to another private school that's not I'm not funding your guy's situation by choice I fund it with my tax dollars to have you have this castle that you sit in right now so please take that into to to to just any sort of thought when it's we're pulling our kids out we don't want any of these decisions to be made for us we're making the decisions for us so the best thing I think you all could do in your interests to work whatever agenda you want to work is just go we're not touching it with a 10- foot pole we're going to let it pan out the meeting I am saying that I am not in any way for you guys having
169a special meeting I wasn't even coming here to talk I was just going to stand outside and hold some signs up because seriously I didn't think we were ever going to need to get to this point because we handled it last year when we said we didn't want to go ahead and do it for 30 days we didn't want to do it for 60 days we didn't want to have it go to spring break then summer then Christmas Thanksgiving all these all these lines you kept passing down to go go and go and go and go again this is supposed to be a 30-day looked at situation A 90day looked at situation are you already looking at Thanksgiving are you already looking at Christmas are you already looking at Spring break next year Fourth of
170July just go ahead and just say you're going to do it all the time from now on because we'd rather just know straight up how you're going to Kick the Can to the next person before you go ahead and drag us through the dirt having to come here and waste our time to talk to deaf ears please stop that's all you have to do is stop we're not going to do anything that's all you have to say no special meeting no special anything why do you have to have a special meeting on a Friday two days from now we know you're going to have it on a Friday you're going to push it to two days right and then you're going to go ahead and put something in place right at the end of the
171day if you are going to do it so then it goes to them just goes on to the next week like it didn't happen we're not stupid please please just don't touch it's fine let people choose people are fine choosing for themselves the doctors can say what they want as well because even with whatever in place they're not going to go ahead and get us to force to take any sort of vaccine that we don't want to anyways or wear the mask in our own personal time so it's not going to make any difference and I really was waiting until that last minute thank you following will be Tammy Holland you said yes the speaker to follow will be Tammy Holland okay up now is Sharon Mitchum Sharon Mitchum followed by Tammy Holland Sharon Mitchum
172are you in the back Sharon Mitchum yes you're next okay welcome thank you I'm a grandmother of three children in the pelis county schools and I am appalled that we would have somebody sitting on your board that would Advocate breaking the law I am totally against your meeting and since you let people talk on the variant I would appreciate you letting me say a few words on it several weeks ago I had the variant my two grandsons had the variant and my daughter in her 40s which works for the school pel County schools had had the variant my grandson 13-year-old grandson had it first and he has breathing issues all kind of things we called the pediatrician and the pediatrician wanted a Zoom call and said if we have any watch him if there's any
173more issues call us that afternoon at 1:00 we went to a doctor that treats covid by 5:00 that afternoon we had the necessary medications to treat that child with his issues if we had waited on let's watch and call us back if there are or any more signs then he probably would have been one of the children in the hospital okay I'm 75 years old I had the variant I also went to the same doctor got my medications and in three days I was up back just like I am now early treatment the right meds will stop this variant somewhere along the line we are not getting that out to the public and I'm here to tell you all four of us are great my daughter's back teach substituting in the schools and we're living
174our life we are not mask we don't need to be mask and I am totally against your meeting thank you thank you the next speaker was Tammy Holland and following Tammy will be and following Tammy will be Jennifer Sullivan Jennifer Sullivan all right good afternoon welcome where's gpri sedman there there are speakers in the back that she'll be able to hear okay I just want you to know that I'm a mother of four I stand against this meeting I promise to uphold the law as each and every one of you did when you were sworn in it is your duty to uphold the law I'm very confused by the so-called logic so if you're wearing your mask and you say it protects you then why are you forcing me or my children to wear it
175you have your on you should be safe right please allow us as parents to make that choice chice did you guys have a nice summer did you enjoy your fresh air our kids attended summer camp and not one mask and not one case and not one quarantine the logic I'm trying to understand I was hoping Caprice and I could make eye contact because it's her decision her choice to do this and I don't agree it's not right it's not fair and we should have a choice I appreciate you listening to thank you and the speaker to follow will be Jay Richie okay welcome hi I am a mother of three school age children I've been to one other meeting and that was the end of last year because like many of the people that are
176here this is very inconvenient to spend my entire day I have two children that I've pulled from pelis County Schools because of the Mask mandate last year I strongly oppose this special meeting I have one child left in fundamental schools and I gave up two seats last year if it were completely up to me and I didn't have a husband who had a say in it the third would be gone it is you know everyone all of the parents in here want what is best for our children and we do not agree on what is best you're not going to be able to please all of us I think the closest that you can get is where you have it right now where it is an option for the parents you are going to continue
177to lose people if you try to please everyone as I stated I have three kids I can make a wonderful dinner and two of them will tell me it is their favorite meal and the other one doesn't want to touch it and that is where we are in this room the best thing you can do is give us an option I would suggest one other thing would be not propaganda but education about why we should wear masks maybe you know you can send out some information to the parents not to the children every morning my fifth grader at Pasadena fundamental and I know other schools are doing this as well because I've spoken to other parents the principal gets on and say how says how it is a choice and that they strongly recommend you
178wear a mask and they have them available it is not your duty to give a mask to my child when I have sent them without one okay another thing that I want to touch on is that the kid the school I put my kids in was mask optional and about 10% of the students and teachers wore masks we never had a problem and my kindergartner I have videos hugging playing around okay I think if there you were going to these masks I mean are you going to mandate fruits and vegetables for the children are you going to mandate exercise I take care of myself I take care of my children we you aren't going to please all of us I want to be here to talk about other things that are happening in the schools
179like the poor curriculum crazy sex education crazy pronouns boys and girls kissing on the playground those are things or boys and boys and girls and girls those are the things that we need to solve not these masks so lay it to bed you're not going to please all of us keep it as it is where it's an option and those that want masks can wear masks and those that don't their parents don't they don't thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Adam rer I am the parent of a first grader in pelis County schools and I'm here in support of the emergency meeting about masking I think you know later this week it's a little too late as my mom would say the horses are already out of The Barn at this
180point we know through our social media networks at our school alone we have at least 10 times more cases than are being reported by the County right now that takes the choice away from parents to make Health decisions about our kids when we are not informed when our kids have been exposed to the virus we are tired we have spent 18 months rearranging Our Lives to keep ourselves and our famili safe we have made immense sacrifices and to throw it all out now is irresponsible it's ridiculous I'm the Survivor of a massive brain hemorrhage that I was put in ICU for if I hadn't been placed in the ICU within one hour of my brain hemorrhage I would have died every doctor that treated me told me that if we have a 1% 1% of
181our children that are infected with covid are being Hospital ized for Co that's a thousand students in penis County schools that are going to be hospitalized for this virus not counting all of the other things that children might be hospitalized for right now as other speakers have mentioned this is putting enormous strain on our health care System it's affecting not only people with covid but it's affecting all sorts of other people who need immediate medical attention right now that's all I have I support this meeting and I support an immediate mask mandate thank you the speaker to follow will be Jennifer Griffith welcome hello thank you very much for your time I was forced to come here five times last school semester and here we are less than a month into the school year and
182I'm forced to be here again I do appreciate Patrice read that very well-crafted letter that was prepared for her and you guys brought in your Pony show we appreciate that it's sad that we have to be here again and that you have to force me to use an umbrella when it rains to keep you dry you can force the chin diaper on the poor kids but let M breathe there is no significant data difference between force and free kids risk increase kids get it and they get better people get it and they get better they aren't dying from this they're dying from underlying and failure to be treated I know lots of people in our Social Circle that have had it the amount of medicine that is actually prescribed to them once they get it
183is alarming they don't do anything they tell them to sit at home so there's there this idea that you're going to force our children to wear masks in the summertime when they have the choice if the mask protects you and that's the reason why you're want to force it on everyone then the parents and the children that want to wear the mask will be safe right and then the rest of us we've been called lunatics conspiracy theories I watched a mother outside try and force a mask on her 5-year-old child and she had to walk away because the child's crying because it doesn't want to wear the mask the two children that left here a second ago tried to take it off instantly when they left and their mother wouldn't let them that's her choice
184that's great I support that wholeheartedly but to say that I have to do it to my child to make someone else's child safe have you seen what these parents that are so worried about their health have you seen what they send their children to school with to eat have you seen the amount of sugar that they put in their lunch box and put a little note on it they don't care about the well-being of their children they don't I care about them I 100% oppose you guys breaking the law you're going to use my property tax money that pays you all to sit here to fight the ma to to to enforce to go after a law and then what about these other people on the board that don't want to break the law that
185don't want to go against the law they have to do that in order to sit on the board I employ look at the people up here that aren't wearing a masks there's some of us that are wearing two masks great wear whatever you want if you don't want to wear it great but to use our money to fight the law to then represent us is only going to make us vote you out this is nothing today these people that you paraded up here that you saw what it was like last year you guys were here till like 9 10 o'clock we have thousands of people that are going to come we're going to keep coming please give us the parental right to make the Choice what's right for our family and these people can do
186the right for themselves thank you very much for your time take care thank you the speaker to follow will be Amber Simmons good afternoon good afternoon I would like to thank member Edmund for moving this motion for the Emergency meeting forward for Friday my notes kind of got ripped I was writing them as I was sitting here but basically I'm 100% in support of this and everybody keeps talking about the yes mask no mask you hear from medical experts and people that are actually in the hospitals telling you what's going on you're hearing about children you're hearing about adults children bring this and take it home argue all you want over what this mask does or doesn't do but do shoes protect your feet yes they do this isn't a matter of an opinion we
187have a school policy of having to wear shoes shirts that cover straps all kinds of things the mask protects us each other students teachers you have A7 schools right now that are affected by covid in one way or another the downstream effect of this isn't just one person or one family and we all know that it's broader Orlando is having to divert oxygen from purifying their water because they need it in their hospitals Downstream effects I would like it if you all considered all of those I am Jenny wit Griffith and I've lived here all my life thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Nicole Denniston good afternoon hello I am saying no to the emergency meeting follow the law do not break it my kids are in school they're maskless they're
188happy and they're healthy thank you thank you who's the speaker that should be up now Nicole Dennis Nicole Dennis all right we'll go to shirle metf and who will sh who will follow surley Gloria strasner all right thank you okay let's let's try some more in case they're downstairs they'll if they're downstairs we'll give them the opportunity when they come up but let's go to the next speakers the next speaker is Angela dook followed by jamer Cassidy James James James okay sorry good thank you welcome real quick my actually I had a question for Dr kerski so can I come back when he's here yes we don't usually get into discussion back and forth I just had a quick question for him okay I'll ask him to come down and you can get the question
189okay I appreciate that okay do you want me to sit back down yes okay when he comes in if you'll stand back there by the door Mr kerski if you could go down the woman here has a question for you that's okay and so all right that's okay I can just ask it you're fine go ahead ask it here thank you okay Mr kerski can you please explain to the board how qualified immunity would be impacted by them for intentionally breaking the law I'll advise my clients on my own terms but I appreciate you raising the issue okay I am 100% against the meeting okay good thank you next and following him will be Gloria strasner okay okay hello good afternoon now right first off my name is James Cassidy and I own multiple businesses
190right on 19 in Palm haror one of them is a Health and Fitness business and we've been open for 10 years so first I want to say that I am against the meeting the special meeting to vote if you should mandate m for kids I will say shame on miss Edmund here for even introducing the thought I thought we were in America I thought this was Florida one of the most Freedom loving States and I don't think mandatory mask especially a blanket mandatory mask mandate for children is anywhere near the lines of Freedom or free I actually think it's quite the opposite right I believe one of our most basic functions in this world is to breathe and is to breathe in oxygen and we actually exhale carbon dioxide so you get things like hyper
191apnea and things like that when you're you know repeatedly breathing in carbon dioxide and it's just waste it's a waste by byproduct and the studies even show that there's dead space between everybody's mask you feel it there in between your mouth and the mask and in that dead space that waste Stores there's tons of studies and you know there's both the aisle right and that's why I think freedom of choice is so important right I don't think we should make anyone do anything I think as as a parent to be right because I have a baby coming in five weeks and I'm quite concerned where the world is coming so I feel like I had to be here I don't really want to be here as many other places I'd rather be but I had
192to come up here and look you guys in the eye and just say that it's not right it's not right that you would even be considering a blanket mandate for all kids it's ridiculous and kids need education they need options and give the parents the option to mask if they want a mask or don't mask if they want to mask right everyone has their own beliefs and I think that's one of the things that makes America great is allowing people to live their life the way they want and again Freedom being one of the number one things that they allow all right I have multiple teachers who come to my gym I have multiple doctors who come to my gym and I converse with them all and there is both sides of the aisle but
193I will tell you that this is causing a lot of psychological stress and when anybody knows about stress psychological stress can cause physical stress so what we're doing is we're actually hindering our own immune system when we're stressing ourselves out right and putting these masks on kids just like the other guy said I mean it's stressing them out so please please do not have the meeting and you know air on the side of Freedom okay and pro-choice because if we don't do that in America and we don't do that in Florida where are we going to do it right I feel like it's it's stand up now or sit down forever and that's why I'm here okay I don't want to have to come back but guess what I'll come back as many times as
194I need to thank you thank you for your time our next our next speaker we had previously called Gloria strasner and Shirley metf are either one of them here all right going once going twice all right let's move on we have Joshua Dale and Isaiah Joshua Dale and Isaiah Sarah Johnson I think we have one are you Joshua Dale Isaiah Isaiah okay and who will be following just a moment and who will be following Isaiah Sarah Johnson Sarah Johnson are you Sarah Johnson okay perfect let's go thank you welcome I'm against the meeting an emergency what defines the word emergency that's very subjective the CDC said the PCR test cannot differentiate between Co or influenza so yet any sniffle sick cough sick or seasonal flu sick is labeled as covid sick and shared on the
195news as a horrible pandemic where was the concern over kids getting sick for the last 200 years people don't get sick sick anymore sorry to point out the elephant in the room but kids are going to be sick and they're even going to be in the hospital it happens every year if there is a special meeting called to break the law then you better allow consultation from all medical professionals from all perspectives not just your Choy picked I mean your cherry pick science there are plenty of local Health practitioners who will gladly come in and present alternative evidence also it's interesting to take a look at different European countries and what the ecdc says many countries including Iceland Denmark England Switzerland Ireland Norway Sweden Finland they've all removed different aspects of their mandates in the
196schools and maybe they're on to something but regardless of anyone's fears or opinions at the end of the day there's an executive order and a parental Bill of Rights law on the books so I'm not sure why we're wasting time considering a meeting that would vote on whether to break the law whether it's temporary for 30 days 90 days with an opt out with an optin it's still breaking the law this coming from a board that expects their students to follow a signed code of conduct sounds hypocritical and it sets a poor example solution is to keep the policy as it is now let people opt in with the mask if they want to but I don't think we need to be sneaky and try to pull a mandate with an opt out if it
197sounds smells looks like or contains a mandate it is a mandate and it's against the law so vote no against the meeting or be be prepared to be here for hours whenever your meeting is called with public comment saying against you thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Alicia Smith okay welcome hi my name is Sarah and I'm a mother of two children in panella's schools and I'm against this special meeting I mean it's pretty black and white you're either going to follow the law or you're not going to follow the law and you guys are all sitting in a position of power up here and I encourage you and I challenge you to uphold the Constitution uphold the laws be the example it's not always easy to be the example and
198do the right thing but I'm asking as a parent that you do that you know there's a lot of talk on whether masks work or don't work and I can only speak to what I see as a parent and what I see as a parent is our kids playing on the playground they're touching the same equipment they're hugging They're laughing they're playing Miss Mary Mack I don't believe a mask is going to change the way our children interact and I challenge you too you guys made this decision you voted on it and I'd like you to give it an opportunity to work it's it's only been school for a week and a half there hasn't been any time to see results so I'm against the special meeting thanks thank you Alicia Smith and just a
199moment and following Alicia Smith will be Gina cassa Gina cassa okay good afternoon I would say thank you for letting me speak but is our right to be here and it's our right to choose if we should wear a mask not yours I do not think that you are teaching us and being great role models by teaching us to break laws set forth by our governor governor by enforcing a mass mandate for one year of a child one for one school year of a child's life they would have to suffer 1,300 hours of wearing a mask and if you make your child wear a mask from kindergarten to 12th grade they would have to suffer for 1,00 16,900 hours of wearing a mask I do not think we should have a meeting for wearing masks
200good thank you and our next speaker to follow is just a moment please who the next speaker to follow would be Elizabeth Fox Elizabeth Fox all right welcome hi I'm against the added meeting going against the Department of Health Department of Education and Governor DeSantis is breaking the law if you break the law we will instruct our kids to break your law and carry the executive order and the parents Bill of Rights with them at all times I will teach my children to defend their rights every child's life matters think of those students who now have depression those that have committed suicide and I personally know quite a few teen girls in pelis County Schools who last year had severe Eating Disorders their teenage hormones are raging like normal but yet they're masked up to
201their eyeball balls can't make facial expressions to the boy or the girl that they like can't socially interact so some of these girls are taking drastic measures and starving themselves or excessively exercising and my child is one of those children just to get somebody to notice them because all they have now is their bodies they think my child also missed 35 days of school last year due to anxiety and severe migraines with this heat her high school right now is having air conditioning problems and I cannot even think about putting a mask on her in this heat I just ask that you all please abide by the law and that's really all I can say or we're going to have to go to drastic measures thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be
202Tara homman okay good afternoon good afternoon you're hearing two sides of a debate today on one side the promas side you hear about a lot of fear a lot of feelings on the pro-choice side you tend to hear more about studies on the ineffectiveness of masks harms to children from masking and social distancing and other covid measures don't let fear get in the way of the facts don't burden the children with other children's health that is not their responsibility and most importantly House Bill 241 reinforces a parents right to make medical decisions for their children you're on the right track with the current policy of Parental Choice don't become law Breakers that's not a very good example for the students and as you've heard there are many parents who will instruct their students not to
203follow your mandates because you won't follow the law Mrs long board members thanks for following the law so far as you swore to do as a constitutional officer even when you're being pressured to do otherwise I am firmly against any special meeting wasting any time taxpayer money my money to even think about breaking the law it's kind of silly thank you thank you speaker to follow the speaker to follow will be Cassandra kovitz good afternoon good afternoon my name is Tara homman I am a mother of three two of my children are in college my youngest is in middle school he is no longer in panel's County Schools as of last week when I first heard that you guys were pushing the mask mandate I made the very difficult decision to allow him to stay
204with his father in Pennsylvania because they are not forcing masks on their children in that school district I am sure that many of you did not know this would be an issue when you ran for your seat and now you guys are sitting here trying to make this decision against the parents who are opposed to it and we're all here right now opposed to this decision so why do we need another hearing why do we need to hear it when you're hearing our argument right now because you are up there representing us the people that elected you into your seat so that is why I am totally opposed to this hearing thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Douglas Fox Douglas Fox Okay welcome hi everyone thanks for letting us speak and
205again I am very opposed to the special meeting but I just want to pray that the spirit of the Lord falls on to all of you and may he sing to your heart and may you know what the right thing to do you know again follow the laws you know it's okay we have the choice let our children if we want to put our mask on our children then let us if they don't then don't if you want to wear the mask whatever so anyway but I thank you for all of you who are fighting for us up there thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Amy per welcome good afternoon I see that by looking at the you board members you're enjoying the choice with the mask as most kids are
206this it seems to me like this motion should have just stopped in his tracks we shouldn't even be talking about it but maybe I maybe I don't know everything about how things work but so it seems to me that nobody has the right to mask a minor child except their parents nobody it's just I don't see how that's possible but so I'm against your emergency meeting thank you thank you next speaker was Amy per followed by Karen Burman Amy per is Amy per still here followed by Karen Karen Burman Karen Burman okay good afternoon board I'm Karen Burman a parent of two very fabulous young people thank you Capri Edmund for the motion for the special meeting the majority of the public wants this we know from several thousand people who have returned petitions and
207a Community Coalition of over 177,000 parents that we want this special meeting you should be able to have an opportunity to hear from the medical community as you did earlier and not listen to opinion or hearsay or false information from others who don't have the scientific knowledge to interpret the data the data has changed since school began 800 children are infected now here in pelis 2500 in quarantine or isolation those numbers are staggering John Hopkins All Children's Hospital is seeing record numbers of covid patients this isn't normal there aren't two sides of this only the facts we can't wait for the lawsuit to play out children and teachers will sadly die just like it's not up to parents not to use seat bels or car seats for their children to keep them safe masks shouldn't
208be an option be brave like the other districts are and say yes to this special meeting thank you thank you the next two speakers are Greg D Davidson and Nicholas Cary good afternoon good afternoon I'm Greg Davidson I would like to have you hold this special meeting even though I think it's inconvenient I have friends who are doctors and nurses and they're burnt out and they're burnt out because the variant is growing when I realized that places like the Cleveland Clinic the M Clinic the SLO kering in New York Emory University and even our John's Hopkins Children's Hospital here all require that everybody wear a mask on their campuses the variant are changing and they're increasing because people are spreading various viruses because they are not wearing masks yes it is inconvenient it's more inconvenient
209to be suffering in an ICU un waiting in a Intensive Care Unit wondering whether or not you will get care we are in a community I strongly encourage you all to encourage people we have to wear masks and listen to Medical Science not parents' opinions that may be misinformed thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Susan bie welcome hey my name is Nick Cary and I live in St Petersburg and I am strongly in support of holding the meeting I thank Capri edman for bringing it up as has been stated before we put our children in car seats and in seat belts to keep them safe all of us here are wearing clothes to like we don't have full range of Freedom we teach our children what they can and can't say
210in certain situations our community our society is based off tradeoffs of personal Liberty and social responsibility your freedom to swing your arms wildly ends at my nose just as your freedom on whether or not to choose for your child to wear a mask ends when they could transmit a deadly virus to all of our children the most important duty of the school board is to create a safe environment for our children to learn let's teach our children the importance of their civic duty to keep each other safe and have this meeting on this week thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Nancy Schuler hello welcome I'm Susan bchi I have to tell you I came here today to thank all of you because I was at the work shop on August 9th
211and I was so impressed with the results of that meeting and then I came here late today to find out about this special meeting which I am definitely opposed to so I am too upset I didn't prepare anything except to thank you and I'm too upset to just speak Off the Cuffs so I'm just going to read this parental parent Bill of Rights which was is HB 241 it's not about Des Sanders's order it's the entire Congress voted on this so all par paral rights are reserved to the parent of a minor child in this state without obstruction or interference from the state any of its political subdivisions any other governmental entity or any other institution including but not limited to all of the following rights of a parent of a minor child in this
212state a the right to direct Education and Care of his or her minor child B the right to direct the upbringing and the moral or religious training of his or her minor child C the right pursuant to S1 00 2.20 section 2 B and six to apply to enroll his or her minor child in a public school or as an alternative to public education a private school including a religious school a home education program or other available options as authorized by law D the right pursuant to s1000 2.20 section 13 to access and review all school records relating to his or her minor child e the right to make Health Care decisions for his or her minor child unless otherwise prohibited by law okay thank you thank you and the speaker that was Scher Miss
213Schuler the next speaker is Johnny Wong Johnny Long Wong or long Wong W and following him followed by Jeremy kench all right welcome thank you afternoon board members I want to take a second to say kudos to you all for sitting still and being patient definitely appreciate those who are genuinely paying attention and the rest of you for figting interest you're doing a good job I've been here for like 45 minutes but watching it on TV prior to that the content of the comments that I've seen is pretty saturated as in it's been a while since I've heard anyone say anything new or novel so I'm going to try to answer a few comments that I don't think I've heard heard yet I'll start with the caveat that of those who believe or recognize the
214dangers of covid I'm not sure if I speak for them but I actually don't prefer that you have a special meeting I definitely appreciate the motion taken by Miss Edmonds but I kind of view that as a delay or a defer tactic I think for those who are aware of what's going on with Co we recognize that action should have been taken quite a while ago and the second best thing to acting yesterday is acting today a rapid response is really the only thing that's going to work to limit the spread of Co and its variant so rather than convening rather than taking the time and requiring staff to coordinate to convene a special meeting or Workshop or public hearing and you know that's that's a ton of effort I would suggest that the next
215public meeting if it were to happen would be hosted off site like as in in a adult as in an adult or a pediatric hospital so that the folks who have not encountered the realities of covid can actually see what's going on in the medical industry these days if you look at the faces of the doctors when they come home and they're just beaten down and toiling over all the that they have to deal with and then all for the simple fact of folks coming up here and saying it's my right to not wear a mask because it's the most difficult thing for me to do I think that if you weigh the cost and the benefits of an approach that requires kids to wear masks which you know you can breathe oxygen through a
216mask I think you'll see that it's not that big of a deal it can be very effective and it would like overwhelmingly reduce the harms that are occurring in our health care facilities right you have kids who are getting hurt from regular things that break their arm break their leg they have regular medical conditions they can't get beds because our pediatric hospitals are filled up with kids that have covid because they cannot get the vaccination another thing that I noticed I'm just going to make my last point I think it would be wise to host a complimentary or supplementary public meeting on maybe funding continuing adult education as I've been listening to some of the comments I've been kind of surprised that folks who don't understand that consensus amongst the scientific Community is good science
217consensus proves that masks are working vaccines are effective fol aren't aware that a dirty mask is a signal that it is working so maybe those two things done together would have an impact the next speaker to follow Mr kench will be Melissa King okay Mr kench and then Melissa King Jeremy kench goodbye welcome good afternoon people how you doing today been a long year I haven't seen youall in a while it's nice seeing no petitions no mask it's the way it's supposed to be it's our choice our body it's good movement guys we want to thank you for that you know we aren't here we have not been here for hatred I mean I've had a lot of anger still do because we still don't have answers my wife can't speak here yet she Still's
218court ordered for whatever fraudulent charge she got here last year because of these mask issues none of us are for this none of us want this it has not fixed anything like everybody's been saying there's plenty more for you guys to work on this the focus on I mean I don't even know what I'm supposed to actually talk about I've heard several people continue to talk to these about their own things and you cut you didn't certain ones I understand that and respect it but I mean just idiocracy these people giving numbers and talking all this stuff but they're not given any cares I mean just losing everything I wanted to say for all these speakers telling you about the law and FD you and we haven't done our homework really that statement from someone
219promoting to break the law speaks volumes of stupid to say you want to sit here and violate the law when your husband's violated 79 felonies no no we're not doing this but seriously no we're not but it's the point of we're trying to do the right thing we're trying to work with you we hire you we support you we put you in your seats and yet you sit here and attempted a few maybe it's so hard to really tell yet who's for what because I feel you're all just trying to save your seats if that's a fact though you got to start watching there's a lot of names and faces and people out there ready to take some seats in a lot of votes here they're talking about their numbers and these petitions we keep
220showing up in numbers we don't do the petitions we haven't tried to do a lawsuit we're trying to be peaceful I have a lawsuit possibly coming after you the Schoolboard Greg the cops I don't know which way it's about to go you need to start fearing all of this stuff and worrying about the truth and the reality of things take care of our children like we say by giving us our choice you're on the right move I don't want to overdo my steps on this thing right now please please keep doing what you're doing this is wrong you should not even be speaking having another meeting on this after we talked about we're good guys Summer's here let's squash this let's make this peaceful keep it peaceful I'm I'm trying to come in a different
221guy right now and come in but I don't want to do this school year again but I will and I'll bring these numbers and I'll start bringing up my kids being assaulted and attacked and all the stuff again I mean let's get back to real normal stop with this political bull crap I mean my kid seeing a gay pride flag on her wall in school right now but the American flags rolled up what's going on in these schools you're taking God you're taking Jesus Christmas say everything out of our schools and out of our lives and replacing it with BLM and pride and all these other motions and political that's not what school's for you're not teaching my kid political things you're teaching them a abbc numbers get back to the meeting help our kids
222people do the right thing get rid of this thank you thank you just so that some of the people that may not have been hearing before what we're talking about right now is whether or not we're going to have an emergency meeting some people may not have heard that because they were outside and are coming in and hearing so this just a reminder for those that have not do we have just a moment do we have one more speaker or any more speakers after we do have more speakers the next speaker that will follow will be Linda skimas okay all right good thank you welcome hi thank you for having us I also am against having another meeting I came to today with one something prepared that I still think is appropriate to share as
223a rationale according to the way that your attorney has allowed us to speak today on November 17th 2020 at 10: a.m. four members of this board of education were duly sworn in three of them were holding a Bible all of them stated at the end of their oath so help me God in this oath you all promise to support protect and defend the Constitution and government of the United States of America and the State of Florida you stated that you will well and Faithfully perform the duties of your office following this swearing in Dr Greco stated that he had no doubt that this group of people would work as a team I appreciate that I hope you will work as a team I mostly hope that you will Faithfully perform your duty to support protect
224and defend the Constitution and government of the United States and the State of Florida personally as a voting citizen I don't always agree with the governing authorities over me but I will always follow the law you have been placed in your positions by law-abiding citizens who are trusting you to teach their children to follow the law and you want to sit here and make a motion to go against the law of this state parental rights is a law and I had also brought forth the exact text that has not been read so I'd like to further Susan Bui 's reading of the text section three section 104.2 the legislature finds that it is a fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing Education and Care of their minor children the legislature further finds that important
225information relating to a minor child should not be withheld either inadvertently or purposefully from his or her parent including information relating to the minor child's health well-being and education while the minor child is in the custody of the school district the legislature further finds it is necessary to establish a consistent mechanism for parents to be notified of information relating to the health and well-being of their minor children for purposes of this chapter the term parent means a person who has legal custody of a minor child as a natural or adoptive parent or a legal guardian aside from that you all have invited God to help you in this decision making I believe that the framers and the founders of the Constitution of the United States of America and the State of Florida also ask for
226God to implored them in the writing of the laws that we now abide by I think they had Unity I pray that you all will have Unity you were elected by citizens I don't thank you the speaker to follow will be Tom Tim and the speaker to follow will be Tom timi Tom timi Al righty welcome put this down a little hello oops okay you are calling a meeting to break the law follow the law no mandate you were sworn to uphold the law when you were sworn in oath of office is support protect protect and defend the Constitution and government of the US United States of America and the State of Florida stop living in fear and emotions Faith over fear stop living in fear 50 years ago when my kids were little and
227they went to school we never had to deal with this nonsense I don't know what has happened to the education system today it is so flawed that it has to be totally overhauled that's all I have to say thank just vote right just follow the Constitution and don't break the law thank you the speaker to follow will be Nancy Davis Nancy Davis okay good afternoon afternoon I'm very concerned about this I am so concerned that I took a day off from my job to come here to speak to you I'm opposed to this meeting you are advocating breaking the law if I go out and break the law if I L up a cigarette in this room I would be breaking the law and I'd be getting carded right off the jail for it I
228don't understand why what you guys are talking about is any different from me doing that you follow the law you obey the law you sworn uphold the law all of you are elected officials you were sworn to uphold the law uphold the law if this is being challenged in court let it go through the court system and let's let's find out what happens but in the meantime uphold the law that's all I have to say thank you thank you okay who is the next speaker was Nancy Davis Nancy Davis is Nancy Davis here all right and following Nancy Davis will be Kev armsey good afternoon I'm Nancy Davis I'm from Simo Florida and I'm a grandmother I've had two two daughters in the public school system I want to say no to this mandate meeting
229I'm against mask mandates I support Governor des's decision and I'm opposed to a meeting to even discuss a man mandates I am for Parental Choice I'm for freedom of choice according to a study of 9,000 students in the New York Magazine comparing mask and non-m mask students showed no significance significant difference in the outcome so I do not believe that masks are even necessary at all so I am opposed to this meeting thank you very much thank you and our next speaker would be just a moment while she calls the next name following will be will William Nobles William Noble will be next for right now welcome thank you I'm definitely opposed to this meeting parents have the only right to make the decision of the child wearing a mask in school and isn't it
230ironic of all people you Capri advocating for breaking the law I guess that's how you role in your family your husband has had over 70 I can tell you say sir I'm sorry Mrs Edmond let me that has nothing to do with whether or not we are going to have I'm just trying to share the truth no no I understand but your comments need to be relevant to the motion that's on the table so okay are you opposed to having a special meeting or in favor of it and then you're rationale for that has nothing to do with anybody's family up here you have no place to influence this board or at all alone encouraging the board to break the current law of Florida you know this is just not okay you know we've been
231going we've been we've been around for years without mass this was a Conformity of 1930s when the Nazis just continued to use this as control and fear I'm opposed to I'm opposed to it no mask thank you before you start next speaker's name next speaker is Renee chelia good afternoon board my name is William Nobles I'm a business owner here in pelis County I have two children one first grader in Cypress Woods Elementary and an eighth grader at East Lake High School or East Lake Lake Middle School Academy of engineering first of all I greatly oppose this and I'm appalled that it wasn't immediately struck down as a violation and an attempt as a coup to go against our Governor's mandates I was also a penel County Sheriff's deputy for 10 years and I was
232trained in the proper use of people PE personal protection equipment I know how to use it and as I sit here and every single person that's come up to this table wearing masks not wearing masks you've all contaminated each other everybody up here with all due respect you've all adjusted your masks and contaminated your masks those have to be destroyed or washed or whatever type material it is on the masks that these paper masks you know as a contractor OSHA does not allow me to use these paper masks that to protect against dust when my workers are on job sites it doesn't protect against dust it's not going to protect against a small microscopic virus let alone a huge small piece of dust it's it's it's our choice as parents to be able to decide
233what is best for our children's health ironically you know I tried to pull up the suicidal death rate for children for 2020 well strangely enough the CDC it's August now of 21 and they still don't have those numbers posted on their website it's a little scary there's all kinds of reports you know it depends on what news cycle you watch whether you have have you know there's there's Arguments for everything whether it's against mass for Mass whether it's you know this type Tire on your car whatever it is the bottom line is that you know as a former sheriff's deputy you guys are all you know sworn officers of the state here and as a former sheriff's deputy I was as well and if I had tried to create a coup against my fellow deputies
234to go against the law I would a be fired and B most likely be criminally charged and my recommendation is that you be criminally charged for attempting to create a coup amongst our you've invited this circus this circus is on you thank you the speaker to follow will be Mark Hall Mark Hall okay welcome thank you I am opposed I was going to address the fact that this is pelis County and therefore your consideration to move forward with this meeting or not should be based solely on pelis County data and impacts not all the anodal things and National things and whatever that people are bringing up here today although there is increasing infection right here the fact for penelas County data that I looked up today is there have been zero deaths from covid since
235June 2nd zero zero I strongly encourage you to not hold this meeting and not break the laws of Florida this comes down to Freedom versus control America has always and will always stand for Freedom we are not Communists to those of you who want to control other people and control their freedom and personal Liberty I say this you are fortunate to live in a free country you are free to send your kids to school with a Mas you are free to keep your kids home and do online school you are free to pull your kids out and homeschool you are also free to pull up stakes and move to a state that has passed laws that are more in line with your values I can recommend California for you I moved here from California last
236year my son has thrived here I will fight for him here as I did there I stood alone there so you will probably love it I don't stand alone here and I love that Freedom means risk Freedom means each family and parent has the god-given right to do their own risk mitigation you are not welcome to do that for me regardless of whether or not you break the law my son will be going to school without a mask if you choose to break the laws of the State of Florida I vow to file suit against the board and fight this all the way to the wall I will ask for remedy in the suit to be the removal of any of you who vote for this ille legal action today I will be taking notes
237as you vote thank you thank you do we have any other another speaker the speaker to follow will be Maria camarinos all right good thank you welcome welcome good afternoon board I don't agree with having a special meeting I'm not anti-mask I'm proas choice and I know that the n95 mask gives protection if warn properly and is imperative in a sterile Health Care Facility environment to protect healthare workers when dealing with patients with an active infection I'm not here to talk about the emotional aspect or fear-monger you I'm here to talk about the science covid-19 is around 50 nanometers in particle size a nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter I'm in the medical field and I own the most most powerful microscope you can buy outside of an electron microscope it goes
238to 40,000 magnification I can put put your saliva under a slide and magnify a bacteria the size of a silver dollar yet I can't even see a virus under this microscope it's no wonder that study after study comes to the same conclusion paper and cloth masks are only 10% effective at preventing the spread of covid a new study out of Canada that just came out this week came to the same conclusion use common sense if you can easily breathe through a mask do you think it's going to keep out a virus that is 50 nanometers in particle size it's like putting up a chain link fence to keep out mosquitoes even on the surgical mask box which is designed to keep out bacteria out of open wounds it states this product is not intended to
239stop or prevent the spread of covid-19 or any other virus covid-19 is an RNA virus just like the influenza virus it has already mutated several times and is not going anywhere we will be dealing with this just like we've dealt with the flu year after year if we go down this road we will have our children masked forever and it'll destroy their educational and Social Development is something that is 10% or less effective worth the physiological and psychological damage please do your job as a constitutional officer and follow HB 241 and don't have a special meeting to break the law thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Scott Verona welcome hi I'm am here to talk directly to Caprice do I do not Advocate you advocating for people breaking the law here
240I advocate for you to follow the law specifically hb2 241 it was voted on it was past which gives the rights to the parents all of these people that have come up here that are trying to take the rights away from the individual parents and trying to tell us what to do with our own kids is so mindboggling that you want to mask your own kid great nobody here has ever told you what to do with your kid to not wear a mask but those people want to come up and tell me I have to force a mask on my kid the logic is just so flawed so I do say that a mandate does not Trump the law and if you vote we will not allow our children to go to school mask because
241the Mandate does not supersede the law end of story I mean it's that simple we have a great governor who does the will of the people our will is to have personal freedoms that's what you guys are elected to do the will of us we decide how we treat our children and what is best for our individual child not one size fits all nobody here has suggested if you want to send your kid to school with the mask not to do it is just it's it it's it's unbelievable how one side is okay with letting you do what you want with your children and the other side is trying to take our personal rights away from what we want to do with our children I ask Caprice that you knock it off off this is
242so ridiculous that you even bring this up today and I suggest that the Schoolboard members follow the law specifically hb2 241 because you swore as a constitutional officer to do so I'm not only here on behalf of my children my family but for neighbors and friends that couldn't be here today because this is a work day and we are all on the same page we want rights as parents it is offensive that other people have gotten up here before and tried to infer on our rights that is just so offensive there a teacher that got up here that said she's resigning today good resign because she doesn't those are my kids are not her kids my kids are my kids so you can get up all of these Specialists and whatever I know what's best
243for my children okay and I would like to state that well I already did the mandates are not laws we follow the laws and that's it I'm going to just leave it at that thank you the speaker to follow will be Beth Ellis welcome hello I want to thank you all for your time today I really appreciate the opportunity to speak I'm a parent of a penales county school student and I'm in favor of a special meeting the academy the American Academy of Pediatrics along with the Center for Disease Control have stated K through 12 students wearing masks for in-person learning is necessary to reduce the transmission of Co Palm Beach County Broward Miami Dade and Hillsboro among others have already mandated wearing masks my 5-year-old has no option for covid vaccination we've reached out
244to trials as far away is the Carolinas no luck we can't get her in her only protection against Co infection is diligent mask wearing and hand sanitizing with General good practices however this has much less benefit for her if her classmates are not doing the same it's very simple public mask wearing is most effective in the reduction in the reduction of the spread of the virus when it's done with very high compliance if we're not all doing it it doesn't help that much we have to do it together we have to work together my 5-year-old is very concerned with becoming infected with Co and passing this along to an elderly grandparent I urge all of you follow the example of a 5-year-old and think of others before yourselves hold the special meeting please help her
245keep her loved ones her classmates staff and the general public safe by mandating masks in schools thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Carrie Kent welcome oh Lord I'm tall thank you for having me first I'd like to say thank you to Mrs Edmonds for even proposing this special meeting I am 100% in favor of this I am an emergency room physician in pellis County I happen to also be the site medical director at my ER which let me tell you is not a fun job to do during a global pandemic I'm also a mom of two kids who are too young to be vaccinated although you can bet I will as soon as it's approved you know this pandemic has been really hard for me really hard for my co-workers we're
246tired the hospital system is overrun whatever statistic that was about people not dying is just not true I coded two people myself on my last shift I'll handle it thank you I mean people are dying I could talk to you endlessly about the covid people that I have the 39-year-old I intubated on my last shift as soon as he hit my doors people are dying but I think what we're forgetting when we're debating this is that it's not just covid people who are having bad outcomes that woman who said she had a brain bleed and needed to get to the ICU quite frankly that wouldn't happen right now she would have died in my ER I had a guy under 40 who came in with chest pain and we correctly identified him right away having
247a big massive heart attack he needs to get a life-saving heart cath or else he would die and there's no facility in pellis County that's open and Sunstar is running 40 minut delays and so he died out of Co times he would not have died he would have been saved this isn't just about people making a choice for their children this is about being respectful for our entire community and the benefit for everyone my people are tired the hospital systems are overrun covid is booming it's up 164% in my hospital system as compared to this time last year I would implore you to do the right thing here have the meeting impose wearing masks because when you need to come to a hospital and you are having a stroke or your loved one is having
248a heart attack what kind of care do you want right now we cannot provide that Care thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Boris welcome thank you I'd like to voice my support for holding a special meeting regarding masks as proposed by board member Edmund the reasons I think having this meeting is so important is because I'm a mom of three sons in pelis County Schools two are vaccinated one is not I am counting the days 54 until he turns 12 while also hoping the vaccine is approved for all school age children soon my sons wear masks indoors at school because they care care about others and because they know that protecting their classmates and their teachers is just the right thing to do meanwhile despite the district's policy to strongly encourage
249but not require maske wearing they still have a few maskless teachers and many maskless classmates who choose to make going to school less safe for everyone we need a mask mandate because the best science tells us masks are a vital part of getting this virus under control pelis County families deserve a masking policy supported by the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics worried parents who are simply asking for a layer of protection between their sons and daughters and an unpredictable potentially life-threatening virus are currently at the mercy of folks who confidently dismiss the doctors and scientists who keep telling us that masking is our best option in schools right now I'm asking that you issue a mask mandate for our school buildings to keep our children safe you have the science you have the
250authority and I am just hoping you muster the will thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Len reing okay welcome yeah all right before we begin we're all in agreement the members of this board have all executed their Florida statute 8760 5 oath of office correct and that you all know and are aware that Governor D santis and the legislature has already passed the parents health Bill where they have the right to choose while then appears there's a mistake and I'm here to address the issue of the co emergency Co measure this board is hereby pondering including the wearing of mandatory masks such as these when the ma when the Box itself informs that misuse of these masks can cause injury and death and the government and the legislature the ones making
251the laws have already determined what you all are about to do therefore with what evidence do you all have in support of not just we follow CDC guidelines or whatever what actual evidence where's the science where is the evidence and if you can't produce the evidence how is this not contemplating continuing child abuse the maximum law states the proof relies on the on the on he who affirmed let me stop you please not on he who denies ma'am I am speaking you will be quiet while I speak no I will not right now the science and the facts going War you one time stop stop you will stop talking now you will stop talking now Madam chair Mr bis no no no you we have Mr Boris we have stopped the clock you will if
252you do not stop speaking you will be removed you are address you are out okay please remove him oh all right now we're going to stop right now I read what our procedures were and frankly I was going to thank you all for the decorum and for the way you were behaving and monitoring yourselves during this time the reason why I was going to stop him is he was not speaking to the mask mandate even broadly he hadn't even mentioned it yet we were well into it and I was going to ask him to to State his case and then allow him to go on for those of you that have not been in the room the whole time we are not talking about whether or not we're going to have a mask mandate we
253are talking about whether or not a special meeting will be called to discuss it so we have to at least address the fact that there is a the motion on the floor is to have this emergency meeting I am I am trying to I am trying to be fair with this but it wasn't even coming up so there was nothing being stated and when I asked him to stop so that I could explain it he did not stop and then well we could have fixed that we could fix that and the next thing was I specifically said there would be no profan at which point he I know and I called him and I called him on it and I'm not going to get into any more discussion this way I called him when he
254said it I said be careful and he did not do it again Madam chair if I could also clarify the issue with this gentleman was that he did not allow the chair this is our meeting and if the chair asks you to stop we will stop the clock save your time and then the will be a conversation between the chair or me and the speaker his defense was not stopping we are here to run an efficient and orderly business meeting and to hear from the public if somebody is not going to allow us to interrupt them to redirect them according to our policy then you will be removed and if the time had gone on we can correct that once we once we get to it so with that let's all just take a deep
255breath welcome our next speaker and who will be the one that will follow just a moment who will follow this speaker the next speaker will be Jennifer Schulman Al righty thank you welcome thank you my name is Glenn Ryan I'm a St Petersburg resident I'm 35 years a retired ER nurse and I worked for eight years over at All Children's Hospital as a Charged nurse in their ER and I want to say that I approve and support capric Edmond's thing for the mask mandate meeting and I urge you because I've been listening to some of these people in the back and I urge you to make it a science-based type of thing meeting because I think there is a lot of misinformation out there and they you don't have to cherry-pick their are people on
256the opposite s that are well documented and have well presented issues but I believe I personally support the mask mandate and I think in the interest of Public Health you guys have more of a global thing people have come up here with individual episodes like well I my kids got covid and he got better but the thing is that when they're infectious they have a 14-day window to infect other people and those people that they infect may not be so lucky they might wind up in ICU on event so I think right now as a global issue you ought to look at the science you ought to have this emergency meeting cases are rising in penel County hospitals are overwhelmed and that's all that's all I'll say about that good thank you the speaker to
257follow will be Dr Ladonna Butler welcome hi there my name is Jennifer scholman and I have a fifth grader at penel County Schools chair Cook penel County School Board and superintendent grego thank you so much for your patience to listen to everyone in their comments and I would like to say that I am in favor of having a special meeting I don't want to St here and spew facts and data about what this best safety protocol you know the facts you have the data what I do want you to do is to implore you to honor the oath that you took to uphold the Florida Constitution the Constitution says adequate Provisions shall be made by law for a uniform efficient safe secure and high quality system for free public schools I want to draw your
258attention to one word in that governing document safe above rules above the Board of Education policy above the legislature statutes above the governor's executive orders is the Florida Constitution your attorney has said that you cannot require mass in schools because the governor's executive order and subsequently the Board of Education and Department of Health directives say that you cannot there is no need to abide by these because the Constitution is above all of them and it requires you to provide a safe environment last year we asked our children and staff to wear masks and they did our community came together to thwart a common invisible devastating enemy what makes this year different has the disease been eradicated has the virus become less virent have our hospitals been able to easily handle the influx of patients have
259the short and long-term effects diminished the answer to these questions is an equivocal no don't believe me believe the doctors in our community believe the reports on your own health department believe the stories that you've all shared through social media and conversations with friends families and constituents there are those that will claim that they have the right as parents under the Florida parents Bill of Rights to direct the upbringing and Education and Care of their minor CH children and this is true except for two as salable points if the state or government entity can demonstrate that such such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling State interest and that such action is narrowly TA tailored and is not otherwise served by a less restrictive means and the pesky State Constitution which supersedes laws
260passed by the leg legislature I submit to you to have this special meeting on August 27th to take action to meet the state's interest thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Esther Eugene good afternoon everybody welcome I say thank you I'm looking at all of your centered actions to make sure that our schools are safe from ensuring that we're not cramming a whole bunch of kids in one classroom making sure that we're having conversations encouraging handwashing I'm watching this board take reasonable actions to ensure the health and safety of our kids I've even seen the actions that you've taken to make sure that we're learning about equity in our schools I'm learning about the training that your teachers are going through and I am excited about the work of the board I
261am now last year this mask is a real inconvenience it is not oppression I know what oppression is right this is an inconvenience however last year we understood the importance of masking and we made sure that we had Provisions we even provided mask for staff and kids to be able to to be safe nothing has really changed in fact we've actually got gotten worse and so I'm encouraging us to come back have the meeting discuss every single available option to keep our kids safe now in my clinic I saw an overwhelming we had elevated numbers of people who were coming in for things like depression anxiety there was increased substance use kids were thinking of taking their own lives because of the degrees of isolation that they were experiencing because of what we were doing
262in the beginning that's just true we all witnessed it even people who don't agree with masking talked about the impact of covid and isolation well if we don't take these actions if we are not safe we're headed back to a path where we are going to have to come back indoors I do not want that to happen I have a couple things I want to say real quick I wrote them down we know that most children are better served when they are able to be with their peers and with connection with caring adults I'm a mother of five and four of them well now three I have two graduates of penel County Schools three of them are in penelo County Schools I will also say to you as much as we protected our children and
263we wore our mask my husband and I are vaccinated his work with children caused him to come home with covid-19 that happened and in our house covid ran through my entire home he was we need to make the steps we need to do everything possible to make sure that this virus does not continue to burn through our schools burn through our communities because we cannot take the risk associated with getting us sick I am not talking about infringing on people's freedoms we got bigger things to talk about when we're talking about Freedom we're talking about a Public Health crisis that is going to impact all of us so we need to do the next right thing have the meeting discuss every available option hear each other and then be bigger stronger wiser and kind and
264mask thank you the speaker to follow will be Raul lobam welcome good a well I was here this morning but good afternoon I want to Esther Eugene I'm the current sitting president of the St Petersburg branch NAACP Dr Greco you said earlier let's use common sense and I respect that but as we know Common Sense is not so common when families feel that they are enacting their rights while mixed with emotions and the thought that they freedom is being violated but I bring a different perspective the local NAACP Branch supports and stands in solidarity with this board on the motion for a special call meeting if you so voted in board members this is well within your purview and your Authority there is value in pressing pause on a decision to ensure that decisions are
265not knee-jerk approaches to appease issues that have emotional connections there is value in ensuring that you review each aspect of this process there's value in ensuring that there is a governing board that as a governing board you do your due diligence with facts and then relay those facts to us the data speaks for itself the variant is on the rise facts are facts there's an increase in numbers since the school year began facts are facts the decision is not about violating a family's right and their decisions however let's be clear for the most part our students and instructors spend more waking hours with each other than they do with their families in a five-day period the students and the instructors must feel safe protected and valued we cannot comfortably depend on parents to report positive
266results we just cannot it's emotional this is where your commitment to leadership and the mission of the school board takes presidents you are charged to provide the best opportunities for all students to succeed by adopting policies that ensure continual Improvement of highest student achievement safe learning environment and effective efficient operations clear concise and that's it a special me meeting should be called and the facts should be clearly defined to the best interest of the students and the instructors I'm I'm I'm saying it this way because it's important and the instructors but please ensure that during that meeting the data is reflective of our community and that it's thank you the next speaker is an V followed by Stephanie Lane welcome hello so my name is anorei I am the mom of three boys who are
267in third and fifth grade in pelas County Public Schools if I'm here today to tell you that I support 100% the meeting to support mask mandate for our public schools today yes my kids are wearing mask at school but we don't feel safe because we know the mask scoring is not 100% effective if not everybody is doing it so me too I like to see my kids smile and I wish they would not have to wear this but this is the reality of this pandemic and I prefer to see my kids smile behind their my with their eyes than to be like I was this summer at the hospital with them at the ICU suffering and crying I'm concerned that if one of my child break a harm like it happens last winter he would
268not have the appropriate Health Care at the hospital or whoever is falling sick in my family cannot get this care neither this is not just about being sick of the co this is about staying healthy in general and it's about taking care of each other my kids never complain about wearing their mask for 18 months they totally understand why we are doing this the importance to protects and to protect the others and if they can do this I think we can think about that and do it too thank you and you're speaking in favor of the meeting I thought so I you did say you did say you were speaking in I am fully in favor thank you I thought you said it but I wanted to make sure okay the speaker to follow will
269be Christopher K good thank you welcome thank you good afternoon as the parent of two penales County School students one of whom is two young to be vaccinated I strongly urge the school board to hold an emergency meeting regarding requiring mask in schools there's a staggering covid emergency in our state and Florida currently has one of the highest rates in the nation for Pediatric H pediatric hospitalizations due to the virus in the wake of this Public Health Emergency the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC are both recommending students mask indoors to slow the spread of Co the Delta variant is far more contagious than previous covid strains yet safety protocols in our schools are far from what they were just a few months ago and our district has not provided a virtual learning option
270this year our students deserve the right to a safe learning environment in person please do what's right and step up to protect our children teachers and staff by holding this meeting to require masks thank you thank you next speaker is key gleon followed by Barbara mcdor welcome okay first of all it's hard for me to believe that we're back here again debating on having a meeting on this same topic we fought so hard last year for permanental rights over medical decisions for our children in school and the board finally came to a decision at the end of last school year would be no masks you know people have been saying listen to the science but the science would been given for the last year and a half have all been Lies We Know Mass don't
271work we know foui is a fraud and that masss do more harm than good my daughters and I have immune are immune compromised and have severe asthma last year my daughter had more asthma attacks than ever before on top of bacteria lung infections from masks so how can we even be contemplating whether or not that there can be a universal medical decision when each child has a different medical history so how do you know that a mask is safe for my kids or anybody else's they say masks protect yet there have been many studies three specifically sponsored by the NIH that the virus is spread by aerosol particles which go right through masks more people are vaccin vaccinated in comparison to last year which has been directly correlated to more cases not masks Co is
272not anywhere or Co is not anywhere near more cases not masks Co is not going anywhere a mask isn't going to save our child all the different doctors that have been coming up here speaking about masks and covid people dying but have any of them went against the Nar and actually treated patients with htq or ior meton with have 100% success rates because that's what saves people not masks Governor DeSantis has signed an executive disorder an executive order for parent parental rights on this very subject so why are we on Earth having a discussion to vote against that what parents what parents don't want the right to have a choice in their child's medical decision this subject shouldn't even be up for discussion to take away our rights to make those types of decisions for
273our kids and we're literally having a meeting right now to decide whether or not to break the law and the order that was put in place for our parental rights I'd rather have the pelis county school defunded than the thought of a discussion to go directly against the governor's EO which I already emailed Governor Dan santis just to at least put this on his radar because I refuse I refuse to even entertain the thought that my kids would be subject to physical and psychological abuse again to have to wear a mask for six hours a day we should always have a choice period there doesn't need to be a meeting to discuss that thank you and before you start let's I'm Barbara dumo shell I just wanted to say that spoke about you know all
274the statistics stop please wait a moment who's our next speaker and then reset the CL okay who's our next speaker ma maam you wrote on your speaker form that you want to speak about CRT and vaccines is that right yeah okay I don't know if I'll have time for both that will be at the end do you want to speak about whether or not the school board wants to hold a special meeting yes I don't agree with the meeting and I'd just like to address the mask at this point okay and then you can speak about the other issues after the meeting okay but hold on yeah by the way I'm so embarrassed for that gentleman that was taken out it should have been explained to him say please stop stop stop stop stop who's
275the next speaker after her oh you stay where you are the next speaker is Katrina cook followed by Sarah Dara I thought you said Barbara Doo yes yes yes you are and then the person that follows you is the one we're calling you now have 3 minutes and welcome we'd like to hear have to say thank you I'm just embarrassed for that gentleman that had to go through that humiliation without really having it explained to him that's why I believe in School teaching relationship skills anyway you might want to check the source of the science who's funding it okay that's number one and 100,000 people died of regular flu that's number two and number three is from the scientists 99 something percentage of children are affected by covid there's 73 million children up to age
27617 in our country 99 point I don't know some really very small statistic my heart breaks as as as everyone Hearts break for any kind of sickness disease and loss but we have to be reasonable okay my glasses and we're talking about whether or not we have the meeting there right okay there is you know Dr fouchi has gone back and forth the two medical communities that were named about science their funding is not good the the good funding comes from 2,000 plus scientists that I'm connected with I can't I'm just a little nervous because I'm just wondering if you're going to stop me can I just read this if it's inappropriate just say stop and I'll stop because I don't know okay there is an Insidious treacherous evil agenda covid-19 is a bioweapon from
277China fouchy Bill Gates Against Humanity 12 holistic doctors have been murdered in Florida because they were you know SE speaking the truth on vaccines Dr voui was is kicked out banned from Africa and India for a vaccine created to cause HIV and sterility the CDC the who the FDA the pharmaceutical industry follow the money trail of corruption the mainstream news media will be indicted for presenting to America false science data and numbers I'm connected to the scientific Advisory board over 2,000 scientists the Frontline doctors who have the proven science in the Journal of virology write this down American Journal of infection control Journal of American Medical Association the healthy american.org and by the way one of my favorites is Dr R Brar he's a famous doctor in but of I could name 2000 but he's
278one of them and this to quote a virus is a microorganism that gentleman's information was correct the argument is over math thank you so are you in favor or against the meeting totally against it I will fight it like the other lady said with the law thank you all right who's our next speaker Katrina cook followed by Sarah Dara followed by who Sarah Dar Sarah Dar okay welcome hi good afternoon I do want to say thank you Capri for bringing this up this is definitely something that needs to be done unfortunately we should have another meeting you know for this meeting but I do agree with the meetings and I see today like I've heard people who who want to quote you know biblical things they think they're constitutional lawyers they think they're scientists we've
279heard from real doctors what's really going on not some kind of conspiracy theory maybe that was on Fox News like this is really going on on the second my kids started school last Wednesday on by Friday morning they had to go home and quarantine for 10 days days okay and it was from children who had covid that didn't wear masks to school and I understand you know we all have the right to whatever and laws and all that but Jim Crow used to be the law slavery used to be the law it doesn't mean it was right you know what I mean if something like that was reinstated I don't think any of you board members would be down for that you know what I mean your mission statement says that you're to provide the
280best opportunities for all students to succeed by adopting policies that ensure continual Improvement of highest student achievement safe learning environment and effective efficient operation not wearing masks is not safe no one ever died from wearing a mask people are dying from covid all those precautions you mentioned still cause the the classrooms at my kids school to be you know shut down and quarantined and all the things so you don't want to wear a mask sending students home for 10 days every once in a while is not effective or efficient special education students suffer the most scholastically and that is a direct VI violation of Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that protects rights not only of individuals with visible disabilities but those that may not be apparent for K through 12 students literacy
281in pelis county is the biggest concern they already call Florida schools a prison pipeline why would you exacerbate the problem wear a mask it's common sense and that's all I got to say we should have the meeting thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be M mount mount mountane welcome hi thank you so not only do I think that we should not be debating the need for meeting I don't think we should be debating a mask mandate the HB 241 that everyone keeps bringing up clearly states that parents have the right to govern their children it also states that these rights can't be infringed upon without demonstrating such actions reasonable and necessary and I think that we've all determined that it is reasonable and necessary the CDC has been very clear that masks
282work the notion that laws suped or nullify local ordinances or statutes is incorrect and fallible are we not required to provide vaccine records for her children at kindergarten in seventh grade is my child not required to adhere to a very strict dress code does she not have to wear closed toad shoes to PE or be marked down I was not given a choice when school uniforms or man ated at one of my children's schools as a parent I don't have the right to allow my child not to wear a seat belt as a free citizen I don't have the right to drink alcohol and get behind the wheel of a car laws are made amended and retracted based on the needs and safety for all unvaccinated and unmasked adults are sending their unvaccinated and unmasked
283children to school while either knowingly or unknowingly contagious subsequently killing other people out of sheer selfishness and or ignorance they are not following the sick policy guidelines they are openly scoffing at the mentions of people dying in this room today scoffing openly at the notion that people are dying they don't care about our children so you have to if a meeting is required to enact general safety in our schools then I support it thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Mary zers you're next but after you yeah it's a little confusing but we're trying to keep it moving welcome thank you yes of course I urge you to have a special emergency meeting for the mask mandate and I urge you to vote all in favor of it I do believe it's
284within your power to create a policy for mandatory mask I was wishing you will take this action today but anyway I support you I trust you to ensure safe and healthy schools in our County because encourage encouraging mask is not enough we need a mask mandate thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be sicy rathel hi welcome I'm Mary salers I have two grandchildren in the pelis county system and my daughter also teaches there I just wanted to point out along with others who have spoken that we have laws that we have to obey and if we don't like those laws then we get to change them we cannot just forget that we have them or override them because of whatever reason we think is important enough to do that I would also
285I'm deadly against the meeting I don't want to have a meeting I don't want to have any more mask mandate discussion the decision was made and I think we should stick with it and if you don't like the law that the governor has passed or you don't like something then go about changing it don't just ignore it I would also like to tell the board that if we go down this road it's a slippery slope So today we're here to discuss whether we can have a meeting on whether we can have a mask mandate that we've already decided we're not going to have so let's say we get that we get the mask mandate and it's a very emotional issue for everyone and everyone has picked their side and they're not going to change so
286let's say we get the mask mandate okay and let's say it's for 30 days or 60 days or 90 days and then we still have it because we will everyone knows we will okay so then what's the next thing then the vaccinations get approved so then the school board of pelis county is going to decide whether students in pelis County are required to take a vaccine the school board I don't think the school board has that right and so I think that you should not have the meeting you should not have the Mandate you should leave it alone it's all going to end up in the court anyway can we afford that and just let it go and see what happens thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Clark molella hi welcome
287thank you haven't seen me before because I'm one of the parents who quietly chose from the options you made available to keep our Safe Kids Safe last year first virtual and then in person watching the June 9th board meeting made me realize how hard you each fought to provide those options and for that I thank you I'm here today because the options available this year cannot possibly keep our children safe and our schools open right now I'm here to ask you to hold a special meeting to discuss a temporary mask mandate and reevaluate wait until our community positivity rate drops to below 8% and until students under age 12 have a chance to be vaccinated to prevent the worst possible outcomes covid-19 spread in schools was limited last year because mitigation measures like Universal masking
288and remote learning were effective and because the virus was half as infectious but the virus has changed and so was me so was must we someone with the delta invariant infects an average of six to eight other people often before symptoms appear and almost always those who are in close proximity for extended periods and that describes our schools exactly that's why we're seeing covid spread so quickly in districts that opened earlier in our state and others and now in our own masks are known to be an effective way to slow the spread of disease that's why doctors and nurses wear them they can help kids in school stay in school and out of quarantine too I know that many in the past have cited the Brown University analysis by Economist Emily auster as proof that
289masks in Florida schools don't work but what they may not realize is that this paper is a pre-print and has not been peer-reviewed this makes it equivalent to a drug that's been developed but not yet evaluated and approved by the FDA in fact the journal itself has it disclaimer that the paper should not be used guide clinical practice and therefore public policy in comparison the vast majority of published papers and the medical experts who spoke here today recommend masking as an effective covid mitigation strategy that is recommended when Community infection rates are high while I appreciate that parents want to make decisions for their children as do I this is about the health and education of all our children parents don't get to decide dress code sick policies or whether their child gets checked for
290Li at school because those policies are about keeping kids learning effectively and keeping kids and teachers in schools healthy is essential to this there I ask you to call a special meeting to re-evaluate a temporary mask mandate because it is an education and public Pol Health thank you the speaker speaker to follow will be Sarah molella welcome all right good afternoon good morning Miss or good afternoon Miss long and board members I definitely appreciate your time today I also took time off today from my busy schedule I am I have two full-time jobs so I work for the Department of Defense supporting our nation and our war Fighters and I also I'm a u a full-time Battalion Commander of 240 soldiers here in the State of Florida ranging from the Jacksonville area all the way
291down to the southern cities of Miami in West pal beach port Lao so bottom line is this it's very clear right so I'm a I you know I have to I have to defend and support the Constitution and so do you and specifically here HB 241 that was passed on January or excuse me July 1st of this year okay by our house state representatives and our Senate state representatives right so we're representative form of government here in the State of Florida this measure was heard it was passed by Representatives overwhelmingly by 70% 70% of the population of Florida okay wanted a parents Bill of Rights and that was passed and the parents Bill of Rights is very clear it's very clear and that the parents will make the medical decisions for their children okay not
292the school board okay this is not a legislative body okay this body is and by this body trying to usurp or go around okay a now public law here in the State of Florida okay that was passed by 70% of the voice of Florida okay is to to me it's a der elction of Duty I think that there's I I think we're we're missing it here so bottom line also is masks are not effective in preventing covid-19 infection 3 days ago there was a study by the University of waru in in the United Kingdom I look at the global things okay of of this pandemic not just here in the US a lot of things today are just simply being censored the University of wo researchers found based on their studies that blue surgical face
293mask are only 10% effective and the K and 95 in of themselves are 50% effective okay there are no scientific standards for masks and consequently most masks do not cover the face properly to prevent covid-19 infection come on look at the kids wearing their mask they're loose there's there's you know air coming in they're they're they you know breath going out what what they do when they think about this when they go to lunch okay and same thing with my soldiers when they go back to the barracks and they a chow okay what what's going on they're they're bringing down their mask and they're talking you know to the other children okay do you think that masks are going to help them there no what what's happening okay is my son use my son example
294he thank you the speaker to follow thank you thank you're finished you are finished thank you time's up let's move on next speaker make me ask don't make me ask you to be removed thank you let me remind you some of you did not hear prior to the meeting but part of our board rules are that whether you agree or disagree you do not show that a aitly and we just listen to the speakers and so do the board members so please maintain some decorum the speaker that will follow is Leona feifer okay hi my name is Sarah and I have a son that's in h fourth grade in in the public school system here and he I opposed the mask mandate and you guys having a meeting about that because my child suffered suffered
295mentally from wearing a mask at school we Tred the first semesters of going to school with mask on and he just dramatically suffered mentally from it where he was actually even suicidal didn't want to go to school called it like you said my husband said it was prison for him so we had to take him out of school for the last couple semesters and he went from an a student to not doing as well because my husband and I have to work and we can't homeschool him and although this the teachers did the best they could doing online schooling they don't have the option this year my child is going to suffer mentally if he's made to wear his masks again and many many children not only my son many many other children suffer through
296the same of wearing a mask now like my husband said masks are not effective they don't work they're only 10% they mess with their mask they touch it they kids are just germs and you know what we have to get used to germs I understand people are dying from this and it's sad but at the same time suppressing our children's immune system is not going to help them either and masking them is what suppresses their immune system and we want to be able to all get her immunity through either the vaccine or through just getting it and recovering but it's just going to be part of life for a long time and masking our children and lowering their immune system and blocking their fresh oxygen is not going to do it's going to harm them
297and I beg of you please do not do this not only is it against the law breaking the law and breaking the will of the parents most of the kids that go to school now they don't wear a mask they don't wear a mask because their parents chose not to wear mask those kids chose not to wear a mask and if they choose to wear a mask great wear a mask wear two masks wear three masks but don't make my child wear a mask thank you so are you in favor of or against the meeting I'm against the meeting thank you very much listening thank you so let's remember to keep our comments to whether or not you're in favor of the emergency meeting or the meeting that has been requested who's our next speaker
298just a moment the speaker to follow will be Kelly Johnson okay welcome hi thanks for your time I'm a grandmother with children in penella schools and I think that freedom is a moot point when we are dealing with a highly transmissible virus and I implore you to follow the advice of the CDC over politicians I support this board holding a meeting to discuss Mass mandates I think it is your responsibility to keep our most vulnerable children who are unable to be vaccinated safe from covid Co is preventable for even unv unvaccinated individuals when Protocols are followed no child should be subjected to potentially dangerous situations when it can be prevented with we already know from last year that masking works if a mandate is not adopted we will continue to see growing cases because without
299it very few are masking and positivity is rising the current procedures we have in place are not preventing transmission because parents aren't following the protocols we have already proven to ourselves that choice isn't working the way the Mandate did last year I encourage this board to to hear from medical experts who are currently caring for your students in covid units here in penel County before making a decision thank you thank you follow the speaker to follow would be Christopher Kay okay good afternoon good afternoon good afternoon my name is ky Johnson and I live in Denine Florida and honestly I understand everybody in this room I'm a mother of eight children and when you have eight children there's a lot of different things that go on with those children I'm a product of two retired
300penel County Public School teachers and I'm very proud of that they taught me a lot of things growing up and one of the things they taught me is just how to be understanding of each other so right now I'd like to say for the record that I am in support of the meeting I do not know what you need to do at this meeting I don't know if it needs to be about social distance we need to have some kind of a meeting to discuss how we can slow down the spread of this virus right now my children are recovering from covid-19 I'm going to take down my mask I'm naturally immune I had it as well I had to pray a lot over my family we got it from vaccinated family members we were
301doing everything we could to stop it I've had disease in my house many times and I've been able to stop flu with two kids down the rest it's been amazing I was not able to stop covid in my house it really threw me because I did not think it would be that bad I was one of those people who said I'm healthy I ride 100 miles on my bike I can handle it was really hard and my 15-year-old son was the last one to get it and he said this text to me Mom are you up I'm scared my body is shaking uncontrollably and I feel like my heart is racing this is my 15-year-old son Mom I don't know what to do I can't calm down Mom I don't know what's going to happen
302but I love you I woke up the next day because I myself was suffering from covid and that was what was happening to him too my children had no symptoms the only reason we knew we were covid positive is because we knew that we were exposed and we were testing the two that really didn't have symptoms are 9-year-old twins I would have sent them to school the first day with covid and it incubated about 10 days in each one of us that's the other thing when you compare it to flu which you know flu incubates two three days whatever Co in the practical sense of what I witnessed is it incubates quite some time so we do need to take some kind of measures to help slow the spread at the schools I don't know
303if it's going to be mask mandates and maybe taking mask breaks during the day I mean I do that at work I go outside and I take my mask down but I don't know what that's going to be I don't know if it's going to be spacing the desks out right now they're kids are all on top of each other and as far as this protecting you from kids from transmitting it do you guys not understand kids spit when they talk they spit a lot and this definitely traps bit so that will definitely slow it down and I don't want to get into that I just want to ask you to please have the meeting and you know like other people have said have all sides represented so we can make a really good decision
304so that people like my son who's 15 they don't have to send Mom a text in the middle of the night because they think that they're going to die thank you thank you next speaker Madam chair I have three speakers that work called earlier but did not respond can I read their names now it everyone is from upstairs correct no one is still down okay then go ahead because they may have been downstairs Nancy Schuler Josh Dale and Amy per okay well that ends the comment on the motion that is now on the floor board members we have had a lot of conversation so ourselves over the past what three or four months so I'm going to allow everybody to have an opportunity to speak but if you can do it succinctly and do it
305in one shot I would appreciate it if we need to if you need to share something else I'm not going to stop you from it but let's be as succinct and as as thorough as we can be if you have something that you want to say please push your button to indicate it and Mrs long will start with you thank you I wrote a statement last night but before I read it I want you all to know I taught 35 years I'm a mother of two children my husband is a teacher I took this seriously and I looked at all sides but here's the bottom line I took an oath to uphold the law for instance just as I would up hold and do all in my power to ensure protections for say ESC or
306lgbtq plus students protected by the Ada and Title 9 I would uphold them I must obstain from a decision that would set a potentially dangerous precedent if boards will choose to violate one law what is it to stop them from choosing to violate others it creates loopholes and is not conducive to progress I implore you please to continue with the mitigating measures thank you thank you Mrs Hine there you go thank you know I think I think there's a couple of important points here I think I feel like through the discussion today we've kind of got gotten put into this All or Nothing position and we're not in an All or Nothing position our current policy is that we strongly recommend masks for staff and students and I know that Miss Edmond suggested having a
307special meeting to discuss the POS the possibility of going against the Department of Health order but that wasn't what we were we weren't talking about whether we would or would not do that we were talking about what could we do and as I listen to people I mean one of the things I realize is I don't think that's the battle we're we're having right now we can do more than we currently are what I first I want to say thank you Dr grego I think the way you had to and palis County schools had to assume all the responsibility for contact tracing quarantining Etc the new dashboard everything thank you and I know and thank you for allowing me to talk with you and participate some in those operational pieces because they're they're they're so
308important and really they should not be the responsibility of palis County schools are resp responsibility is to educate right and but but we are we also have to provide a safe and effective learning environment that is also our responsibility so thank you on the operational side on the case management side I think there are some really important pieces there that I know we haven't gotten to today I appreciate that we decentralize it's at the school level it'll be faster it has to be fast to be effective notification of closed contacts notification of a positive and an elementary classroom I know we've talked about that and I'd like to make sure that we follow through with that making sure we get testing site information out to families and staff thank you for working on opening new
309testing sites and being sure that they're open after hours all of that is case is case management so there's more we can do we could right now I don't know that if we could do it today because there's been this motion piece and all this discussion so I don't know if it got lost in there but we could right now require that teachers and staff wear masks there's nothing in the department of health or the doe or the governor's order that doesn't allow us to do that is that correct Mr caprisi yeah the Department of Health Emergency Rule and the executive order deal with students we would have to contemplate collective bargaining and other issues if we were to do something with employees so I'm not sure that you could do that right here from
310the day okay and then but but it's I just what I'm saying is there's so much more we could do decides you know up to the Department of Health order and the the Department of Health order is also clear that it requires parents to have an opt out and so we could require and an and allow an opt out all of that is legal all of that is legal today there is a court case right now that is ongoing we know that the hearing is ongoing we should have a decision within the next couple of days about whether the executive order and the and the Department of Health rule is legal there's the piece that the parents Bill of Rights does have the piece about if the subdivisions or other government entities can demonstrate that
311the action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling State interest and that it's narratively tailored so the parents Bill of Rights does allow for local government to assess current conditions in that local government's area talk to those local government Medical Health fire whoever the right people are when we're in an emergency situation there is the ability within the parents Bill of Rights for us to take actions that are narrowly tailored not otherwise served by a less restrictive means so there is stuff we can do we there is more we can do we don't have to we have heard we have had emails phone calls I mean unreal right so we don't have to do nothing today or or or nothing this week and I would say I would I would say it would be
312a real shame if we did we have options we don't have to do nothing we've heard from our medical community we've heard from our families we've heard from our schools and I do have more that I would like to share I do because I think that we can do more and I would like for us to do everything we can up to the law and I am watching this hearing I am watching it and I think it's very important and guess here's here's the few things I would mention as far as our role of providing a safe and effective learning environment here at our schools we envelop our students and teachers every day for a long period of time and that is a great responsibility and I one that I know one that we all
313take seriously and even more than we met at our Workshop a couple of weeks ago pelis county is even more in a in a in a significant Health crisis due to this steep Rising Co Co and I know we're all tired we are all tired we all want Co to go away we I think we really valued being able to vote on June 9th to resend that mask order right everyone wants that and yet conditions change and we've talked about when conditions change we need to change and we need to be able to be nimble every small business every place needs to be able to be nimble and respond to conditions on the ground so right now and this is not Laura Hine talking I am not a medical doctor or nurse but I've spoken
314directly to more than 10 Physicians I have all of my notes here that I'm happy to share with everybody including three members of our medical advisory team two Emergency Room Physicians at John's Hopkins All Children's Hospital the lead of emergency medicine at Tampa General leading internists with Bay care pediatricians infectious disease doctors plus hundreds of Physicians nurses and infectious disease doctors that we've heard from in our communication and again all here in our community not not National or International organizations but people who live right here who are dealing with this here and the ones that I have spoken to and as is seen in the reporting by the Florida Hospital Association and then also you can go on to Sunstar EMS and it makes clear it makes very clear that our hospitals are full emergency
315services are regularly put on D diver and or EMS is having to hold for 30 minutes or an hour or more you can look right now at the status and you know when I spoke with and you know surgeries are being canceled and when I spoke with Dr copc of bay care who's who's on our medical advisory team you all probably remember him he made very clear to me that when we say elective surgeries are canceled we're not talking about a facelift we're talking about cardiac bass surgery we're talking about cancer Mass removal surgeries I have a friend who's a dermatologist who called me last week devastated about a patient with melanoma who desperately needed a surgery that was scheduled that was ready to go and he needed this Mass removed it was cancelled because
316of the influx and the fact that our hospitals and doctors are full and exhausted and they cannot do these elective surgeries I'm sure many of us have had or have family members who have heart conditions who have cancer who need these kinds of services and care you know I think you're probably aware that 911 has asked people please don't call unless you are in an actual lifethreatening situation so it's very real and yes we have Co fatigue no doubt think of the fatigue of the people in our hospitals we heard from some of them today and we also know everyone can pull up the county rates and see that over the months they've gone up and or over the weeks just recent weeks weeks and 20 20.6 positivity just last week and our vaccination rate
317is barely moving right over the weeks 61 62 63% I think that for all of us seeing the Pediatric specific numbers that we get from the Department of Health and you know reading the line that says that the largest proportional increase in new cases was observed among the 0o to four age group I'm quite sure that kind of stops everyone here in their in their tracks for a moment and also that the VAC ation rates of our 12 to 18 year olds are still below 30% now here's the interesting thing all this stuff that I just talked about hospitals EMS Etc this is county level information this is county level responsibility and one of the things I wonder is gosh I wish we were hearing from our department of health more I wish our County
318Commission was out advocating and doing more if our county is in a Public Health crisis that those are the agencies that should be out there we're we're a school system we are responsible for education and thank you to all of our principes and teachers who were out there doing it every day while while we're spending the time in here and I and I know that they're doing it well so I believe that this is a county level but we also know that there's you know things that have been done to make them feel like they can't do anything either and so yes yes perhaps this shouldn't be our responsibility perhaps it shouldn't be the responsibility of the school board to be looking at this kind of information and making policies and it is this is
319our ship and everybody who works and learns and comes every day within pelis County Schools is is our crew that we're responsible for and so in the ship shipmate self piece where you take care of the ship first take care of your shipmate then you take care of yourself so if we look at just panel's County Schools just us just us last year the entire entire first semester almost four full months of school we had 653 students positive for Co in the first nine days of school this year we've had 899 so in four months we had 653 in n9ine days we've had 899 so 246 more nearly a 40% increase but again look at that time span difference our teachers we had 316 in a semester last year and in nine days we've had
320297 so not quite but almost the same number in nine days as in an entire semester so what what are the key differences well one there's far less space right because we've had the we've had the my PCS we haven't been able to do that because we haven't had funding for that so there's a lot more people in our classrooms then the other one of course is that we're not requiring masks for all staff and students students we can't change the number of students in our schools but we can do more we can do more with with with the mask peace so I just think you know back to the Pediatric cases and PCs or or yeah and our County Schools positive cases I've heard people say well kids don't really get sick what's the
321big deal we heard from Physicians today pediatricians today and after my talking to many of them here in our region not National not International right here the doctors who keep us and our children healthy and safe you know yes there are some hospitalized here in pelis I got I learned from Dr Dua an infectious disease at all children's hospital this morning that there are 21 patients currently hospitalized for covid now that might not sound like a lot to you of course if it's your child you're going to think that's pretty important and that maybe our community did not do enough and if you if if you don't think that the health of children is really a risk with covid I know we heard from Miss UL at the workshop about long covid and the risk
322of long covid so that's you know chronic fatigue headaches Etc affecting 10 to 15% so if we have 899 positives now 10% of that is 89 students currently in our schools from the first n days might have a reaction of long covid which which has a compounding impact on their ability to learn I really think one of the most important things I've learned I was talking with Dr Patrick Mone who's a lead emergency room physician at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital and he couldn't stress enough about keeping kids in school keeping kids in school and you know yes yes we need to keep them there for learning but so many other things I didn't know this but did you know that drownings of children doubled during the pandemic during during the shutdown phase of the
323pandemic pic so it's great that our schools are open and we need to keep them in schools also nationally emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts by girls Rose by 51% here in Bay cares 15 hospitals pediatric psychiatric e visits Rose by 31% we need each other kids need each other they need their teachers they need their coaches they need their sports teams they need far less time on social media we need to keep kids in school I'm super supportive of kids being in school and not have them and their teachers constantly quarantining right that instability is unhealthy for families it's unhealthy for schools it's unhealthy for business it's unhealthy for our whole Community I've so that's Physicians I you know I've I have visited I'm sure you all have two I visited seven different
324schools two high schools two middle schools three elementary schools walked around thank thank you for that visited classroom students and teachers it is amazing to me that every single school I visited hoped for clarity more clear requirements on masks when you walk in those classrooms whether it's and it's not just Elementary School that sits in pods I don't know if those of you with Elementary School students realize this but it's also middle school and high school they sit together in groups and as you walk in and you see that you know it's clear that you know some are some aren't and just asking for clarity and you watch passing time and we see the number of teachers right what did I say now we were almost three almost 300 with teachers that means Subs right
325that means covering classes so there's just a lot of instability anything we can do to have more stability I think on so I think on The Masks piece we can see that just nine days into school we see the effects of mass in our own schools so I mean if you want to look at other studies I have them here I have plenty of studies on the efficacy of mass that I brought but I think we can look at our own school we also you know I talked to Dr Kennedy as well who's a member of our medical advisory team who universally recommends masks period She said our hospitals are full kids are five times getting it machines are running sort staff is stretched yes masks and she says the science is not that it
326will burn through and be done that's not that's it's not the science it will continue to mutate if people don't vaccinate and in the meantime we have to use all of our layers in order to keep people healthy and really to reduce the strain reduce the strain on our current hospital system I know we heard from the one Doctor Who shared about a medical doctor whose two children made it through the whole year last year even with two medical doctor parents and then they go to school for a week and they're positive with Co with those kids and that doctor go to school with my children so I am I am aware of that and I appreciate her Her counsel during this as a as a pediatrician so I think keeping kids in school and
327then when conditions warranted we employ the strategies that we know work so you know I shared about the conditions in this County and again when conditions change we can change the measures so I understand that we can enact an emergency rule that that we can enact an emergency rule for up to 90 days and then during those 90 days we can resend that measure within a single meeting there's not a long period of time it's not like we put it out and that it takes four to six weeks that's not the case and I hopefully all of you all saw some of the legal clarifications that were emailed last week I know it's tough when we get so many emails to to necessarily see all of them so so we can we can enact an
328emergency measure and we can resend it and it would just be I feel like you know in a in a private company in a smaller private company you would react to the condition so we would talk about is it the is it is it 20 per 100,000 cases is it a percent positivity is it letting vaccines be available for all of our students parents of children in elementary school and some in Middle School have not had the choice to vaccinate their their children yet can we do something that helps them that helps provide a better a safe more effective learning environment for their children to be able to get vaccinated and we have to have common sense elements in the policy yes you know if you're if you're outside or you know working independently in
329an office we've all learned how to live with these so I feel like this is our ship of children of families and the conditions are clear to me that we do have an immediate Danger of Public Health in our County and within our schools if you look at our numbers here and that we should take some action for additional masking requirements we have options we don't have to do nothing we've heard from so many people so many people that they would like more overwhelmingly overwhelmingly more we don't we cannot not do nothing so I guess I'm not sure what I'm proposing Miss Cook and I know I've talked a long time I don't know that it takes another meeting I would like for us to enact as much as we can while you know while
330we can and then on Friday come on Friday if that's when we want to have a special meeting for at that point this the results of this hearing will will will have been decided so I don't know if we can talk today about requiring masks for staff for vendors Etc and requiring with an outt out for students affected immediately we can talk about whether that's K12 whether it's K8 somebody had mentioned before just K8 doing as much as we can up to the rules and policies that have been set forth okay right now the motion that is on the floor that we will be voting on is whether or not we call a special meeting to implement a mask mandate with for 90 days something reassuring I think looking at it every 30 days and
331challenging the do that's the motion that we're talking about right now and that's that's what our comments are supposed to be for and that's what our vote will be I'm for having the special meeting I don't know that I'm for all of the other pieces of it yeah that's what the motion is yes well you're not yetor yes a board member can always move to amend the main motion there's already been a motion by Mrs Edmund and a second by Miss Hine so if somebody wanted to propose an amendment there would be a mo a motion to amend youd debate have a second if there was one debate that motion to amend vote on that motion to amend and if it fails or passes then you go back to the main motion do we have
332to have a motion to you know th this has all been policy and procedures so far it was just you know procedures written by staff for strongly recommended do we have to in order to require for staff and vendors in order to require with an opt out for students do we have to have a motion and vote on that or is that procedural how does that I'll let you answer it again yeah you don't need to have a motion to determine whether there's a majority that wants to have a special meeting a motion has been made but yes if you're going to implement a mask mandate then the board would need to act you have not you have nothing in place right now so you repealed your mask mandate effective as of the last day
333of school last year so if you're going to reimplement something that would need to be done by an emergency rule most likely and that's by board action so how do we do that well we have to take care of this motion first the motion on the floor is to have the special meeting to implement a mask mandate for 90 days readdressing it or looking at it again every 30 days and challenging the do with a medical optout so that's where we have right now so we have other people that want to speak to this motion so we'll we'll move there Mr Dudley thank you madam chair was all ready to go but I got sidetracked here well I think that a lot of good points people taken we're we're in a situation where we have
334and I'm just blowing the number out well I a large number of people want mask large people like the choice so whatever side we go on we're going to be anti- the other side in their eyes and to me the best option and I consider it the Mandate the Mandate is Choice that's my feeling on it and we there's a lot of arguments on on where do we go what do we who do we listen to you know everybody's telling us about oh listen to the pay attention to the science well as I pointed out the last meeting and if you didn't hear it I will repeat it again it depends on what Science Guy you're listening to okay I have you know she's not the only one that does research I've got all kinds
335of stuff here that I've research and some of the do you realize that since Co is affected Us in the last 18 months there's only been one study in America one study for Pro for wearing masks and not wearing masks a scientific study it's only been one it's in the state of Georgia 990,000 see I did this I looked it up 990,000 Elementary School students in Georgia and half of them had Mass the others were without and you know what the finding was there's no difference and the big difference is in my eyes is by wearing the mask you've significantly made a step backwards because especially with elementary school kids we've all you know I taught Elementary School it was short time but kids love face to face want to see the Expressions it's how
336they formulate words and letters please stop or I just a minute I will not have any okay you understand that's a warning okay thank you Bill please just nod your head it's okay or this that's okay I where is it oh so it's it's very important so if it doesn't make a difference then why do it and again it is my colleague at the last session and she did it and it is very it was mentioned here today too by the way about the Constitution and U there was a reference I believe you did it three it may have been four times where you mentioned a section of the Constitution where it says promote the general welfare well that is true but that's pretty catchall phrase and it covers a lot of thing from building
337Road roads to whatever the next phrase however is to me is the key secure the blessings of liberty securing the blessings of liberty and that makes it very very plain that our framers were concerned with freedom and so I think that's something when we quote the Constitution you know it's three sentences long that last one to me is very very important there are some epidemiologists from worldwide and I mentioned them the last time I was here and I have this document to great barington and here's the list well before I start let me just say that since we're throwing numbers out there are 43,6 60 medical practitioners and 15,000 Medical Health scientists who've endorsed this and in this they say that children schoolage children 16 and under don't need Mass let them play let them
338do all those things they are the least vulnerable because of of their god-given antibodies that are okay and so you know again what science are you listening to the head of one of the leading surgeons and oncologist and John's Hopkins which is we have the children's version here he thinks it's way overrated we don't need mask on children and I know we quote the guy locally and keep it local we what's that expression keep the local stupid well we have our hospitals are it is true that they are filling up but you also need to know that in normal circumstances and now I have two members of my family one's a doctor and the other one is a is a PA but and nurses on top of that but a hospital will keep ICU about
33990% capacity all the time so if we're filling up or filling up however beds that hospital have is a shorter version not the diminishing it please understand I'm just trying to make sure that you understand statistics and way we say them and how we present them certainly can be different and H just you know I just caught it when you were saying it was about the number of the increased number of covid cases the first nine days of school well don't forget the first three days we came back from school which was probably the most we just came back from vacation people travel all around the country camping all that kind of stuff a lot of that stuff was brought back it was not you know spread in the school necessarily and I think that
340we need to use common sense is basically what it amounts to and I think if you are one of those people who thinks that your child needs to wear a mask put the mask on we're in and I would say if you have any question all put the mask on go and do it but to require others to do it I I just it just rubs me the wrong way and it's and not to to make light of it but there's a lot of kids that have a claustrophobic you stick a mask well we've been through that old gamut because you know we've been through this for 18 months you know somebody was up here earlier today saying yeah the first nine months we caught I'm not going to say that word but we C
341you know what I'll have to ask for for for you know making kids wear a masks that's all we call they wanted the freedom so now we got the freedom and Paul is rolled the other way now and we're catching it the other way so I would say that we have made a mandate that mandate is choice and I think that people use a little common sense and if you just do what what you think is in the best interest of your child and certainly do it and I'll just leave it there I'm not going to talk long I had a lot more stuff but in an essence of time good thank you Dr Carr thank you thank you Mr Dudley and Miss Hine for sharing your thoughts on the matter and miss long for
342articulating your concerns of following the law I agree with you Mrs H that there is a greater responsibility I agree with you can you hear me now Mr Dudley that better okay thank you the I agree with you that it is not just our responsibility but the responsibility of all of us in this community to address the concerns and meet the needs to help decrease the numbers and it is however we are we are responsible ible for for governing this organ for this organization this ship and I've all along said conditions pending right pending conditions we would make decisions I was thinking about this before our meeting and I was also thinking about all the other things that we have to do and our teachers receiving training in the Florida best standards and I was
343thinking about the Florida standards for sixth grade math where we apply real world math to solve problems and we solve real world problems with simple percentages and that came to my mind and I know Mr Dudley you talked about doing math or statistics I'm not going to statistics we're not doing high school generalizable or or anything like that but the our English language arts best standard to site evidence to explain or justify your reasoning so I was thinking of those two best standards that we teach our kids and I asked what's our current enrollment for prek through 12 and our current enrollment for prek through 12 is 47,3 65 students and that does not include our Charter School students those aren't our numbers 473 65 40 not K12 sorry in in under the age of
34412 okay all right those makees sense yeah no we're like at 90 something so the but under the age of 12 not enrolled in Virtual and not enrolled in Charter because we don't make the decisions on a mask ring or protocols for covid at our charter schools and virtual so for the sake of easy math we do what we do in middle school and we'll say rounding so 50,000 children under the age of 12 remembering under the age of 12 folks are not eligible for vaccine nor are they eligible for the monoclonal antibodies at this time which is under our emergency use treatment so let's say that 20% on of the kids under 12 and that's one in five so seems pretty reasonable one in five children potentially could catch covid so one and five
345that would be about 9,472 we could make that easy and say 10,000 students so if one in five of our children and I'm not doing hard math here one in five of our children under the age of 12 were to acquire covid that would be 10,000 students and just to say that conservatively only 1% of those students would require hospitalization so that's just 1% of kids under the age of 12 got had to go to the hospital that would be 100 students so students potentially seeking hospitalization is very conservative and there are 250 beds at all children's hospital but I guess my then I think of the 0.01% of children that they say might might die right and that's almost negligible right it's one child but I wouldn't want it to be my child and
346I wouldn't want my child or your children to be in the hospital and a 100 kids who don't have the option of additional protections or treatment at this time potentially would be hospitalized so I it stuck with me that someone's comment was children for other children you know we wouldn't sacrifice children for other children and it's true we wouldn't we wouldn't want to sacrifice advice right of children for anyone else's children but I also think one of the things that we talk about with character education is taking care of one another and doing them whatever we can to support and take care of one another and even if it a mask only offers 10% protection you know that's 10 fewer children out of a hundred so 90 fewer children would be hospitalized so I guess
347I wonder why would we not do everything we can to mitigate potential hospitalization or mitigate ser and with all with the hospitalization onethird of children who are hospitalized require severe intervention and treatment and that's that's that's that's just from our doctors in our local hospitals right now what they're experiencing right a third of the kids are requiring some sort of extra help so I do understand I don't want to violate the law however I do think it's important for us to fully examine if there is a compelling reason to take action reasonable or necessary so I do think it's worthwhile for us to examine current conditions further to determine if there is a compelling reason and that's the leeway that's in the Bill of Rights I believe that there if there is if there is
348a compelling reason and I think that's worthwhile and taking the time to examine if there's a compelling reason I appreciate the folks having time and being present here to speak today but I also believe there are many other community members who may wish to have an opportunity to speak on this item and we don't want to surprise individuals and say we're passing something today or doing something today that wasn't vetted in the community and folks didn't have time to hear in our prior workshop on this topic I did Express that I think it's important that everyone have their full three minutes everyone be able to speak and that we not limit folks opportunity to speak and share their perspective so I think it's important for us to listen to our community and give folks time
349to attend a meeting where we can further explore the current conditions we did not hear directly from our medical folks our medical ad advisory team prior to this the start of this school year and I recognize that they don't want to be put on the spot and perhaps it is important for you know us to hear a wider variety of individuals so there doesn't seem to be bias but it does seem important to hear and we heard from a couple of folks today who are you know the head of the emergency room hospitalist I mean that's like your person who coordinates all of the intake all of the I don't know what else I need to hear if she's telling me that Hospital's full then she that Hospital's full so I can't imagine knowing her
350to not knowing her I don't know her personally but I just as a professional cert board certified position she has an oath and obligation and I can't imagine someone getting up and saying you know now the hospital's full when it really wasn't because she wouldn't want to so I would I think it's important for us to to determine the current conditions and determine if there's a compelling re and decide as a board if there's a compelling reason I don't think we have enough adequate information to to rule it out I certainly wouldn't rule it out at this point that we need to do something differently while I really appreciate the dashboard it has been a number of days that it's disappointing that you know we did rely on the Department of Health to do our
351contact tracing and it is our understanding that they are overwhelmed and unable to do the contact tracing so we've had to really step in and assign additional folks to do the contact tracing and I'm not sure not spoking speaking to them haven't spoken to them directly or heard from them directly is there a reason for that are we not doing contact tracing simply because we're overwhelmed or is this so contagious that squelching it with contct tracing isn't necessary I mean those are the kinds of things we would want to know and I appreciate us making the extra effort to keep families informed I appreciate us working really hard to get more testing but we do have a very real struggle being 30 drivers short and it is again frustrating that we're going to hire a
352private Transfer Company because we can't have small buses I know you or small Vehicles Vans and stuff Mrs Kane you had asked that before many moons ago but we can allow someone else to which is you know makes no sense but the fact is that currently we have sometimes two routes riding on one bus and that can be you know very close quarters right do we or multiple students riding in close conditions and quick turnover so you know even if we're examining some settings that we have to have additional mitigation factors but anyway that I see you're ready to go Miss cook but the but I'm not done and there's it's important for us to still consider those things because as we heard it is life altering and I feel like it's my duty and
353responsibility and ethically and morally to do everything I can to keep children safe and that's my fundamental belief and if we need to add additional mitigation factors to keep all children safe I think that's my responsibility as a human and as a board member okay good thank you let's make sure everybody has a chance first Miss Kane did you want to say anything or are you okay okay Miss Hine I was just going to mention for the idea of turn your microphone on there we go they got it I was just going to mention for the idea of the meeting on on Friday or you know when we if if if we were to schedule it it's been really good to hear from a lot of people and this would allow a lot more people
354to be able to come and speak with us we could you know coordinate who we actually who we also talk to during dur during the meeting I know that they are long and I think we're all happy to take as much time as we need to hear from people we could consider you know instead of three minutes we make it one minute so that as many people as possible can say what they support or don't support or things like that we can't do because our policy says three minutes oh okay so you can't make a special meeting with certain special rules I no no okay it's just a thought okay okay Mr Dudley mam chair I call the question there you go okay do we have a second second he called the question which means
355the first vote that we will we have a motion and a second to call the question so the first vote we will take is whether or not we basically stop all conversation and go straight to the next vote so the first one is to call the question for all in what so I just wanted to make a call if you call if you no if you call the question first of all we have to vote on whether the board agrees on calling the question you call the question the majority has to agree with you to End discussion and then the next vote will be immediately want make sure vot yes that's what I'm trying to do too so the first thing is are we going to End discussion that's what calling the question is okay
356so we have a motion and a second to call question all in favor say I oppose say no okay so that one passes unanimously now we immediately go to well no no just calm down so now we go immediately to the motion that is on the floor to have a special meeting and if you'll allow me just to to reward it a little bit and if you don't like it tell me to call a special meeting to implement a mask mandate for 90 days and readdressing it every 30 days with a medical opt out and to challenge the Department of Health that is that okay so byid on Friday by Friday by Friday okay okay by Friday all right so that is a motion on the floor the question has been been called there is
357no more discussion so all in favor of having the special meeting say I and opposed say no no no okay let's raise hands just to make sure I believe the motion failed but all in favor of calling the special meeting say I all righty and those that are saying no all right the motion fails I'm going to I'm going to give you that one because you all behaved very well and I do have to say thank you very much it was it was time consuming watching yeah no it was it was timec consuming I think it needed to the conversation needed to happen and I appreciate you honoring our decorum and the rules that we have set forward so now we are back to the and we will get to public comment or public participation
358in a little bit but we have to finish up our meeting so now we're back to I'm going to go back to Mrs Edmund and see if there are any other things that you wanted to bring forward with your board report I have a question all right so we just saw that the majority of the board did not want a special meeting regarding a 90day policy reassess every 30 days with a medical opt out what I've heard from colleagues on the board is that they would like to have a discussion an intentional discussion about what we can do to Stronger mitigate or put it set forth policies to support the students in our schools with a more mitigation efforts so my question now is how do we schedule a meeting so that we can have
359this discussion to talk about additional things that we can put in place such as the efforts mentioned by Mrs Hines and Dr Carr Mr kerski oh thank you for sending that one my way yes Madam chair so a majority of the board needs to be in favor of calling a special meeting in other words a meeting that is not on the calendar as a regular meeting or a workshop so the motion failed to call a special meeting with those parameters as I said several hours ago we do not need a motion in order to determine it can simply be a discussion of the board led by the chair whether or not there is a majority of the board that would like to have call a special meeting for another purpose okay that's the answer to
360your question through the chair do you mind having a discussion to see if we have a majority of the board that would like to have a meeting to talk about what we can do to provide additional support as it relates to the guidelines I will ask the board see if we have a majority that would like to do that okay those that would like to do it raise your hand no okay and those that would not same for yeah and Madam chair that was not a vote you're just you're determining the will of the board whether a majority exists right thank you so there is not a majority that wants a specially called meeting now that does not mean that we can't have discussion at a workshop or something like that it can be brought
361forward at that point to look at what else could be done or what else is being done can also be discussed okay anything else yes so you just mentioned at a workshop we can have further discussion but we had a workshop and we cannot Implement a policy change at a workshop or take an official vote well it's sound so how does that work well it's sounding like the majority doesn't want to have a policy change if you want to talk about what else can we Implement what other kinds of things do we want to bring back plexiglass do we want to bring those types of things back in that would be conversation that we could have with the superintendent because it's it's his it's his decision as to for those types of things because that's
362how things are going to be implemented so we can have conversation and out of that we would if the board there decided we wanted a policy then it could go on a board meeting thank you I just want to make sure that everyone is clear and everyone is understanding what the majority of the board is asking for or supporting at this time so that it's clear you know what the majority of the board is going with and that there's not really an opportunity for one person or a few board members to deviate from what the majority of the board wants corre because we operate as a whole correct so that's why I'm asking these intentional questions regarding what we can do to help mitigate when we hear that hospitals are filled okay we're not talking
363about this conversation so again I'm just making sure I'm clear on what we're doing thank you good thank you all right Mrs Hy just a just a point of reference here I want to make sure I'm correct on my calendar so I see that you know today is August 24th our next scheduled Workshop is not until Tuesday August 21st and our next scheduled board meeting is September 28th is that correct no 14th work shop September 21st I said August so we have a oh yes the evening so the evening of September 14th so three weeks from now corre is that correct is our next school board meeting thank you okay board report or you done okay Dr Carr thank you I appreciate it and I just want to go back to a comment made by
364miss Edmund regarding the once the full board so that the community is clear because often times once thanks for pointing to your ear when I'm not there once the board has made a decision we respect one another's decision being made even if I'll State personally even if I disagreed with the decision being made going forward it is the will of this board and as a member of this board we adhere to the will of the board and that's defined in our policy so that others are understanding of that as we go forward with you know if there's not compelling advocacy or you know if there hasn't been some other reason we as indivi we as a board do not as an individual do not function as an individual we're part of the board correct so
365I appreciate the input from all the col all my colleagues and will respect our decision as a board going forward thank you so but the other piece I did want to talk about was I want to just say thank you in my board report to folks for a great kickoff I went with Mr vigu to a number of different schools on the first day and subsequently have visited a number of schools and how grateful I am for our folks getting things up and rolling I look forward to more of the best standards trained rolling out think that's very exciting because we have a lot to focus on at our last Workshop there was mentioned of our school performance and I hope we'll continue to hear more about pieces that are going into place at the
366future Workshop to see the success of Lakewood be exp Elementary expanded into some of our other struggling schools and the exact things that may be taking place I think it would beneficial for us to know exactly what interventions are happening with those L300 that may have been identified and the supports that are in place I also think it'd be prudent for us to understand how we're addressing the bus driver shortage in in future updates and I think that it would also benefit us to continue our discussion on the Esser funds at our future workshop and I'm looking forward to us moving on to these important initiatives that are in place and I hope we won't lose sight of them under our current current situation and that's it all right fine thank you Mrs Edmund you
367have a yes I okay yeah so a part of my board report was some of the visits that made on the first day of school and one of them was to Lakewood Elementary who many of you have heard received an a having the opportunity to work under the leadership of Dr Bert Miss Reed and Dr webbley I think it's important to uplift and recognize that the school earned an a I also think that it's important that we look at what happened at Lakewood Elementary and as Dr Carr mentioned see how we can duplicate those efforts throughout the county in all of our transformation Zone schools whether it's additional support additional funding small groups like really getting down to the nitty-gritty and finding out how was Lakewood so successful I also like to just point out
368that during my visits at many schools the students are excited to be there the teachers are happy and everyone is navigating as best as possible during these times many of the comments I was going to make about what we can do better have already been addressed or are in progress of being addressed and that such as quarantining lack of contact tracing or or notification the bus and transportation situation and again we have just started school we're navigating things as best as possible possible and I encourage the people that are emailing calling to keep emailing and calling on the website they have the let's talk app where you can click it and Report or address a concern provide a suggestion or provide a thank you to staff as well as look at how you can address
369issues at your schools I've received an email from a parent just stating how great her principal was with addressing the lunch concern that she had so some things can be handled by just contacting the principal and then other things might need to be escalated to a board or Dr grego or area superintendent issue again I just want to say that it was great to see The Smiling Faces and I strongly encourage everyone wears a mask so that'll I'll my comments with that thank you there you go there you go all right Mr Hine thank you I wanted to First Echo what Dr Carr said about we we act as a board and I respect my colleagues and and thank you for the discussion today and I know I emailed all of you individually I also
370wanted to publicly apologize I was not pleased with that quote that was in the newspaper last week okay well then I brought it to your attention so lesson learned I will stick with eye statements you can say can hurt me so speak I respect each of you and thank you so I just wanted to Echo Echo those comments also it was great visiting schools but yes we had to talk about all of these things but also just our administrators principals teachers students parents incredible I mean just incredible the amount of work it goes into getting our schools open and I really appreciate it and it's just it's a great joy for me to be able to to visit schools and thank you for all of the time that those people gave to me and I
371also to you know the public and even the media who has been so engaged in schools in recent you know weeks and months I would say welcome and thank you know Public Schools educate more than 90% of our population for about 12 years of our lives and they have strong impact and importance Civic social economic National success so I'm a I'm a big believer in strong public schools and thank you for being involved and let's all keep supporting promoting and participating in in our schools some was a little longer than 12 thank you that's all thank you Mrs Kane thank you all so much thank you for all the comments today I am very grateful that our legislative platform has passed and I'm really looking forward to Bringing forth some of these opportunities for our
372students I'm a firm believer Health has four parts to it's physical emotional mental and spiritual and over the last year and a half we've asked our children to sacrifice so much emotional mental and spiritual health in regards to their physical health it's taken a year and a half of their life away when it comes to socialization when it comes to activities how many things have been cancelled or they excited and look forward to them and then they were cancelled it's been a roller coaster for every parent who's had to mitigate that disappointment when birthday parties are cancelled when they can't see their friends when they can't go out and play while I understand the statistics being set forth I'm also a realists we walk around Publix we walk around the grocery store with our children
373we go to the gas station we go places with our children yes masks are helpful to mitigate but are they being used with fidelity because that's the next question and if they are going to be used with Fidelity that would mean we'd have to sacrifice our children's emotional and mental socialization with every other child in order to protect them from an Airborne virus that's really the only way to do it and in hospitals and in medical places they do quarantine people they lock the doors they put on hazmat suits and they cover the door with yellow tape that says do not enter and are we going to do that no and I don't think any parent would commend that a child were to do that and that would be exercising some of those protocols with
374absolute finality and so I understand the statistics I understand many people have many different viewpoints on this I believe our children have four parts to their health and I think we need to pay close attention to the other three that have been sadly ignored for the last year and a half in that they need opportunities they need a good education and what we're putting forth in this legislative platform is a Workforce Development opportunities for their future to help them to build their future to help them become better educated to help them to become better citizens in our society and I'm 100% for that they need to socialize and they need to be out and they need to have that those opportunities and I am very grateful I'm very happy that we've got the start of
375this year over time Co is not going to go away there's not going to be an end to the scare of it's not going to be an end to the fact that it exists in our society it's going to continue to mutate and I do have to agree with there have been people who said we have to learn how to to make Common Sense practices part of our daily life and part of their daily life so that they can keep themsel and their and their friends and their classrooms safe with teachers and with adults as well and so with that being said I want to thank you all for the legislative platform I'm really looking forward to working on some of these and working towards providing the student of pelis County Educational and Workforce Development
376opportunities I'm looking forward to getting back on track to think about their education thank you do you want to talk about the legislative Gathering that's a lot talk about only if it's me do you want to talk about the legislative Gathering sure the legislative Gathering we had a proposed date of September 13th we were not 100% % on the proposed time somewhere from 2: to 4: or I heard 2:30 to 4:30 possibly 3: to 5 those were the I think we said we were going to say 2:30 to 4:30 or 3: to 5: and we wanted to see what would work best on that day for a delegation Gathering we wanted to do an inperson gathering at PC was the Proposal PCH Clear Water yeah MH okay yeah we were going to look at the
377availability of the legislative delegation as well but also we may be asking you all to do some things prior to you know maybe a recording or whatever but we wanted to make sure that everybody knew and I'm taking your thunder I'm sorry go ahead sorry right oh that's that's make sure that everybody knew September 13th was the next one because we're not meeting together between now and then so it's I'm not sure yet whether it's 2:30 to 4:30 or 3: to 5 do you know Mrs D Miss dah I believe the delegation the leadership has said that either the afternoon they are holding we have PTC Clear Water reserved so I think it's what is most convenient for the board at this point for whether 2:30 to 4:30 or 3: to five okay well this
378I hope will be easy do you want 2:30 to 4:30 is everybody okay with that yes 230 4:30 when 2:30 to 4 which is Monday September 13th and I would just like to make sure that the board knows the reason for having it in the month of September is legislative session starts in January this year and committee meetings actually start at the end of September so that's why the quick turnaround for the actual delegation Gathering so but we may call and ask you to do some voice over stuff or get let you know that there's an assignment each one of us is going to be involved in one way or the other in the presentation so we're going to do a lot of emailing back and forth to let everybody know what's what's happening and
379what the expectations are okay all right Al righty any other board members before I do mine okay Mrs edman and I attended the greater Florida Consortium of school boards and we came up with a proposed platform which we've talked about it we will probably have the finalized proposal draft proposal within a week so I'm going to make sure that is sent to you and hopefully that will be able to be on our next Schoolboard agenda to adopt that or not you know adopt the items that are on it or or whatever so we'll talk about you know how that all works but when you get this another proposal no it's not the school districts it's the greater Consortium and so we'll read it and be prepared to vote on each of the items okay I
380think that's everything I wanted to say I can't remember I know it isn't I really really do want to thank you all we've watched some school board meetings across the state and I have to commend you on your decorum your behavior your ability to listen and to allow us to speak as well as to allow people that have differing opinions to speak and I really thank you for that you know we had a couple a couple times that I had to had to remind you but you also also kind of monitored yourselves you know I heard some of you going sh sh you know when things were going on so I do appreciate it pelis county is a great place to live we have wonderful people and you have proven that so thank you very
381much so I'm going to now ask Dr Corbett what are the requests from the school board Madam chair thank you I had for further discussions at the next Workshop or the one after that we would talk about successful strategies used in the transformation Zone specifically at lakwood successful strategies in the L300 schools will address the bus driver shortage and provide an update on Esser I look forward to this discuss I'm gonna assume y'all heard it and it was all okay okay here's here's the Dilemma that we're up against right now we have 103 forms that have been filled out for people to speak I am assuming that most of those people spoke and shared their thoughts as we allowed a little bit of extra room with the masks and there are 19 people in the
382room so we can either go through all of the N 103 names call them all off and see if anybody's here we can also ask you to raise your hand if you are still wanting to speak and you're one of the 19 in the room and I'm going to ask that we take a short recess so that those of you that do want to speak can they come up to you since you have the forms so if you do still want to speak come up to Mrs Hal and let her know and she'll try to do it in the best order as close to how you signed up as possible and when that is finished we'll we'll come back and do not talk about masks all right I'm going to reconvene the board meeting I
383think everyone who wants to speak has had the opportunity to talk with Mrs Hal and move forward as we go into this if you have already given your speech about masks while we were talking about this don't do again please and so because you're only allowed to speak once to that item don't be compelled to use the full 3 minutes we've all been here for many many hours 6 hours already but I'm not going to cut you off if you're behaving yourselves so if you can hang in there for about another hour we're all good all right yeah I am going to adjourn the meeting and then we're now as soon as I do then we will go into public participation okay so the meeting is now adjourned I've hit my hand there you go
384it's been gabbled all right so who's our first speaker and then who will follow them okay board members and Dr grego we have 18 speakers our first two speakers are anarie weather and Kristen ster okay welcome back hi thanks third time's a charm I don't know okay so good afternoon and you can hear me right I don't have to move it I just want to say that what I had written to now are obviously very different you know ladies you three that are the minority right now are you know you're well spoken you have good facts and I just but I have to thank the majority we have been fighting for over 18 months now just for our choice and I get I get what you're saying and I didn't have a chance to speak
385on any of the masks because I just came up here and said you know please don't do the meeting the one thing that keeps ringing over and over and over in my head are people that are coming up here with masks for masks vaccinated and they say this I am vaccinated and I wear a mask and I still got covid to me that's saying what they're doing is not going to stop this and so to put this pressure on our children of you must wear a mask to save the life of another human it's a little little much so I just want to say thank you I will continue to support this board I also want to say like if I could drive a bus I'd help and nobody wants to drive in a bus
386I cannot park my new any van but as far as having people call I know that's medical information but you know if you can elicit help from the community I I do think there was an issue with the quarantining I know there was a meeting Friday and part of that if you haven't realized it is I have a friend they're not like no one called them okay so no one told them you must keep these siblings home for such and such day and then they were afraid to keep their kid home or tell somebody because they heard 20 days out 10 days out so we need a very strict here's your quarantine guideline or just really keep your kids home for four days like period and then come back and we won't question you I
387don't know you guys will have to figure that out but I do know that kids are coming around out of fear they're coming back to school so I just let's see if there's anything else I don't want to take the time thank you bye good thank you and following the speaker the next speaker to follow will be Jeremy kench okay hello again hello I also didn't I followed the rules earlier and just said my piece on the meeting so now I'm going to come to say what I came to say I actually have I know like we've said there's science on both sides there's data on both sides anybody can pull a study that says what they wanted to say I just want to put people's minds at ease because there is like a lot
388of fear like we talked about and Miss hin spoke about you know the drownings and the suicide and all of these other factors I think it's time we realize like in people are saying this that this is going to be more of an endemic we have to learn to coexist with Co I think the constant quarantining missing school like we all spoke about the constant question of our are we going to mask are we not going to mask are we going to do this are we going to do that we have to sort of figure out what works what mitigates things what it keeps sanity also we have to kind of factor in everything it can't only be about covid as we've seen you know the suicide and everything like we spoke about so I
389have a couple of numbers I think are important that most people probably aren't aware of everyone was talking about 335 deaths of kids in the US so just in pellis County we've had 11 according to the numbers I don't know how if that's delayed or whatever but the most recent numbers I could find was 11 total I cannot find deaths of 2021 of covid for children only the whole entire pandemic which is 11 so there's a lot more numbers that are way more than 11 that we should be discussing and being concerned with like kids getting hit on their bicycles or in car accidents or pedestrians you know while they're walking 844 88 44 Kids versus 11 the drowning like she spoke about there's I mean you could go on and on just so far
390in 2021 there's 1,252 kids that have gone missing and The Masks are make that 10 times worse because how can you identify your missing child if everyone is wearing a mask that to me is a gazillion times more scary so if if you as a parent are fearful of covid for your child for whatever reason that may be then maybe your number one priority is covid but for another parent that might not be their number one priority that doesn't make them a bad parent that just means their priorities are different so we need to kind of take everything into consideration come up with a plan that actually works for the long term like I don't think quarantining every kid that's exposed is going to actually make sense in the long term because they're going to
391be missing a lot of school I think kids staying home when they're sick is the biggest thing which should be the case for everything and not just Co but I think we should focus on mitigation efforts that work that we can substantiate longterm thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Brad rosenheim okay actually held off last because I wanted to go last off it's been a hell of a year I mean I'm sorry I want to hate all you guys you know what I mean but I wish I could love you and think you're doing the best for my children that's been the argument the biggest thing for everybody I mean they want to wear their mask let them wear their mask if that works let it work leave it where it
392is people I'm not going to be here Friday I got to leave I got to work for another two months I won't be here I got so many battles with and about these guys it drives me nuts to worry about my children and just when somebody does something wrong they should have to own it and they should be punished everybody had eat the n it sucks when you're wrong you're wrong but eat it shit's killing me and my family and I can't keep doing this you guys destroyed my son's senior year he's I got to bring him to New York to go back to school because this has destroyed him and now they didn't tell me he didn't have credit I'm sorry ma'am yeah you guys don't help kids New York unfortunately is crappy as
393it is with the mask they don't leave a kid behind he can go back there and do another two years to get his education you guys are taken from him because of all of this chaos and the stress you put my family through and we didn't get to talk to the schools we didn't get the information we needed these guys have Tor my and I don't know if I'm supposed to share just say stop I'm Mr K one more time and then we're going to we're going to terate your speaking yes sir I'm sorry I'm just the person that does that is an honest person and it slips my tongue you are aware that we're not doing the special meeting I yes and no you're having something you're having a fight I don't care I'm
394just saying I'm not here I hope that God you guys continue what you're do I'm saying in general I'm still dealing with this a whole court case people I mean my child being assaulted here and everything that this has killed my family it's not about just the mask and everything else the way the treatment the way everything's been handled with this and trapping women out there and taking my child to the floor because she wants to defend her mother who was dragged after being pushed out the door dragged and your video the audio shows it I God forbid we got to wait D this to court I can't do anything because you guys press charges on my wife because she assaulted oh I'm sorry resisted arrest for what what was she being arrested for for
395being loud and stepping up like a lionist and standing up for her son because he wants to point out his finger and be in his face when somebody's wrong they're wrong I really got to take this to court and deal with all this chaos and keep coming back here and begging these people to help me in my kids now I got to take my boy like I said in New York and pray God that it still works well for my daughter and I don't have to pull her out of the school here the vet program and she's loving it moved here for a reason y'all making it real hard thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Bruce poppy welcome hello board members my name is Brad rosenheim and I just wanted to
396sum up today's events with a few words first I wanted to address Mr Dudley the study you cited was called massuse ventilation improvements to reduce covid-19 incidents in elementary schools in Georgia you completely misrepresented it reported a 39% decrease in covid cases where staff and faculty were mandated to use masks 37% reduction where ventilation was increased and a 21% decrease in covid cases where students were asked to wear masks that level of intellectual curiosity should not entitle you to a seat on the board and I was very dismayed to see your misinformation up there now to get the my point we are a community a community cannot have one single ideology that's not Community right now we're split along ideological lines right and everybody here like the man before me we really care about our
397children and I was happy to see the amount of Engagement from from both sides today however we as a community look up and see seven board members who have the power to make a change this is on you two variables have changed one is the Delta variant the other variable is that we're no longer implementing the very successful measures that we did last year so as we a community are split we've invested in you the power to make these changes and you have today decided to do nothing that is on you now own it and I'm very happy to have heard every one of your points of view on this issue thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Barbara Duman there you are thank you good afternoon thank you again I'm Bruce
398poppy from denan I want to step back I mean I'm not an unreasonable person though some may accuse me of that but step back and take a 30,000 foot View and all the division and stuff that's going on what I believe is really is there is a innate distrust of government that is overtaking our society we feel that we have been lied to you know for over so many things just go back to the early part of the year when the vaccine came out it was 90 to 95% of effective against the infection and they told us we you know get the vaccine you can go back to a normal life well that's turned turned out to be bunk it's now like 39ish 40% effective and we're going to end up being having Perpetual boosters
399so that was a lie they the CDC all the people that we're relying upon for this health information they change positions more than I change underwear so I mean there's constantly changing moving goalposts there is an innate distr there is like the Mr Dudley said there is science for every study you give me that says Mass work I can give you one or two that says they don't you know either the vaccines work or The Masks work everything is convoluted and there is no Oracle or not there is no consensus there is so much Divergence on everything that is causing all the emotion all the fear and I applaud you for the work you do and you have a thankless job during this time of that we're living in but I mean there has to
400be some type of information that is trustable the government we cannot trust you know unless you completely just shut off the internet completely Al together and we're only fed just one line which seems that's what's wanting to happen on the mainstream media type stuff there is no Divergence the people who have a Divergent opinion are memory hold censored cancelled whatever you want to call it and that is why you're seeing so much angst over the situation that we're currently living in this stuff isn't going to go away the vaccine for decades we've been trying to get rid of respiratory viruses the flu and the common cold with vaccines and it doesn't work you know how are we going to expect this to be different and we still don't know we can't even that's the other
401issue is we can't even call this a vaccine it's a new technologist MRA stuff is not a normal vaccine it's not the measel mumps rebella that I had to get when I was going to school when we people had chickenpox my mom found out you know a kid down the road had chickenpox go down and play with Johnny so you can get Chickenpox and get over it this we're in different world now and so we need to understand each other and have some reasonable respect for what is happening and I would also like to call for a resignation I think the word respect was the one that we all need to have resonating the speaker to follow will be Tara homman Barbara dumo hi the main thing to remember about this whole issue it's about
402the immune system and if you build your immune system you won't get covid you won't get disease period and God provided nature to do that for us I wanted to just say vaccinations this is what a vaccination this vac is a spike protein is the disease not the virus gain of function to literally replicate load replicate a virus to produce uncontrolled inflammation and a mixture of animal and human DNA it causes hyper a autoimmune response your hyper Auto autoimmune system response so that's what that's about and that's why it doesn't work the Cure early Ivermectin hydroch chloroquin Hydro hydroxy chloroquin vit c d zinc a humid helps this is being censored so that's a clue when something is censored pay attention but and also these vaccines are causing the spike protein that they're spiking to
403shed through through the skin and cause actually cause covid so it's it's really terrible and the reason why we're so excited is because it's americanism versus globalism or communism so it's really I'm so happy with all of you that stood for for freedom and against all these mandates that are being developed by a by a whole false narrative so and I appreciate all the talk about the four components of your health so important don't have a selective hearing we need to pay attention thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Nicole Dennison welcome hi so I did not share my position on masking as out of respect for you guys thank you for what you do for the school system system unfortunately we all have a choice and so when I was up
404North with my son and I heard that this was coming to light that there was a controversy over whether or not penela counties was going to start trying to mandate The Mask I made a very difficult choice because my son was in panel's County Schools last year he was registered in Tyrone Middle School magnet magnet program for this school year and The Masks were so complicated he was in all year he did the whole year they became a problem because it became a health problem for him the first two weeks he got sick and I running 105 temperature didn't know what to do with him and so try to get him into to see a medical health professional he had to test negative for covid before I could take him in so I had to
405wait three days for that test we're already 5 days now by the time I get the results and because I am able to research search online and figure out how to keep my son's temperature down make sure he stays hydrated and make sure he doesn't die because that was my fear he recovered tested negative for covid they didn't know what it happened it occurred again later in the school year the exact same thing and this time I was able to get him in to see a medical professional because they could do the rapid testing at this point tested negative for covid tested negative for flu tested negative for a low blood count they had no idea why he had 105° temperature for 5 days no idea not a clue and the only conclusion I could
406come to is that my H son is wearing a mask on his face and he's breathing bacteria that is making him sick and so when I heard that the school boards were talking about mandating the masks I decided to let my son stay in Pennsylvania where they are not mandating the mask they are not enforcing him to get sick wearing a mask so I had to make a choice to pull my son out of a school out of a program that he really wanted because I'm getting when that you guys are trying to mandate a mask and I feel sad for him because he middle school is hard enough on kids to make them go through something as severe as that as having to wear a mask not being able interact with their friends not
407being able to know what they want out of life and not being able to be a kid is hard it's hard enough so I am totally opposed to it and I will stand here as a mom and a future grandma because my oldest son is planning on having kids and I'm going to stand here and continue to fight for my kids thank you thank you the following speaker will be Angela dubac welcome okay is this good all right I may speak on mask a little bit because I did not come up earlier because I thought that's not when I was supposed to come up you thank you good afternoon my name is Nicole Denniston and my family and I just moved to Palm Harbor on Sunday the Pod was being delivered in my driveway when
408I left to come to this meeting today because I knew it was that important to do so where did we move from Illinois where my children's School District did not even given an option for in-person learning from March 2020 through the end of January 2021 and when they finally opened it was for only two days a week in Mass we saw that Florida schools kept the doors open for in-person learning which we thought was amazing and how it should be then we heard that Florida schools will have a normal school year no masks no canceled sports or activities again something we longed to have for our kids last year I was extremely happy to see this board vote when you guys a couple weeks ago for Parents Choice on masks also as it should be
409I pray you continue with that decision as I'm starting to see I pulled my daughter from our school district in Illinois in November after seeing how horrible remote learning was for her these kids weren't learning anything at all my son stayed in the district with hopes of some normaly at some time because it was his senior year it was really really hard to see so much taken away from these kids we knew it was time to move here I ask you continue to put the choice in parents' hands then all have the choice to do what they think is best for their child other parents and the school board should not have a say in having a mask on my daughter's face for 6 to8 hours a day I will continue to homeschool my daughter
410until I am sure that the penales County Schools have education as their number one focus and priority and not politics and making medical decisions for my child I don't want my freedoms taken away here also because if it doesn't stop at parents choice in regards to Mas masks what's next thank you for your time and I hope to have my daughter Walking The Halls of your scho schools very soon thank you and welcome to pelis the speaker to follow will be Elizabeth Fox I'm not very tall welcome hello thank you to the four of you who are going to follow the law and support parental rights do appreciate that we all know this virus is here to stay and it's going to mutate again and again and again and again but what's not here toesday
411is Caprice Laura and Nicole okay because you guys are going to continue to try and force these masks we know this is at the end of it and parents listen those of you listening on radio at home at work or whatever pay close attention because they'll try it again and when we'll when is it going to end okay so say they end up forcing this mandate and then what's it going to be next the vaccine and then is it going to be critical race Theory or what they call Equity and our freedoms are gone just like that so please please pay attention parents and don't let them win this battle thank you the speaker to follow will be Douglas Fox hello again welcome back I really just want at this point to thank those board
412members who support parental choice it's very important that parents have the options of the choice to make the right medical decisions for their children I also appreciate the other board you know the three board members that have their concerns I understand you feel a deep responsibility but your responsibility is to teach these children educate these children make sure that the schools are set up for them to be educated not to make medical decisions for them so I would and please stop talking about positivity rates I every time I hear that it just makes me want to cringe because it really is only a function of how many people that are tested and how many people test positive if only the people that are sick are tested your positivity rates are going to be high that
413really is no indicator of how much disease you have or how much illness you have in your community so please find another statistic other than positivity rate because it's really just a statistic and it's meaningless out of context but once again I just really want to thank those of you that stood up for the parents today because we needed that thank you good thank you the speaker to follow will be Susan bie welcome back good afternoon I just like to thank the board for how things turned out and I don't I come here came here last year to try and get rid of them The Mask here this year to try and keep it option optional and so I don't come here to pick on anybody individual Caprice I'm not sure what kept you from
414flying over the I don't know what you'd call that there but I just I'm not into that kind of thing and Mr DL same thing and I was just I was just glad to hear a lot of things that were said not everything but that's the way it is so thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Katrina Davis hi it's Susan bchi so now I get to thank you for you know for just maintaining the opt out option for the parents and to to you Miss Edmonds and Dr Carr and Miss Hines I know you want what's best for the children I know you do you have to really start looking at other sources of information so you can put your minds at ease you know I mean you're going by conventional
415medicine and you're going by those you know the CDC you know and there are just other sources of information I've been here before and I've talked about the Highwire you know and that has nothing to do with pharmaceutical advertising dollars you know he interviews immunologists epidemiologists you know from all around the world and they are very credential and have a lot you know of information to to give you know and when you're when you're making these choices about the mask you're going on what's probably a false premise so you're thinking it's safe and you're going by that but if you I sent you all a letter yesterday and it was a magazine article New York New York Magazine by a David swag I think his name and he's a science a science journ journalist and
416he's been looking at this for a year and a half and he's been writing for different magazines he's award-winning journalist and he could not get any information from the CDC or the or the AAP he couldn't get anything substantial no studies to support that these masks were safe so maybe maybe to put your minds at ease you can try to get these studies for yourself that say once and for all that the masks are safe my girlfriend and I've said this before too she's a scientist she is she's a professor and she's had her whole entire class trying to find information on these masks and she couldn't find they couldn't the whole entire class couldn't find anything one way or the other so you know I'm just saying this so that it could maybe you
417could research it a little bit more and you could feel more comfortable with the decision that was made here today all right and I thank you all again for enduring all of this I know it's not been easy thank thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Melissa King hello hello I just want to say thank you for giving it the parents' Choice there are kids our decision it's we know their medical history we know everything about them I appreciate you giving us that choice back I also wanted to say thank you for bringing up that the different studies that you found a lot of people don't want to listen to the other side of the story and you should I've got a ton of doctors that would disagree with your doctors that
418doesn't mean my doctors are wrong that doesn't mean your doctors are wrong you're never going I mean there's different doctors believe different things you know if you get diagnosed with something go get a second opinion that's what a lot of people do doesn't mean one's wrong and one's right may maybe they're both right but they see it differently I also don't understand this case study stuff you guys constantly talk about the cases they've already determined the PCR is invalid they've recalled it so how do we know those numbers are accurate if they've been recalled for being inaccurate why are we going off case numbers doesn't make sense thank you thank you the speaker to follow will be Renee chia hi again thank you so much I appreciate that you listen to everyone and we also
419listen to to the opposite side than what we may agree with and I appreciate everyone giving resources of other sources of information I also read a variety of sources and I'm sharing today from my own personal family's experiences which did include the death of a dearly loved member of our family which also included includes the hospitalization of my sister while she was pregnant she's a teacher in Georgia she up very ill from wearing a mask and I'm just sharing now what I'm very grateful to know after my dearest loved and significant other was also had covid and I cared for him and I never got it because I was taking Ivermectin prophylactically I continue to take icon prophylactically and I'm some who hasn't had a pharmaceutical drug in my body since I birthed my last
420child 22 20 years ago I don't believe in it but because I am a person who cares about others and I can use my mind and apply it scientifically thanks to a good education which I know your heart is to give to all the kids in this County and I appreciate that I hope that others can find out about Therapeutics I appreciate that the governor recognizes that all doctors are not telling their their patients are giving them the opportunity to get pharmaceutical drugs that will help them prevent and also help them when they get it and I know that happened in this County because I could not get the medicine that was needed in this County by the doctor that was my boyfriend's doctor wouldn't get it said there was none in the pharmacy I
421go the next day because my doctor prescribed it to me to help me prevent from getting it and of course they had it and it was very inexpensive hospitals also are a business we have a dear friend who is also an emergency room doctor at me Countryside and she said when we ask her is this true what we hear on the news about hospitals being full she says that what happened at the beginning at shutdown many hospitals let go of many nurses in this County and in order to make up money they didn't hire the nurses back so therefore when they're telling you it's full it's full what she said is it's full for the amount of staff that they've actually hired and they're not even bringing back more because they need to make money
422too so thank you for listening to all sides thank you for continuing to do the research because it isn't going to end but I do hope if you decide to send them information home to parents you will also tell them about Therapeutics and supplements like zinc c d that can help them to be strong thank you very much thank you the speaker to follow will be Nancy valard hello hello again thank you for your vote today I really appreciate the board's discussion and I appreciate the fact that the majority of you decided to follow the law and respect parents rights thank you is it Lisa Kaine for being a wonderful example of prudence today and thank you Mr Dudley for the information that you brought forward and for pointing out the fact that all these
423statistics and numbers that everyone talks about everyone can have their own sides make up their own story and it's really not helpful and so then I think we need to lean on Prudence and Common Sense which you were both great examples of today so thank you that is not why I initially came here this whole thing being here all day wasn't my plan I actually came to speak to you about the issue of CRT in the schools and last time I was before the board I was calling it Marxist rabels so that we do not get caught up on the verbage of necessarily CRT it's a broader scope of an issue in my opinion a syllabus was sent home with my son from his school this year just a week ago and the main text
424used for the classroom curriculum is based entirely on the 1619 project theories the section showing the units to be covered provides a brief description of the major Focus areas of the class and one of the titles is America becomes a global power with a system of white supremacy when I brought this issue up with the principle of the school he called me to discuss my concerns when I pointed out the unit title he said the syllabus he had for the class that was turned in by the teacher had a different unit title than the one that was sent home to the parents the teacher is simply changing the language he submits to the principal to obfuscate the issue so he can continue to teach Mr as I'm sure you're aware this curriculum content is specifically
425banned content in the sunshine state standards and I can provide you those code sections if you need them I strongly recommend the board consider a task force to physically assess the content of the educational materials being used throughout the county I would gladly volunteer to be a parent member of that task force I strongly encourage parents to physically review the materials being used and taught to your children right now and throughout the year and Report inappropriate content when you see it to your principal additionally I would like to rem recommend cameras in the classrooms at the last board meeting there were many parents addressing Mr and many others expressing concern over the discipline standards being voted on as I listened to the concerns it dawned on me that cameras in the classroom could help to
426alleviate many concerns for the teachers who got up and swore they weren't teaching CRT this would benefit you as well the parents you said are misunderstanding what you're teaching then we could just watch and see what's actually being taught to our children and thank you the speaker to follow will be Kevin Smith Dr greo if you if you the last speaker if you could please talk with Dr Gonzalez who's coming up to your to your right there now left welcome Hey there all right despite our greatest hopes for normaly for this school year we do find ourselves facing a public health emergency I mean that is just true the decision for optional masks I was all for it at the end of last year and in the beginning of this year I thought it was
427a great way to go and then the numbers started to climb and I thought well maybe we do need the opt out maybe we need to try to get the number of masks a little higher in the buildings but not take away anybody's rights and an opt out would do would provide that would let people make choices while we try to get the numbers up in the building that didn't exactly occur the opt out for some reason people think that is a violation of what the governor has asked for it is not he allows the opt out so I was very confused as to where everybody is getting their information a little confused and the positivity rates in context last year when we when we began school it was 6% and everybody was worried it's
42825% now in the community the numbers as of yesterday in our system the case numbers in our system positive cases is over 1100 where at that time last year year it was 62 I mean that's an enormous difference those are numbers you don't they may not mean anything in their in in itself but when you compare them from year to year they absolutely have meaning what's concerning to me now is that teachers are still being asked to congregate in large groups for trainings meetings and photographs with no thought to physical distancing and of course no mandated masks many are uncomfortable with this you're making people get into a group when it's not necessary we totally agree that teaching and learning face to face is the best way to do it but there is no reason
429that you have to have a faculty meeting or a training face Toof face when we have all of this technology available to us why wouldn't you mitigate for the Educators in that way we shouldn't be requiring pushings and making people go in and out of element in the Elementary classes shouldn't be mixing classes if we could avoid that these things are unnecessary risks and I'm disappointed that you didn't want to have a meeting just to discuss those things even if you didn't want to talk about the masks there are a lot of dangerous things going on in the buildings for both your CH the children there and your Educators that have absolutely nothing to do with masks I think you should be getting together and talking about those things thank thank you the speaker to
430follow will be Mark kutho good afternoon afternoon I didn't want to sign and talk earlier during the opposing or non- opposing of the meeting earlier most of my comments are about the mass I'll briefly state that I'm opposed to anything CRT Mr Marxist Rabel that's very good critical race applied theories crap you know figure it out I'm opposed to it especially teaching any kids about who should be an oppressor or who has oppressed their kids leave them alone you know my other information is against Mass so thank you guys that proposed to not go down this whole route again for people that were concerned about maybe teachers meetings and being forced to be in large large Gatherings and groups of people might have wanted to phone this one in or send an email instead instead
431of coming physically let's see again almost 80% of the people that have died with covid were morbidly obese almost 80% were vitamin D deficient so go outside get some sunlight go run around a little bit if you're concerned go to if you want a fun grouping of all of them life sight news lit T news.com and search for 47 47 studies confirm ineffectiveness of masks for covid and 32 more confirm their negative health effects the very first one is the uscdc performed a study that showed 85% of of those who contracted covid-19 during July 2020 were mask wearers just 3.9% of the study participants never wore a mask one of you brought up the current do Florida health numbers published August 20th 2021 go to Google just type in penel county covid numbers scroll down
432past the charts it's the first link it's a nine-page PDF I literally did this sitting in the back of the room and went through it AG is 0 to 29 so anything under 30 in the past since all this started 2 18 deaths out of 42,253 that's a half a percent for anyone under 30 now here's the fun part we've had over three million cases in Florida dangerous evil cases 0 to 30 makes up over one million of those cases yet I just told you only 218 of those people died so if you guys are very you again using wrong kpis to further a narrative you keep looking at positive cases you got to look at actual deaths now only less than 400,000 positive cases of senior citizens 65 plus 33,000 of them dead but
433over a million positive cases and 218 for the kids or even under 30 let's see thank you the speaker to follow will be Josh Dale Mark cluto Largo good afternoon that's a shame four of you were spineless and wouldn't vote for that mandate yeah and I hear from a school board member up there talking about common sense that's a joke Common Sense yeah you know what are you going to do you going to listen to Governor you know who and the Republicans wrong thing to do headline adults are failing us on climate climate scientists warn us when will we listen Earth's carbon dioxide levels at highest level in four million years oh yeah and if the mask aren't working how do we just go through a flu season and hardly anybody had a flu just
434some anecdotal evidence that the mask work get ready for the climate disasters only big steps will save Earth a hotter future is now inevitable a un report says scientists find Rapid shift from fossil fuels could avert greater perils Stark warnings for the warming Planet un report spells out dire consequences of climate change not a pretty pretty scenario and I think I had this here before about the plan in New York City developers are devising ways to retrofit New York's oldest structures to reduce Ed their carbon Footprints the Casa passiva where they're retrofitting these buildings and they're cutting the utility bills by 80% Now new buildings it would be an easier proposition and you could cut the utility bill even more but you aren't doing it you're ignoring science a crime thank you the last two
435speakers to follow will be Isaiah Neil and an Neil hey good afternoon I'll try to be fast as I can I recently enrolled my daughter in the vbk program to help her with her autism therapy my wife is currently at home undergoing chemotherapy treatment to treat her breast cancer I was hoping that the staff around my daughter would at least be wearing masks because the doctors at Moffet are continuously reminding us that Co is a serious death sentence for my wife I've had multiple conversations with the principal and I am I totally understand she wants to help but she is restrained in her options due to your guidance evidently we're describing to the rationale that parents have a choice this of course gives no support to the argument regarding staff wearing masks in any way
436I haven't really heard that get touched on too much today my question for the board is like what exactly are my choices my daughter can't wear a mass she's I suspect that has something to do with the fact that she's three years old and probably also combined with the fact that she has autism she won't keep it on her face and if anybody that's worked in this ESC field is familiar it's a sensitivity issue and she just won't keep it on we try I promise we use Mass to keep us safe similarly we enlist the law enforcement our schools to keep our children safe we develop procedures in the event of emergency we employ School nurses to Aid our children if an accident should arise we don't tolerate certain Behavior such as running and hallways
437we have a high level of security around there we have fences all exterior doors are locked you have the right to smoke cigarettes but not in school this is all with the intent of keeping our children safe not requiring their use of a mask is logically in consistent with everything else we do to keep our children safe I am certain there are similar cases within your jurisdiction that are similar to my families I see people coming in and out of infusion centers all day long every day of the week I'm not asking for any sort of preferential treatment over anybody else but if your position is that I have a choice why can't my choice be to have my daughter work with a therapist that at least has a mask on I would like my
438Cho because what you're what you're subscribing to it limits my ability to make any sort of reasonable choice at all do I send my kid to therapy and run this very dangerous risk or do I just not send her to school at all if your policies don't account for your most at risk students then what's the point of all this are we really are we really that willing and that motivated to leave these vulnerable students behind just because the law allows it according to ml any law that uplifts human personality is just any law that degrades human personality is unjust I'm asking you to ele to evaluate the law made by a majority that has the potential to fatally impact the minority ml also further in his letter from Birmingham Jail also highlighted the importance
439of Socrates disobeying law and probably by doing so we don't have the AC academic freedom we have today I'll be in this district for next 14 years I have nothing better to do than to promulgate safety for my daughter I ask that you just exercise wisdom and caution thank you madam chair I'd ask that maybe ner superintendent can meet this gentleman and get some details of that we have students with peanut allergies and many other things that we could certainly when people know the situation they certainly would adhere to it so I'd ask if he yes he's still in the building yes he is so thank you oh there he is I couldn't see him I thought he walked out okay good thank you welcome can we res go ahead yep yeah go ahead thank
440you Mr Dudley appreciate it Mrs Kane thank you Vice chair long chairwoman cook thank you for your support of honoring medical Choice parental Choice I appreciate that for those few board members and parents who are still clamoring for medical devices to be for strapped to the mouth of every child and who would want nothing more than to reverse mask optional environment we have those discussions or decisions don't fall in your jurisdiction last I checked your name wasn't on my kids birth certificate mine is I don't get to make decisions for you on how to care for your pet what to do if you get a headache or even who to date or marry that's your choice stay in your lane you can have all the opinions feelings fears press conferences you want but at the
441end of the day my child's physical mental and spiritual health decisions are for me to decide in me alone it's my god-given right to decide what goes on their body in their body to think that you can scheme a way to require anything otherwise as exposes the true intent and agenda of your heart stop projecting your fear and perceive Solutions on others we have enough in life to worry about without carrying your burdens I alone will stand before God and give an account to how I fathered my children and the health decisions I make or didn't make your accounting will be for how you did or didn't protect my right to do that with the authority you've been given stay in your lane and keep your masks off my kids my last last messages for
442those on the board parents who might be listening anyone within the sound of my voice who loves our country and our kids we are living in unprecedented times when history is being written day by day and the protections and freedoms are being erased day by day we're at a critical juncture where inactivity and silence is inexcusable to be silent and on the sidelines is complicit we need a mass return to activism starting with prayer Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever and he's still in the healing life-changing and hope filling business turn off the news the video games Netflix and other mind ning mind numbing medications and start sharpening your spirit and soul turn on the highwire.com the facts are there if you search but it's go time if the last year and
443a half hasn't stirred your soul then this is your wakeup call we were born for such a time as this man up Dad up Mom up pray up our kids need us because this isn't even about a mask or no mask shot or no shot even though that's coming it's about standing up to an ideology that says my god-given sovereignty is not enough that my children's Sovereign bodies are no longer theirs that somehow I need the government County Commissioner Schoolboard to step into that role because they know better we will not comply if we're not allowed to make an autonomous decision for ourself and our family then we're not free to those who've been in the arena for a while keep at it and don't give up thank you if you're new and looking to
444get involved welcome join a group start a group we the people must link arms and stand together find your people your tribe their out there don't give up and don't ever comply we will not comply again thank you Mr Dudley Mrs Kaine Vice chair long chairwoman cook thank you whichever one works for her that one okay hi my name is Anna and so at my school today I saw two kids wearing in The Mask because their parents tell them that they have to wear the masks and I feel bad for them because the parents don't know how bad these masks are thank you thank you alrighty is that it we have no more speakers and that is the end of this public participation thank you all for hanging in there that's staff included we appreciate
445it