001welcome to the september 14 2021 regular school board meeting which i now call to order this evening we will begin with a moment of silence which will be followed by the pledge of allegiance led by vice chairperson mrs long and the national anthem will be performed by pinellas park high school student trista hassell under the direction of helen twynen director of choral studies after the national anthem trista will also perform say yamama by giovanni pargo lacey i hope i got it right so we're looking forward to hearing that as well will you please stand for a moment of silence i pledge allegiance i pledge allegiance of the united states of america and to the republic oh say god you see by the dawn's early what's so proudly wield at the twilight's last gleaming who's brought
002stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight or the reports we watched were so gallantly streaming our flag was still there oh say does that star spangled and the home of the braves oh foreign me is m foreign very nice thank you if i am correct you might be the first student this school year that has actually performed in person so we appreciate you being here thank you and thank you for sharing your talent thank you for your hard work miss did i print that you pronounce it properly when i said twine twine all righty well thank you for the work that you do with the students as well and your principal is here and he's smiling underneath the mask i can see that mr brett patterson principal of pinellas park high school thank you
003also for being here all right we are going to have a video all right kathy biddle has worked over four decades at clearwater high school as a teacher coach and athletic director she has spent her life serving students and supporting colleagues and as bob putnam from the tampa bay times wrote she is clearwater high that's why we're so pleased to share that clearwater high is now home to the katherine h middle field at jacks white stadium it is the first the first football field in the country to be named after a female and no one is more deserving so let's enjoy the celebration this is going to be the ceremony as we dedicate the field will forever be known here ends forward as catherine h bittelfield at jack white stadium it's very emotional for me
004i just want to cry you don't realize how much of someone's life you've touched and i don't right and when they come up and tell me things i just kind of i am taken back because i just see it as i do my job i don't see it as i do anything special kathy biddle is a graduate of the school after going to college she came right back and started teaching here she's coached here two sports a cheerleading student government senior class graduation coach athletic director she really is an important part of the community you know when you think about the community as a whole she's she's miss claw at her high i mean that's the best way to say it i think she embodies everything that is clearwater high you know you talk about
005the tradition the honor and the pride she has she's cemented in that foundation of what it means to be a clear high tornado right she gets us all twisted in the right way by just her work ethic her demonstration how she models things in and outside of either the office place or her interactions with students or interactions with former coaches current coaches and everything else i think you see the passion the love for clearwater the community and making sure that's always on the forefront of her mind and doing it the right way because it's the right way and not another there's no other way well actually being born here at morton plan and going to the school system here it means a great deal and i'm so blessed and so many people are just so
006kind and see people and see the alumni coming back and it's just a lot of fun i just want to say thank you i have i actually have two years left i'm hoping to make it for those two years but i want to thank the community and i want to thank the school here for the support it's incredible and way overwhelming for me it was a terrific celebration but she is definitely very very worthy of that recognition so congratulations we'll now move to the introductions of professional excuse me okay and this has to be turned on all right mr dudley thank you i know kathy biddle very well she is everything they said in that video is true she's a wonderful wonderful person i got to know her when i was coaching cross country and
007she was a clearwater coach at in cross country and just a terrific person i had the privilege of competing against her our teams and she is smiling all the time just i just don't think i've ever seen a frown and she's just a great person and she's going through some tough times right now but she's a great person and if you ever get a chance to see you should go up and just say you know thank you for all you've done because she is she is an institution at clearwater high school and she is just a terrific person thank you all right we'll move to introduction of professional and community organization representatives this is miss isabella mascarenia public information officer good evening madam chair members of the board dr greco and staff it is my
008pleasure to introduce the following representatives of community and professional organizations from the pinellas classroom teachers association nancy villardi president representing the seiu and the florida public services union talmudge and andrews chief steward and member of the executive board from the pinellas arts for a complete education coalition joining us virtually is victoria hagedorn co-chair members of the media in attendance today are at 10 tampa bay and de lemundo today we have a presentation from the student rights and responsibility committee please welcome amarya mcdonald and caleb sandage from pinellas park high school and their principal brett patterson thank you thank you welcome thank you madam chair dr grego board members and staff good evening to you all my name is caleb sandage and i am the executive board president at pinellas park high school it is truly
009my pleasure to be here and to proudly present this information about pinellas park high school today i will be mostly speaking about our school's extracurricular activities as well as some achievements made by students at pinellas park high school one of our students last year won the very coveted florida tax watch award for her work in overcoming barriers and excelling academically i had a chance to get to know her briefly last year and i can say with confidence that she is an incredible person and a true representative of patriot spirit our principal mr brett patterson had nominated her for this award and received an award himself from the florida tax watch which is very well deserved for all of the support that he has provided to our school and its students over the summer we also
010had a student who was accepted as a bank of america student leader this is a national program with four students being selected from the tampa bay area for their leadership and their civic engagement our student had the chance to represent pinellas park high school in several manners ranging from interning with local non-profits to personally questioning members of congress on pertinent issues to our generation we also had a group of students who won second in the state of florida and fbla for an e-commerce competition making it to national competitions this is actually the second time somebody has won that award at panelist park high school the group before mentioning developed a website for an online school store which is currently being repurposed by our student government to be implemented at our school good evening my name
011is amarya mcdonald i'm a senator on the senior board it is such a wonderful honor to be here and converse about pinellas park high school pinellas park high school has substantial magnet programs accelerating sports while also having a welcoming encouraging environment filled with various clubs and a first-class staff team pinellas park high school has a very sophisticated intriguing view on education this educational institution secures students with not only stimulating but fascinating professions such as the criminal justice academy jrotc coast guard and the first responders the coast guard program is one out of three in the nation it recognizes leadership while empowering the importance of being an accountable citizen the program also provides direction for young adults allowing them to excel in real-world situations while using elevating techniques the other magnet programs are criminal justice academy
012and the first responders these programs also anticipate learning about further emergency skills and knowledge about the legal system the programs structure and assemble students into future conquers of the world the pair also provides an automatic acceleration allowing students to try strive excuse me and pursue soul eccentric careers after graduating high school furthermore pinellas park high school also has an outstanding football team the patriots have been undefeated so far in the season all the players form unity and portray patriot pride in both the classroom and field the athletes managed to stay humble while being very passionate about our school and the sport each player conveys remarkable potential allowing the team to achieve their athletic goals while illustrating the patriot spirit in conclusion pinellas park high school has a very heart feeling connection with the students the
013staff at the school have done a wonderful job caring for the students they truly help lead the way and provide comfort and composition for a fabulous learning domain their encouragement ambition and determination help to motivate and guide the students the staff goes above and beyond when helping each other and the students i'm very appreciative and pleased to have this staff they have had such an incredible influence on me throughout my high school career every time i needed something there was no hesitation all the staff provided wondrous approaches they're all very sincere within a school society is very crucial to make sure the students come first and feel acceptance that is exactly what pinellas park high school does the respect shown in the school is very honorable and cherished i'm very grateful for this opportunity and
014to express the lovely aspects of our school environment and pro provides excuse me again words cannot express my gratitude thank you so much good and thank you job well done made you very proud didn't they mr patterson all righty good thank you yeah good all right dr grego are there any changes to the agenda or any amendments there are no amendments the agenda manager all righty board members any items to be pulled all right then i will entertain a motion to accept the agenda to adopt it okay all right mr dudley made the motion and mrs long seconded all in favor say aye i oppose say no and it passes unanimously in our special order agenda we have a presentation of the proclamation designating the month of september 2021 as american founders month constitution day
015is september 17th and the week from september 17th to the 23rd of 2021 and to celebrate freedom week during the last full week of this of september do we have a motion to accept the proclamation or to adopt the prosecution all right mrs hi miss hein do we have a second second okay miss long dr grego miss ma'am chair and school board members is always a great privilege to bring these pro this proclamation but these issues forward especially when centered around our constitution and also an opportunity to brag about our social studies department for both this one and the next presentation and i'd like to recognize matt bloom our 9 through 12 social studies specialist in the job he does and he's going to highlight some of the activities that we're doing throughout our school
016district to honor these issues thank you good afternoon madam chair school board members dr grego and staff pinellas county schools proudly supports american founders month during the month of september celebrate freedom week in florida during the last full week of september and constitution day on september 17th which kicks off constitution week each year for a little history the celebration of the constitution was started by the daughters of the american revolution and in 1955 the dir petitioned congress to set aside september 17th to the 23rd annually to be dedicated for the observance of constitution week that resolution was later adopted by the u.s congress and signed into public law on august 2nd 1956 by president dwight d eisenhower florida was one of the first states in the country to officially recognize celebrate freedom week in 2002
017and since then many other states have passed legislation officially recognizing celebrate freedom week as a week-long recognition of american values contained in our founding documents while our social studies teachers guide students through in-depth lessons throughout the year on the founding of our country this month week and day serve as a special time where we can continue to educate our students and community about the sacrifices made for freedom and the founding of this country and the values on which this country was founded american founders month celebrate freedom week and constitution day resources are able to be used by schools and teachers in a wide variety of ways to engage students some examples include morning announcements about the constitution or trivia questions on the founding fathers and founding documents the social studies classes around the county take
018a deeper look at founding documents like the constitution and the declaration of independence to understand how they continue to shape and influence our country today we are fortunate to have wonderful support from our community and we've had support in pd and resources from our local florida sons of the american revolution organization to help us engage students in understanding our founding fathers we've had support from dr robert zafranski who's a retired pinellas county schools principal and member of the saint petersburg rotary to be able to provide copies of the constitution with lesson plans to students at many of our st petersburg schools and the daughters of the american revolution have been able to provide a wealth of additional lesson plans and resources to be used at all levels by our teachers and our k-12 social studies
019department continues to expand our constitutional conversation video series which focuses or features pinellas county and bay area government leaders to help students learn about different elements of the u.s constitution and why it is so important to our lives every day thank you for your support in these annual events all right mrs long would you please read the proclamation american founders month constitution day and week and celebrate freedom week 2021 whereas during american founders month constitution day and week and celebrate freedom week we focus on better understanding the nation's founding fathers and the sacrifices made freedom that hold a special place in the history of the united states of america and the state of florida and whereas during the month of september all civic fraternal and religious organizations as well as public and private educational institutions
020are urged to recognize and observe american founders month constitution day and week and celebrate freedom week through appropriate programs services celebrations in which state county and local governmental officials are invited to participate and whereas during american founders month schools at all grade levels are encouraged to dive deeply into the history of our nation's founding fathers and the intent the meaning the purpose and the importance of america's founding documents now therefore the school board of pinellas county does hereby proclaim september 2021 as american founders month constitution day september 17th and week september 17th through the 23rd as the last week of september as celebrate freedom week sign this 14th day of september all right board members is there any discussion all right we have a motion in a second to adopt the proclamation for american founders
021month constitution day and week and freedom and celebrate freedom week 2021. all in favor say aye i oppose say no and it passes unanimously thank you very much our next presentation of proclamation designating september 15th through october 15 2021 as hispanic heritage month do we have a motion to adopt mrs long and dr carr is a second and dr grego yes ma'am chair it's always a privilege also to bring hispanic heritage month and also use it as an opportunity to celebrate the achievement of our hispanic students they've done phenomenal work over the last 10 years in this district the way that we've really focused on the work of over 92 percent graduation rate double-digit increases in advanced placement classes gifted studies and so forth and just a sheer participation in our school district so i
022couldn't be more proud and as we celebrate the heritage of hispanic students and families michelle anderson who's our k-8 and what a team between michelle and matt so i want to thank both of you will describe some of the activities in our school district to celebrate over the next month thank you dr grego madam chair school board members dr grego and staff good afternoon each year americans observe national hispanic heritage month from september 15th to october 15th by celebrating the histories cultures and contributions of american citizens whose ancestors came from spain mexico the caribbean and central and south america the observation started in 1968 has hispanic heritage week under president lyndon johnson and was expanded by president ronald reagan in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting on september 15th and ending on october 15th
023it was enacted into law on august 17 1988 on the approval of public law 100-402 president george h.w bush issued the first proclamation for national hispanic hispanic heritage month on september 14 1989. the day of september 15th is significant because it is the anniversary of independence for the latin american countries of costa rica el salvador guatemala honduras and nicaragua in addition mexico and chile celebrate their independence days on september 16th and september 18th respectively also columbus day or dia de la raza which is october 12th falls within this 30-day period pinellas county schools supports and promotes hispanic heritage month our teachers have received curriculum support through a variety of mediums including the library of congress pbs and the national education association we look forward to seeing our school's cultures grow in support of all ethnic
024groups as they highlight the contributions and achievements of our hispanic and latino country men and women thank you for your support of this annual event thank you mrs edmund would you please read the proclamation national hispanic heritage month september 15 through october 15th whereas our nation has drawn strength from the diversity of our people with faith and passion a sturdy work ethic and prevent and devotion to family hispanics have helped carry forward our legacy as a vibrant beacon of opportunity for all whether their ancestors have been here for generations or they are among the newest members of our american family they represent many countries and cultures even adding their own distinct and dynamic perspective to our country's story in celebration of national hispanic heritage month we honor the contributions hispanics have made throughout our history
025and we highlight an important part of the rich diversity that keeps our community strong and whereas this month let us reflect on the countless ways in which hispanics have contributed to our nation's success and let us reaffirm our commitment to expanding opportunity and building an ever brighter future for all let us embrace the diversity that strengthens us and continue to striving to ensure the american dream is within reach for generations of hispanics to come and whereas congress has authorized and requested the president to issue annually a proclamation designating september 15 through october 15 as national hispanic heritage month now therefore the pinellas county school board does hereby recognize september 15th through october 15th as hispanic heritage month and urge all citizens to join in a national effort to recognize the contributions made and the important
026presence of hispanic and latino americans to the united states and celebrate their heritage and culture signed this 14th day of september 2021. and thank you board members is there any discussion all right we have a motion and a second to adopt the proclamation designating september 15th through october 15 2021 as hispanic heritage month all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you very much all right we'll now move to public comment on the agenda and tonight we have a lot of opportunities for people to speak so let me see if i can make it clear members of the public have three opportunities to address the board as we gather for meetings the first opportunity is speak is to speak during public comments on agenda items the next opportunity is
027when there is a public hearing tonight we're going to have a second reading of our policy 9270 home education so that will be a separate opportunity for people to speak we will also have a budget hearing that was scheduled as our organizational meeting of november of 2020 as a time certain meeting at 6 30. at that time speakers may address the board on the budget if they choose to do so they can sign up in short if you're here to address the budget it will you will not be doing that during public comment right now you'll be doing that during the budget hearings at a separate time lastly after the meeting is adjourned we will remain for public participation when speakers may address items pertaining to the business of the district our staff is here
028to help you if you have any questions as to when you're to sign up or when you're to address the board each of these opportunities for public input board members are here to listen to you this is not a time for discussion or debate we will not take any formal action on information brought forward unless it is pertaining to the agenda item or our budget however the board and superintendent may clarify statements or refer the speaker to proper staff to help work through a problem or 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 speakers please refrain from showing audible support or disagreement we also ask that you assist us in maintaining a civil and constructive
029environment by confining your comments to the business of the district and refrain from profanity and intemperate or rude remarks thank you very much mrs houck do we have any speakers to the agenda items madam chair board members and dr grego we have three speakers this evening for agenda items our first speaker is mark clutho speaking to agenda item 7.11 7.12 he'll be followed by renee chia speaking to item 7.9 and then be followed by sweet speaking to items 7.9 and 7.17 all righty thank you martin luther largo 7.11 this is a remodel and renovations 700 000. oh yeah and we had those high schoolers and their espousing tax watch where was tax watch another boondoggle and here at mildred helms you know that's where my wife taught the classroom where she was they called it
030the morgue because the room was like a morgue because other rooms had to be bombarded with air conditioning because of the bad design of the building and that school building was supposed to be a prototype two and a half million dollars there oh more stupid buildings so what does it give us here's the headline july was the earth's hottest month on record noah says melting ice imperils nearly all emperor penguin colonies this is cause and effect you make those stupid buildings you keep ignoring science and this is the effect hotter future is certain u.n says urging immediate action to ease perils get ready for the climate disasters yeah if it wasn't for that high pressure what would have happened here if ida would have struck tampa bay instead of going a little bit north a
031hotter future is now inevitable a u.n report says earth's carbon dioxide levels at highest level in 4 million years adults are failing us on climate this is from greta dunberg and some of her cohorts we will not allow the world to look away but that's exactly what you are doing when you continue to ignore the science of high-performance passive solar building only big steps will save the earth stark warnings for the warming planet un report spells out dire quan consequences of climate change you know over two decades now i've been bringing this science and you just flagrantly ignore it thank you one thing that i failed to mention is we're going to be calling several people at a time so in order to make sure that we're attaching the right name to the cards if
032you would give your name as you come up to speak just as mr klutho did we would appreciate it and it would be very helpful so who's our next speaker hello again my name is renee chia from dunedin and i'm speaking to agenda number 7.9 tonight and i strongly encourage the board to not renew this particular contract i did about 15 minutes of research today when i was going through the agenda before coming here tonight and discovered a few things community tampa bay inc which also goes by the name anytown is an indoctrination indoctrination factory for our children and it's also the apparently the contractor that you use to send all your teachers to this summer and some of the parents were here a couple school board meetings ago asking specifically for that information i
033followed up and asked for that information and i was sent some links specifically to pinellas county school board flat pages that didn't give any information on the actual contractor and just had really high level language right and that's part of the game with this marxist rabble is we use high level language and talk about equity and different things like that but when i dug down one since the contract was actually there and i was able to actually dig down into the theology of what it is they actually teach the book they use is the cost of racism for people of color and when you look down through the theoretical and foundations that their material is based on it specifically says critical race theory critical race psychology and social policy refusing damage cataloging oppression and documenting
034desire whatever that might be so this is directly in opposition to florida law at this point and i would strongly suggest that you do not renew this tonight at minimum table it and have a further discussion also in the scope of work for community tampa bay they quote incorrect strategic direction numbers in order to connect that back to the contract so i think that's going to cause you a contracting problem in and of itself if you don't table this tonight and look at the language in here and for the parents this is what they do at this lovely little camp they send these kids to we call these tactics dialogue and cross-cultural interactions both of which are proven techniques for prejudice reduction students experience interactive workshops that teach and demonstrate the concept of isms or
035systems of advantage that favor one group of individuals over another and the ways these systems create and reinforce discrimination i could go on there's a whole lot of stuff in here basically it's crt thank you good evening my name is sweet i don't think i need to introduce myself so i'm expounding on to what she just said the crt we are aware that it has been changed to the culturally relevant teaching which i have an even bigger problem with saying that somebody needs to be treated differently get different tasks get different lessons because their culture now you're spitting on culture okay the critical race theory in and of itself has the word theory in it and that some people can study it some people don't have to but what i learned from the contract that
036you guys have you're asking for money they're asking for money you wanting to renew a contract i learned from teachers when i was here on saturday protesting the beginning of your teaching this summer i learned from teachers that they were actually threatened with their job some ap teachers were told if they didn't take this critical race theory that they were going to lose their jobs whereas some people were allowed to have it voluntarily some teachers were being told that they would lose their jobs and if your browser furrowed and you're like oh she's over here lying so your teachers are lying it was more than just one teacher who came up and thanked me for having that sign out there that said fcrt and were glad that i was there because they didn't want to
037be there to begin with they were mad that they were being forced so if that's a term of their job was that put into the contract that they signed like is that part of the contracts that you're renewing right now with these people and i'm also going to say for her that you should table it until the public is able to fully have information because it's all about having information for consent people are sending their kids to school and you're able to just make these changes and we're not able to look over it table this allow us to look over it the only reason i could see that you would just fast forward and do this is because you don't want us the time to look over it and that's fear and trying to make
038sure that we stay uninformed critical race theory bringing race into teaching was wrong whoever thought of that because i'm mexican puerto rican also that takes me part black i've got cuban friends about african-american friends i have black friends i have jamaican friends nobody's asking to be treated differently they don't want our kids to be treated differently there isn't a person of color that is ever asked to be treated differently quite the opposite equality not equity which should just go to our mortgages we've asked for equality really quality not to dumb down tests because you know you need better test scores so you can get more money and it's got to be their culture right it's their culture it's their parents fault it's how they're growing up that's the reason that they can't learn the things
039that they're in school it's got to be their culture so we've got to have all of these extending community tampa community inc and everything else that they're working with because they can't go out and just say what they're doing which is why they expound and they use these words to try to confuse people because of the anger that would actually happen if we knew what was really going on thank you it's three minutes for all agenda items not three minutes for each agenda item when you were called up our board clerk indicated the agenda items that you were speaking to no i'm sorry when she called your name she said the two agenda items that you were speaking on and our policy gives members of the public during this opportunity one three minute period to
040speak to one or more you can speak during the general public comment i'm not aware that we've done so you speak to any and all agenda items during this portion of time unless it is a second reading or a public hearing which i explained earlier will be on policy number 9720 and then of course on the budget hearing there are two opportunities that's an entirely different set of rules and laws that we have to follow in order to do the budget and there are two opportunities to speak at the budget hearing which is separate so are there any other speakers for agenda items no ma'am there are no more speakers for agenda items all righty okay so we have unfun unfinished business now and it's a public hearing to consider the amendment to policy 9270
041home home education this is the second reading this is the one that i was talking about that people will have the opportunity to speak to do we have a motion motion okay mrs edmund do we have a second second all right miss hein and dr grego yes madam chair as you know this policy change was brought to you in a workshop and we've discussed it extensively ms bell who's the chief strategy and impact officer in our district will go over some of the modifications this deals with our responsibilities for students in home education thank you good evening madam chair board members staff and the public today i bring forward for second reading and the public hearing to consider amendments to policy 9270 home education there have been no changes since first reading this policy was
042brought to a workshop on july 13th and first reading on july 27th what this policy amendment's put forward is making sure that we are being very clear in our policies around our responsibilities and the responsibilities for parents for enrollment in order to receive special education iep services or gifted services the amendments within here for home education students denote the days and which and where parents can request evaluation for both gifted services or special education ese services on the timelines in which we need to evaluate and then if parents want the full breadth of services with an iep they must fully enroll within pinellas county schools and so it what the state asked all districts across the state to do is be very explicit about those responsibilities in our policies so with that i bring it
043forward for public hearing okay very good mrs helko are there any speakers from the audience madam chair there are no speakers for this item all righty very good thank you board members is there any conversation we did talk about this at a workshop so this isn't the first time we're seeing it actually it's the second time it's been on the agenda but we've talked about it each time so are there any questions or com or discussion all right so we have a motion and a second all in favor say well to consider the amendments to policy 9270 home education all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you we'll move to the consent agenda do we have a motion all right mrs edmund do we have a second thank
044you mrs long all righty all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously we will now move to the non-consent agenda we request approval of the 2021-2022 strategic plan do we have a motion to accept all right ms hein and the second okay mrs long oh was it i'm sorry it was mrs kane i heard somebody over here okay thank you for clarifying that all right dr grego yes ma'am chair and to the public our district strategic plan doesn't drive everything but it drives some of the major initiatives in our in our districts those areas that we care and we really want to improve academically i think one of the challenges that i always say to people is that if you look at every any aspect of our district strategic plan
045it could all be brought back to student achievement whether it's in the finance area human resource area tis technology information systems no matter what the area of our school district the support area it all comes back to students and schools and student achievement i'm very proud of this particular document the document was placed at your at your desk area and i want to say for the public that this board has been instrumental in drafting this document we began talking and working with this document back in workshop both with budget and strategic planning back in june of 22nd june 22nd because it is important that we build the budget around the strategic plan and vice versa so we should never get a strategic plan that we don't have the resources to to to satisfy by on
046july 13th another workshop we brought the draft to this board and to mull over and to really reflect on and changes were made at that time based on board discussion recommendation i want to thank the board because one of the changes that you that you recommended for that was the the highlights section that starts on page eight and nine and i think that's that's a great look if someone were to take a look at this and and say so what what last year how did the district do what were the some of the major highlights or initiatives it's it's it's placed in in graphic form easy to read and certainly flows very very well our strategic plan is tied as i mentioned to our budget that's why today we have a budget hearing and today
047the strategic plan is on the agenda to be to be approved i also want to take a look at the section that ms dell will will highlight some of those with the strategic initiatives that we highlight some of those areas to the public and to us and to our principals and everyone else in all employees these are some of the major lifts that we're going to be focused on early literacy the best interested in implementing the best standards the pcs connects the level up that i'll talk about later on and college and career readiness just to name a few i can go on this board is very attuned to what what those are my last comment before i turn it over to miss dollars i want to thank all of the associate superintendents because each
048of them they have a lift if you if you look and read the strategic plan you'll see teaching and learning you'll see operations and school operations you'll see the area superintendents you'll see mr herbick in there you see the divisions represented in their budget and finance communication student services each of them have a responsibility and each of the action goals is assigned to not only division but also to individuals it's important for for us all to con to remember each of those action goals are measurable they have responsible then and they're reported out quarterly so it's how we track the progress of of our district and sometimes things happen like a pandemic or other aspects that the things have to slow down or move or or we go in a different direction but i also
049lastly want to thank jennifer dull because she has been the kind of the head person the shepherd of this district strategic plan each year this plan gets better and better in terms of its layout its readability and so ms dull thank you for all of the work that you've put into this document it's looked upon i can tell you i share this with other districts throughout the state of florida they always look for pinellas county's district strategic plan and we share each other so we take the best from it and we learn from each other so thank you board members for your support of this growth it's a fluid document it's not it's not cast and concrete we need to continue to go back to it and really focus on on the work this school
050year so mr thank you dr gregor some of the things i would like to point out as we bring forward this for approval for this year is that it is an annual plan and annually these goals are updated to align with where we are in the work and where we want to push ourselves aspirationally to be at the end of the year as dr griego mentioned staff works along with this along with we actually have a let's talk button open for district strategic plan feedback 365 days a year from public or staff members and we also elicit responses for updates for this in usually around may of each year as we form our next version of our district strategic plan this is done alongside the budget purposefully so that as district offices and schools are
051aligning their budgets or their school improvement plan budgets that it is aligned with the work within the district strategic plan and schools also engage just as the district engages in the district strategic plan with their school improvement planning processes at the same time which those will be brought to you for approval at our board meeting in october one of the things i would like to point out too and updating in the district strategic plan along with in the last couple years we have highlighted strategic initiatives one of the feedback we really got was that sometimes within our action goals because there are a lot of them that we update that bucketing them would be helpful so that not only the public but staff can see how the different initiatives within each strategic direction so you
052will notice that as a visual update that all of the different action goals are bucketed it was very kind of dr grego to thank me but this is a definite team effort along with all of the staff that helped develop the actual content i think miss leanne mrs leanna eisen who's our director of strategic planning and policy who would be here presenting this tonight however she had a little one about a month ago was instrumental in really working with our communications team and libby jordan and making this visually kind of come to life in a way that each year we get better and better at so i do want to definitely acknowledge the two of them taking leadership and ownership of how this looks so that people have a visual representation and a more digestible
053way to engage with our district strategic plan so with that i bring it forward for approval tonight very good thank you all righty board members are there any comments again this is as dr grego stated this is something that we have been working with for quite a while and the staff has done an excellent job of showing how our overarching goals will be accomplished so that's terrific dr carr thank you i'd like to thank you and the team as well as staff for working to make sure that so many of the str the pieces are not only bucketed but also measurable and that's really important to us to our ongoing progress monitoring as well as our accountability so i appreciate that i know we discussed that quite a bit in workshop and having spent time
054looking at the outcomes from last year and going through our binders with all those measures i appreciate that you took the time to give us a very clear picture of where we are so that these measures we can be held more accountable to our measures so thank you for that extra time and that coordination mrs edmond i also would like to just echo the comments that have already been made because i'm being a new school board member and having lots of questions it was very important for me to sit down view the binders with the artifacts as well as have the opportunity to ask questions and receive answers as it relates to our strategic plan and measurable outcomes so i look forward to continuing to ask questions and working with you all and thank you
055and your team as well as the superintendents who also answer questions all right anyone else all right good thank you so we do have a motion made by mrs kane in a second by ms long to ada to approve the 2021 2022 district strategic plan all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you very much our next item is to request the adoption of the proposed greater florida consortium of school boards 2022 legislative program do we have a motion okay mrs edmund motion to accept second all right that miss king all right this is kane and the second dr grego do you want me just go into it all right mrs edmund and i had the opportunity to represent this board at the greater florida consortium of school boards
056we joined that in about 2007 i think it was and it's many of the coastal communities we found that there were some things that were unique to those communities that didn't necessarily play out in the middle of florida and so it was designed to help strengthen the needs and some of those items so that we could go with the united front we have been given a copy of they have it as a final but it's the draft of it and we are allowed to look at it and if there are items that you would like to pull off that you don't think are appropriate or that we as a board cannot support we have the opportunity to do that otherwise it will be sent on to them in final form this is a document that
057each one of the district counties will either unanimously support or if there's an item as i said that we can't support it will be taken off completely we don't amend it we don't do anything it's it's basically an all or nothing for each particular item so at this point we would really like to have conversation as to are there any items in here that need to be pulled or do we support the document so i'm going to ask anybody mrs edmond do you want to add to it yes all right thank you miss cook for highlighting the work of the consortium having the opportunity to talk with colleagues about the issues that we face and really go back and forth with how we can problem solve was impactful for me so i look forward to
058seeing the outcome of our vote okay good there are a couple of items on here that we specifically put in here one was to extend the lifespan of our millage i mean of our referendums so that a board could choose to do it anywhere from four years to ten years and if they if they guess it wrong they run the risk of losing the referendum but definitely to be able to maximize it for planning sake and that type of thing so that was one of them that has been put in here and the other one was to use other facilities other governmental buildings as well as schools or instead of schools let's look at them first and we've talked about why that would be there and it's also on our individual pinellas county platform so
059those are a couple of things that were added as a result of submitting it and the group talking about it so if there is no discussion we have a motion to adopt it in its entirety is what it sounds like to adopt the proposed greater florida consortium of school board's 2022 legislative program all in favor say aye aye opposed say no and it passes unanimously thank you very much so we'll now move we do have some time so items introduced by the superintendent yes thank you madam chair first i want to thank governor desantis and commissioner corcoran for visiting our district today both visited high point elementary school a school that even through a pandemic increases its letter grade thank you mrs kane mrs cook for for joining us at that press conference you'll hear
060a lot about it in terms of the different form of assessments that the state is moving to i'm in favor of it i think that monitoring students along the way instead of this huge assessment at the end is a good thing i've talked with many of the board members about this in different ways shapes and forms we have a lot of work to do still just recognize that it needs to go through the legislative process i for one will be very involved with this along with our superintendents association to ensure that it's a meaningful thing for our teachers and our schools and students and parents one of the highlights of it though that continued to be brought up today is the connection with families and the parents the notion as as we provide monitoring tools
061for parents and parents always ask well how how's my student doing and what can i do and one of the things we're trying to get closer to is to answer those two questions so here's here's what they're doing great here's here's where they need a little bit extra help and here's what you could do to assist us in the partnership of educating your student so if it reduces the testing time it reduces increases the instructional time we all need to be open to it and really understanding that the monitoring piece in this day and age with this technology we ought to be able to do this i've mentioned and use the college board as an example when they give an ap exam at the end of the year they give these formative assessments periodically through
062the year and as students progress they find out where they're really strong and where they need to brush up so it's better to prepare them for that assisted ap exam at the end of the year and guess what our passing rates go up it's all about you know if you're really really sick do you wait to go see the doctor at the end of the year or do you go in and get a checkup earlier it's not let's wait but rather let's see where we're at so as i said there's a lot to be still ironed out with it but it's a great start i think it's a great talking point i think it's needed we've been dealing with the fcat or fsa for how many 10 15 years just about in the same format
063and there's a real desire that we've been working on for the last year and a half to try to better connect families to their students assessment and their progress i'll keep the board up to date on on how we make progress on this collectively as a state though but right in line with that i want to also talk about level up programs our level up program because it is really a great indication that everything's building on more individualized instruction how do we individually prescribe or subscribe a instructional program for students and where their needs are in school and out of school and in terms of enhancing our pcs connects program that you see is very represented in our district's strategic plan last night in fact our high school students specifically our high school seniors had
064their first session and level up and the session was addressing specifically with parents by the way the high school graduation requirements and how they can utilize the act and sat it answered those questions and the workshop was entitled level up to graduation and not only this the families and students that watched it last night but the archiving of those so that you can go back to it at any time day or night tonight in fact just started at six o'clock the math team will host the level up session for middle school students and families regarding our ixl mathematics platform which has skill based activities this is a very exciting middle school program that the middle school team is rolling out and it's involving everyone and practicing and enhancing the math skills in middle school so
065the level up sessions are going to continue and i'm going to continue to promote it we need to promote this throughout our entire community they're on our website if anyone wants to learn more about it but you're going to be hearing a lot more about it pcs.org forward slash level up and i want to thank our teaching and learning department for for all of the work that they're doing and as a result of our one-to-one devices we're we're truly succeeding at expanding the learning opportunities of of all students in addition to that i want to talk a little bit about the early literacy in our literacy program again expanding the learning day and also enhancing what we're doing during the day project 23 was launched this year addressing specifically the need for reading proficiency across
066our elementary or across our elementary schools in the reading recovery that we greatly expanded this year into more and more first grade classes in in our elementary schools so these are things that academically were as a as a district where one month into the school year we're not only taking off but we're really truly making some gains for for the efforts that we're doing and it all ties back to that strategic plan i want to also give kudos to robert lynch our boca ciega high school mathematics teacher robert was selected from yale university as the 2021 yale educator award this past year from the undergraduate admissions programs you know that some prominent universities across the united states have this recognition program of their fresh incoming freshmen to nominate a teacher that had tremendous influence and
067robert was one of only 50 teachers that were recognized and 21 counselors who selected over 300 nominations and that was just from yale so we congratulate the emphasis and the impact that our teachers are having that sometimes their students write about them after they're gone and what a great recognition in addition skyview elementary school welcomed the wounded warriors a statute unveiling and you can see a slide of that i believe we have mike the a 2003 graduate of pinellas park high school it's very appropriate that we had pinellas park high school here today and wounded marine corps veteran created the wounded warriors ability ranch in 2015 on september 1 the 15th anniversary of the sniper attack that paralyzed him he brought a group of wounded warriors to skyview elementary school and during the event veterans
068and students gathered to unveil the sculpture of patriot the eagle and thank you to all of the artists thank you to everyone the maintenance department there was so many people had their hands in this this effort thank you certainly to principal hester for a wonderful addition to your campus she does a magnificent job also our students every year and this year was even a little extra special commemorated the 20th anniversary of september 11th as you know zona elementary school in the very early days helped and was key in the creation of the curlew hills memorial garden of the 911 memorial service there and i want to thank and recognize the zone elementary for still 20 years later still working and displaying their artwork and also jameson elementary school and their work with in some displays
069in saint petersburg area we truly celebrated and honored and remembered the 9 11 tragedy that took place in in our country and it's so it's so important that our students who weren't born at that time understand and understand and remember and recognize the event of that day that we all might learn from it i also want to say thank you to al bennett as many people on a friday night the lights go on and the football stadiums are there we have a number of new athletic fields that we opened up this past friday tarpon springs athletic field clearwater you saw lakewood and saint petersburg but all of our fields are beautiful and our tracks are beautiful in our athletic facilities where i want to thank mr herbeck for all his work in in in enhancing
070the not only the fields but but everything about them and so al is maneuvering greatly with everything else and continuing on the sports not only in high school but also in middle schools which is so important i remind the board that the rays are celebrating pinellas county county schools night this saturday at 6 10 against the miami marlins in inner league play so they'll if any board members are interested they honor our teachers they honor our school district and certainly our students and others are recommended or certainly celebrated there that night and also the rowdies will be doing the same thing on on friday october 15th so our district is is operating smoothly we have so much going on in terms of after school before school activities and certainly as i announced a lot of
071after school activities of academic proportion in in the household so thank you madam chair thank you all right items introduced by the attorney i have no items this evening thank you thank you all right items introduced by board members all right dr carr thank you i want to add to some of the athletic events that we have going on i had the opportunity to attend the relay swim event at north shore pool and i don't know if you've had the opportunity to attend one of our swim meets recently but i found it to be incredibly entertaining and far more fun than i dare say in football but the between the breaks and activities that take place and the level of engagement with families and and the students that were there so it was a tremendous
072event because it was all relay and a real opportunity for students to from across the district all our high schools were there showing up and building their team spirit i also wanted to acknowledge and thank ms kane for your coordination your leadership as well as miss cook and miss edmond for our legislative meeting which took place yesterday yesterday goodness where and those folks who were in attendance senator ruson and as well as representative raynor and representative diamond representative lavala and representative cheney so those individuals who participated and were able to attend it was especially fantastic for those who came to the to pinellas technical college because they had the opportunity to see some of the programs in action in schools so the culinary prepared we had the welding we had tell me the dog's name
073i know you remember but sponger spunger the dog was there and as well as the juno the body for our medical program so it was very engaging and a real opportunity for students and staff to showcase our certification programs while we were there an element that really stuck with me was a comment from donna cecilian who is the leader of our student services and one of the things that was poignantly asked of her was regarding any evidence or research related to positive or negative mental health around masking and other mitigation factors and shu articulated it so well and i have such a positive regard for her expertise as a mental health expert in our schools and in our community and as a leader and i'm gonna do my best to paraphrase her but she certainly
074said that there was not specific evidence one way or the other of it being detrimental to the mental health and well-being in in terms of in the literature with mental health at this time but that really where we see and as a former school counselor myself i believe it's oftentimes in the way that adults frame things that can add to the stress and anxiety of students so how we behave as adults and how we support our arguments and present ourselves contributes to the anxiety one way or the other and it caused me to reflect on a lesson recently learned in our household that no individual is as totally good or totally bad as they are often portrayed so there's not perfection or pure evil so we want to make sure that when we are sharing
075our perspectives and opinions on on positions in this environment that we consider how we frame it to our children and how we present things to our children and i just really that was a big takeaway for me from the event when there was some of the discussion at the end so i'm grateful to her for her expertise i'd also like to acknowledge mr herbick for working so hard we've had some real struggles with transportation through we're not alone in that it's a national and statewide issue finding individuals i know we received our update on it i know we've really been working to fill in gaps within the bus bulletins capacity to get the information out to families and that we really started out with fewer drivers than than we had in the past and i'm
076grateful to you for these extra efforts you've been putting into place and the additional training group and folks that are things that are about to roll out to really address some of those issues so i appreciate our families and parents i know that has had a direct impact on student instruction and learning and i know that you're working on it i know it's not something and it looks like dr grego you have comments now okay but i want to acknowledge that and put it out there publicly that it's not we have received concerns issues around that and the things that are in the works and then lastly to represent a little bit of the data that we shared was shared i have the opportunity to serve on the continuum of care homeless leadership for the
077board and the subcommittee i work on is because you do also serve on a subcommittee and i see some others that are on the committee so you but one of them is data system performances and measures and one of the things that was very apparent regarding that there was some recent probing and looking at our veterans and the disproportionate homeless rate amongst that group and i just we are fantastic in our celebration and recognition of individuals who have served this country in so many ways and with things that we do and i'm just going to push again to request that we acknowledge it further and have veterans day as a holiday i know we have gone back and forth on that quite a bit i'm just going to put it out there again i while
078i acknowledge how much we do in the schools i think particularly now it is incredibly important to recognize those individuals throughout the community and give the community the opportunity to step up and acknowledge and recognize our veterans in the community with how many veterans live in our community work in our community and our family members in this community so that's my report as a board member and i hope we are able to move forward with that as a possible consideration for the calendar committee exactly exactly dr gregor yeah madam chair and if i may if i could address because i think dr carr brings up not only one of the more important points i know that about three four weeks ago we had a statewide meeting of all superintendents and number one issues bus drivers
079with a distant second by the way so yeah thank you for recognizing mr herbert i might ask if the board would allow me to to bring you up to date on some of the very aggressive things that we're doing things that we've never done before but certainly we're getting some results we're bringing some new drivers on as you know the board you contracted out with some so let me let mr herbert discuss some of the things we're doing and some of the reliefs that we're hoping to see in a week or two thank you dr grego and thank you madam chair and board members as as he shared we are trying some things that we've that we have not tried before and one of them is to contract with an independent contractor called alc to
080transport some some very special programs and those are the programs for extended transition students and by doing that really what those what our transportation program prior to now for those students have been to take them from their home to one of their job sites and these again are kids who are learning job skills and two classes of extended transition students are actually at walter pinel service center and i know personally that the buses that bring those children in there due to the length of the routes they're not able to service students in the first run for that high school run and then they bring them to walter panell the program's so successful we've actually hired students as part of our full-time staff out of there so we want to make sure that we give them
081the service that they need and so what we did is we again contracted with this firm to take those students to their job sites to make sure that they still have that high quality experience what that does for us transportation-wise is it actually freed up about 20 bus drivers that are able to drive during a high school run normally in a normal year we have three or four high school routes that are open and when we don't have a driver for it means that we have to go ahead and fill her out fill a run and then double back and pick up kids they're naturally going to be late to school this year we have about 20 or 30 of those type of routes so when we take 20 drivers and return them to the
082first slot that's going to make what we hope a tremendous difference we've also just added nine new students or graduated nine students from our bus driver class they should be picking up their routes later on this week thursday or friday so now we're up to 29 additional drivers and we have 13 in a class that's coming up right now that we're that we're just starting so when you start putting all that together it kind of gets us back in closer to a normal year one of the things that is always challenging whenever you have a shortage is the the unknown of the daily call-offs when we come in and we think that we have every route covered and then a driver calls in in the morning they wake up they don't feel well something else
083is going on and they can't come in one of the things that we're doing now and it's been in the contract for quite a while that for every quarter basically a grading period or 45 days there's been an incentive of a hundred dollars to give drivers if they have perfect attendance during that time and through this budget or through the contract negotiation with seiu and i know to thank mr andrews there in the back we've been able to extend that from 100 to 1200 so that of a driver who has that perfect attendance for 45 days make a substantial bonus for being able to do that eliminates that huge unknown every morning makes the job of our dispatchers and routers which remember we combined our dispatchers and routers this summer into one job it makes
084their job much easier and it kind of gives us more of a fighting chance to be able to put the correct information into bus bulletin because we won't have so many changes to put in every day and parents will be able to get more accurate information which has been a real cause of concern is bus bulletin just cannot handle the number of changes that we're having to put into today and parents aren't being able to get the accurate information that they need so again those are some of the things that we're doing to putting in place we'll keep you informed as we move forward we also have put in a 1 000 bonus for transportation employees we call a head hunter bonus if they go out and recruit someone who then passes our driver class
085and stays with us for a year they can earn up to a thousand dollars recruitment bonus and i know that's things that we see companies like target and walmart and other people doing as well and hopefully them that can work for us as well board members we're also recruiting as we will run classes throughout the year so the 40 or so drivers that mr herbeck's talking about will which should be engaged in another week or two will really help and relieve us but we can't stop there bus driving and recruitment we're looking at other marketing tools and hiring some folks to truly go out and year round so that we can be graduating 20 30 drivers and at a clip and also have some substitute drivers so those call offs in a day that we
086just don't know about so i know this has been a strain for every school district and large medium small it hasn't it hasn't been isolated by anybody every district is experiencing it but i feel comfortable that we're constantly attacking the situation not just having a discussion with it so the other thing i want to do is just thank our bus drivers i get a i get an email every single night by the transportation department i don't rest until about until every what they say every every bus is back in the barn and at that point i know that we're we're good to go and it's usually around 6 15 and all of the runs with our we i just talked about athletics you see them transporting our football teams so our bus drivers do a
087remarkable job and they get up early in the morning they're long days so please just really thank them for what they're doing we'll continue to try to enhance their compensation along the way too truly so thank you okay thank you and dr carr you thanked many of the people on the legislative committee but you too served on that committee and i want to thank you for your work on it as well okay mrs edmund i think we have time for one more so go ahead i would like oh very okay i would like to also thank mr hendricks i know that a lot of people have academic concerns as it relates to the quarantines and i was able to ask him about the academic helpline so i think it's important that people are aware that
088there is an academic help line if your student is quarantined and that laptops are available so it would be great if communications could keep pushing out that information so that families are aware and thank you mr herbic as it relates to the quarantine or providing food opportunities for families that are in quarantine i noticed that the communications department did push that out on social media and we're getting the ball rolling on that so i really appreciate you and your team for that as well as working through the bus situation which you elaborated on a few minutes ago i'd also like to congratulate pinellas technical college for earning tampa bay's times best of the best people's choice award for the best trade vocational college in the tampa bay area for the second year it really just
089shows not only the impact pinellas technical college has but the opportunity that are available opportunities that are available to all people who are interested in the trade so opportunity truly starts at ptc also i don't think we'll have time for it but i like to put it out there i would like to make a motion to adopt an emergency rule implementing a universal face covering policy with the medical out for 90 days reassessing every 30 days mr happy please and i also like to let my colleagues know that it's in draft form so if you have other suggestions you'll be able to make those during the discussion so you're making a motion is there a second okay your motion fails due to a lack of second all right do you have anything else yes okay
090i would like to determine if there is consensus to have a special meeting to discuss covet mitigation and possibly possibly a math option okay so do we have consensus does the majority of the board want to do that those that want to do that raise your hand i would like to make a motion no no take it back you're looking for consensus looking for consensus to see if the majority of the board would like to have a special meeting to discuss covet mitigation and if a mass policy and or a mass policy prior before our board workshop on tuesday yes okay you wanted to speak to it you said we need to do it quickly or we'll stop the conversation and move on but so i think it's just a question about if we would
091have a special meeting to discuss a whole range of mitigation strategies and really it's an opportunity i think also to hear from staff about how things are actually going to formally hear from health experts to formally hear from our community who we've heard from thousands of people but i know we've also asked this question several several different times so i guess it's just a question of is there a consensus to have a formal meeting around this topic address it yeah that is a question that is a question things like updates about the bus and updates from mr had all of those things staffing from staffing concerns substitute issues air purification all those other mitigation topics as well so no they're asking for it prior to the workshop rather than doing it at the workshop okay
092so those that would like to do that raise your hand and we'll see if we have the majority that would like to do that all right i don't see a majority so what we could do is ask for some of those things to be added and brought to the workshop does that help so that we know the mitigation things that are going on and what is happening with air purification and sanitation and that type of thing all right thank you anything else because we are one minute away from our time certain okay dr corbett are there any board requests yes madam chair the board requests our recorders we will add mitigation efforts update to the workshop next tuesday okay all right so with that then we can adjourn the meeting knowing that our evaluation will
093take care will will happen after and after our budget hearing we will have public participation and we will now go to our public input excuse me i've got to find my agenda second okay here it is i want to make sure we've done everything so far yes we have so we are at public participation we're going to be calling several names and we're going to ask you know to kind of line up but again so that we can make sure that we're getting in the proper order if you'll just state your name before you start speaking we would appreciate it so mrs houck do we have do we have speakers will you want to start calling the speaker's names yes ma'am the i'll call the first five speakers david happy amanda detrimus kim mcgee ray
094tampa and katrina seiler very good thank you welcome this message is not for all of you it's for three of you we tried representative government your way and we're we've decided we're done dealing with you between pinellas community patriots pinellas watch pinellas county for face freedom several other community groups i'm here today to tell you we're done pandering to you today marks the start of a whole new movement to retake our government in pinellas county we've spent 18 months playing by your rules respecting your decorum you've spent 18 months ignoring the people you supposedly represent and now the only rules you're going to be asked to follow are the rules of law for 18 months we've developed tremendous resources we have attorneys ready to sue you should you decide to follow one of your commissioners
095in advocating breaking the law we have one of the largest law firms in pinellas investigating your ongoing law violations on critical race theory we have eyes everywhere by the way so this past saturday when one of your crt instructors mocked a parent that showed up to voice her disapproval of the crt training happening in this room when the same trainer then forced participants in this room you're sitting in to write every vile ethnic slur they could think of as part of the crt training that pinellas county forced some teachers to attend happened in this room when the teachers union sent you a rigged survey results in hopes of force vaccinating kids this past week we have a copy of the survey 46 of the respondent teachers said they want the children force vaccinated understand teachers
096union you're never going to be touching our children when you're three-sevenths of your board members spend 18 months denying science some of the most brilliant parents and doctors parade in here to share with you but your delusional board member creates a hand-drawn graphic about how 80 of the parents just want you to tell them what to do you're moving money around in bogus real estate corporations and we're watching we're watching everything now we're waiting waiting for the mistakes that you make all the time we'll bring the law and the state in to clean this up the state is coming for your paychecks and ultimately for your seats we're gonna do the only thing that matters to you because we're gonna take what you think you have here we owe it to our kids to the
097future generations to break what you're trying to accomplish here in pinellas we've done it your way we tried your way meeting after meeting three of you ignore science ignored data in your attempts to bring a weird ideological agenda into pinellas county now the only thing we're interested in is retaking our government for our kids putting real representatives in place protecting our children protecting our families protecting our incomes and protecting our community we gave you all the benefit of the doubt and now you're gonna do it our way thanks to those of you up there that get it and to those of you up there that don't you're going to be hearing from us very soon thank you good evening hi good evening my name is amanda thank you it's pretty comical to open up with
098freedom week and talking about the constitution after the last year that we've had there's been 13 florida school districts that have issued mass mandates without a parental opt-out define governor desantis effect executive order and state rules that created to enforce it there has been countless experts in this subject including but not limited to industrial hygienists whose entire job is to know the safety equipment and efficacy of them combined with i don't know common sense once you touch your mask and touch a doorknob it's no longer working put a student in class all day long how many times do you think he touches his mask do you think it's really doing anything at that point there has been multiple medical journals by actual doctors showing the dangers of wearing a mask all day there has been
099testimonies by psychiatrists on how it affects them mentally i know you referenced a mental ex mental health expert but again common sense will tell you that it is going to affect a child and how they grow up by having to wear a mask eight hours a day combined with being coerced or bullying from teachers by telling them that they're selfish for not wearing it so combine that with the survival rate of children from 0 to 19 of 99.9973 percent what kind of human beings are we trying to raise here and why do you want to go back on the mass mandates you think that you have the authority and the permission of which you have neither to coerce discriminate or isolate in any way when it comes to masks temperature checks nasally raping or how
100you like to call it testing quarantine or vaccination so just stop with the circus we are done you should be ready to accept full legal responsibility of said risks and the this precedent that is set by biden which is highly disturbing and unconstitutional we're ready for the next thing that comes down the pipe which is the vaccinations we are no longer complying to any more coveted theater if you continue you are showing that you have done absolutely no due diligence you do not have any critical thinking skills and basically all that we're trying to say to you which i don't know why we have to sit here and beg why are we begging you for a decent education without overstepping your authority we want the choice we do not want crt in our schools you
101can even if you name it something else we do not want forest mass or forced vaccinations and all you're doing is breaking the children's future in this county you're breaking the system that employs you by ignoring your constituents and we're witnessing the entire foundation breaking down nationwide so i ask you what will you do to protect our country and our children and not from the point zero zero two seven thank you kim mcgee and katrina seiler the next five speakers are liam oliver stephen russell lee bryant nancy davis and reverend andy oliver good evening hello my name is liam oliver i'm a seventh grader at morgan fitzgerald middle school and i plan to be a public defender when i grow up when i go to school i wear a mask to protect others many others
102choose not to some think that freedom is choice should trump's safety but there are lots of things that we don't get to choose i can't choose to go to school naked i chose to get vaccinated my little brothers didn't get to choose because of their age no mask mandate means that my little brother evan may spend the next month in the icu instead of ela my youngest brother has epilepsy if we bring covet home to him he might die i am a student standing in front of my school board begging you to save lives require masks thank you thank you good evening good evening good evening my name is stephen russell thank you i have a child in the pinellas county school system i also wanted to address the issue of mass this evening and
103specifically question the philosophy of the board when it comes to it my first question is specifically what studies and data are you utilizing in potentially implementing mass mandates too often in our society we accept the politization of science and we consider it a consensus when science is not a consensus if nine out of ten scientists say the earth is flat that does not make it true you have been elected at a local level to do what is best for the children of this county not to follow the ever-changing inconsistent advice from the federal government if data does not support implementing a mass mandate the board must not implement a mass mandate the board cannot make assumptions about data or guesses on science that do not exist in the real world your decisions must be based
104on factual data as we know it today and we know nothing supporting the position that maps prevent the spread of covet among children in a school setting in addition to using actual data in our decision making we must also factor in the trade-offs to our decisions ultimately we must determine what is best for our children and in that respect the board has to consider potential consequences of making children wear mass in school all day has the school board looked into studies related to respiratory issues with mass have they looked into potential learning issues with mass many children or visual learners and facial expressions are important to them have we considered anxiety issues related to the wearing of the mass and potential bullying around them or the simple facts that masks create a distraction to the
105child as they are uncomfortable being worn for prolonged periods of time and we know when people are uncomfortable they become distracted and potentially learn less if every child is required to wear a mask this would affect 100 of the school population in pinellas county and all of these negative potential issues would affect them are we willing to risk that thankfully we know children are affected by this virus at an extremely low rate the flu and other viruses have a higher mortality mortality rate in children yet the board has never taken up a mass mandate on the flu and should covet continue and turn into a mutating endemic which we have to deal with for years to come is the board proposing we have a mass mandate indefinitely if mass are so effective why force everyone
106to wear a mask why not allow the people who want to wear masks wear a mask forcing everyone to do something without scientific data is a very dangerous and slippery slope if we are simply implementing mass as a cya measure and shame on you and please consider the children in making these decisions thank you for your time tonight thank you good evening chair cook vice chair long members of the board dr grego and staff by the way it's grego not greco sorry i went to greco junior high school i'm tired of him mispronouncing your name all the time my name is lee bryant my pronouns are he him and his and i rise to speak on my own behalf the last time i spoke to you i pointed out that florida schools do not and
107never have taught critical race theory continued debate about that would be akin to debating the existence of the easter bunny it's time to stop i'm speaking tonight to support the need for masks for all students faculty and staff i teach seniors 17 and 18 year old young adults the majority of them are not wearing masks in class and the numbers of reported cases is scary the number of unreported cases is scarier the numbers are telling the story last year after the first six weeks of school we had 164 staff and students with known covid this year after the first six weeks we have three thousand five hundred and fifty six known cases of staff and students 164 to 35 56 21 times higher than last year and we won't even consider the masks and the
108mitigating issues we need mrs edwards has shown the courage to propose a meeting to discuss covent mitigation not limited to masks but to discuss them only dr carr and mrs hein have supported the idea thank you to the three of you to quote stephen hopkins of rhode island from 1776 well in all my years i ain't never heard seen or smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about talk about it please refrain from the legality of the executive order it doesn't take a historian to know that the law is not always a true moral compass of what is right thank you good evening my name is reverend andy oliver my pronouns are he him his i'm pastor of allendale united methodist church but this evening i come to you as a
109dad a proud dad of liam who you heard earlier who comes home every day telling me what he learned in seventh grade civics class from mr scalia and of fifth grader evan whose pet tortoise and frog are calling him to a future career of herpetologists perhaps he also got a perfect score on his math fsa we love our public schools but both boys have had their learning interrupted by being quarantined both boys have had way too many substitutes due to covid evan has had his bus combined with another route giving him an extra hour on the bus for a week all of this is preventable you can look at other districts with mass mandates like brevard who in their email to parents today said we have had a decline in quarantine since the mass mandate
110was put in place on august 30th the mandate will allow your school staff to remain focused on the number one priority educating your children many of you feel no urgency to use your unique power to act because anti-massacres and speakers at these meetings have outnumbered mass advocates whereas that may be true quantitatively it certainly isn't qualitatively some arguments are more sound than others more flat earthers in a room doesn't change the shape of our world the data on masks and the delta variant is clear if leaders before us had practiced leadership by straw poll we would still have segregated schools today doing what is right isn't always doing what is popular in this case you get the opportunity to do both as mask mandates are urged by our medical professionals and favored by residents of
111pinellas in recent polls doing the right thing may upset a certain governor and cost you a future political appointment but if it keeps children and teachers and bus drivers and staff safe in our schools if it slows community spread if it saves even one life then it's the right thing to do in the future i beg you as a dad for the safety of my children especially my youngest who can't get the vaccine yet show some courage mandate masks and keep them safe thank you thank you good evening good evening i'm susan wade from st petersburg thank you for allowing me to speak before you i also would like to say i have a special respect for miss edward edmonds who has shown time and again that she has the courage to do the right
112thing additionally i think all of us here prefer to be governed by our local leaders like you we elected you to do what is best for our children teachers and administrators across florida since july 13 i'm sorry since july 13 school children and 68 educators have died of covid 19. one of them josh sanders was from here pinellas county i'm sure you are all aware of that right now there are more than 4 300 coveted 19 cases in pinellas county these infections and death might have been prevented if everyone had been wearing masks certainly the numbers would have been lower the positively positivity rate in pinellas county is up 14 masks are recommended until the positivity rate drops below five percent if it's lawsuits that you fear the law is actually on your side a
113gubernatorial executive order is not the law but i think you should all consider the fact that there are wrongful death lawsuits and that might be something coming in the future i realize that you are contacted daily by a loud and aggressive group who stand in opposition to a mass mandate they are in the minority a quinnipiac poll conducted from august 17th through the 21st among florida adults found 60 percent support for mass mandates i'm sure those figures would be commensurate right here in pinellas county please do what is right for our community and the students teachers and administrators and pinellas county and institute a mass mandate for our schools thank you for your attention thank you our next group of speakers will be lindsay cross angela d mark clutho amy perch and carrie johnson are
114any of those speakers here lindsey yeah mr klutho angel okay i said lindsay cross angela d mark clutho amy pert and carrie johnson good evening good evening i'm amy pert amy i have a 12 year old at palm harbor middle and so i'm here tonight as a mom i'm also a nurse of 18 years pediatric specifically this past year many parents have awakened to some pretty alarming things and many of us promised to keep eyes on i made that commitment and i meant it i'll be here for every meeting i am able regardless of what is on the agenda unfortunately i was not surprised to hear caprice make a move to force mask our children so i'll speak to that i want to thank the board members who have sincerely listened who helped us start
115this year on a high note by giving families the responsibility to make choices that are right for them our kids are thriving thriving i can't tell you how much i appreciate this as several of you mentioned earlier this evening there are so many awesome activities our kids have to be excited about both inside and outside the classroom for those of you who would do anything in your power to take this choice away up to and including subverting the law shame on you if you think we wouldn't notice the bump set spike between dr carr miss edmonds and miss hein well that's why we're here today today we recited the pledge together we had the pleasure of hearing from a wonderfully talented student and there was recognition of our beautiful constitution and the celebration of freedom
116precious freedom let's continue to focus on holding up freedom while we support and nurture the needs of our children thank you good evening hi my name is carrie johnson i was not prepared to speak today i can't believe we're even back at this point arguing over masks i didn't want to come to the meeting my daughter offered to come and speak for me because she knows my anxiety at speaking at these things she has softball she's in fifth grade her dream was to become a safety patrol officer and she did that she was the first one voted by her teachers from last year even though she was absent online learning all year i've written to you guys i've read comments thanking you for upholding our parental choice in decisions for our children she is happily
117back at school if a mass mandate comes she will forever leave the pinell school system her choice as well i'm not just going to force that on her she will not agree to an education in a mask i don't even know what else i want to say i have lots to say and new organized thoughts i appreciate you again upholding the law i think it is a poor but abhorrent that caprice is trying to engage you guys in breaking the law and in reinstituting a mass mandate at this time it is still against the law my daughter had a second grade teacher who at the time i like and admire still can't say that i don't and she recently shared on facebook a public post about her covet experience she admits to being an avid
118mask wear having coveted vaccinations and still getting sick she alleges that she got sick from someone that had the shots and was an avid mass wear as well then she went on to urge the rest of us to please get our vaccines and wear a mask i didn't bring any science today because we're not even at a logical point at what point does that seem logical for her to beg us to do something that she did and it did not help her as did others my family got covered my mother is fully vaccinated they say that she didn't have his great illness because she was vaccinated she had the same exact symptoms as us and there will never be any way to determine if that would have been otherwise so i urge you keep doing
119the good job you guys have a difficult job i wouldn't want it i'd rather keep mine please do not institute another mass mandate oh i had one more thing hand washing that is my number one go-to for infection the first day of school as i turn from the classroom to wash my hands the hand washing stations were empty i did not mind because i sent my daughter with her by the third time i got my hand washed i sent my daughter with her own hand wash because she is in control of her health that's it thank you thank you good evening mark luther largo here's a cartoon from the great clay bennett used to be with the saint pete times and it's the great vaccine debate has the doctor for the lectern and the against
120at the lectern it's in urn you get it the fool that doesn't get the vaccine dies and these big whiners that are against the vaccine and other protections like the mask well you know their kids to go to school they have to get the vaccines for the measles and the mumps and all these other pertussis and other things why aren't they screaming about that i don't understand it where's the liberty thing with that just think of all the pain and suffering there would be if those vaccines were ignored it's you know doggone shame with these flat earthers i mean it's a world of just people coming out from underneath the rocks and ignoring the science you know i applaud the three of you up there on the board that want to do the right thing
121and you know help the young man that was here that as he stated he has a sibling at home that could possibly die if he would bring home covered you know and there are people here that are i guess laughing thinking that's something funny oh well you know can't really care about that it's too bad just too bad i mean thousands and thousands have died next group of speakers will be stephanie fry elizabeth fox nicholas carey ms cox and kevin johnson jess come on up i don't know where stephanie is yeah hi i'm elizabeth fox and oh what a joy to be able to follow that lovely gentleman back there who does nothing but insult people i would like to say that you know 3.34 of the total district population that were confirmed positive or
122impacted by covid yesterday 0.34 that's one third of a percent you want to mask 100 percent of the population for those people in the nine days prior to september 11th new pediatric admissions in florida fell from a seven day average of 69 florida to 48. in other words they fell by a third in nine days also note that over 50 of the 67 districts in florida do not have any sort of mandatory masking in effect none and yet cases are falling cases the atlantic published an article on 910 headlined the downsides of masking young students are real the article goes on to state the educational cost of faith coverings is far better established than the benefits of mandates this is the real issue the known cost of mandatory masking for many kids completely outweighs any
123known benefit from mitigating covet in schools a study reported in medical express express found that reports of more children being hospitalized for the delta variant have been exaggerated in an article headlined studies suggest delta does not cause more severe childhood covid the medical news agency reported that after examining 3116 hospital records from the period before delta and comparing them from to 164 records during the delta period the percentage of children with severe indicators was found to not differ greatly on september 9 florida's are not and are not is the measure of how many people each infected person tends to pass an infection to was .62 anything less than one means that things are going down the wave is over and contrary to polls i don't know where these polls come from if the vast majority
124of parents are sending their children to school without masks which i don't have anything official but everybody i have talked to has said kids aren't wearing masks in school to me that's an indicator parents do not want their children wearing masks in school you don't need any polls to tell you any different that's the poll you need to look at and as far as measles mumps rubella and any other vaccines if you were educated you would know that florida has religious exemptions so any parent that has a religious reason not to give their children those vaccines is exempt and that is florida law so any questions no he left him to know that he was spouting things that weren't true so i've cautioned everybody you know and even with me don't believe what i say
125go look for yourselves do the research thank you thank you good evening okay good evening i'm trinia cox and i'm currently serving as the first vice president of the saint petersburg naacp and i'm also an appointee to the district monitoring advisory committee which is a judicial oversight committee to monitor the segregation of the pinellas county schools and this is year 2021 and that lawsuit started in 1964. and i have seen such promising results from that committee and we've dealt with very difficult topics for years but i see promising results so when i think about that i'm very hopeful even though i'm quite alarmed what we're seeing now what we're seeing now is that there's a need for people to care for others and not just limit their attention to their immediate families let me share
126what i'm talking about here what we have on 9 11 i looked at your dashboard and saw that there were three thousand nine hundred and ninety five students who tested positively for covet and that it affected eight thousand three hundred and thirteen individuals that is amazing and they said in the impact was 35 percent and then i look again today and the numbers are still sprawling forward what needs to happen i'm not just talking about black students if i were talking about black students i'd be saying look 1.5 times likely to contact kovitch i would say to you for those who get it four times likely to be hospitalized i would tell you also three times likely to die so you have the power of life and death in your hands and i'm appreciating your
127position a little bit more now than i ever had before i think what you're gonna have to wrap yourself around is a courageous conversation not just three-minute sound bites we're going to have to have a special session to have the conversation to see how we can have mass mandates give folks who want the option of their children not wearing a mask to take that option somewhere and i want you to be courageous and responsible and provide a safe learning environment for all children thank you good evening good evening ladies and gentlemen my first time in the board meeting my name is kevin johnson i'm vice president friends of john's branch library incorporated who led the petition drive 20 years ago to save a librarian got new library i was in the hospital with covert 19.
128i was very sick i almost gave up i made it out but some people came in there with me didn't come out i wasn't going to speak the other day but my grandson who's at vanessa park high school he got quarantined papa i want to go back to school because he's in the criminal justice program and he comes from the third line of in in law enforcement i said you can't go back i think it's important to wear masks because okay we're talking about not just the part we're talking about the whole and i think that we're talking about a matter of public health and public safety and i'm going to end it right here are we going to be statesmen and states women what's wrong with having a conversation i mean if you have
129a compensation may not go my way it's obviously it's obviously i'm formats but i think i commend ms edmond and others i think you need to have this conversation because if you don't we all lose so let's have some courage because are we going to get caught up in politics or is it going to be principal thank you thank you good evening hello my name is nick carey my pronouns are he him and his and i'm here representing faith in florida there's been a lot of talk about the legality of whether or not we can implement a masked mandate but know this that not doing the right thing not requiring a mass schools in schools can and likely will land pinellas county schools in a lawsuit if you think you're following the law by abiding
130by desantis's executive order it's not law by the way then you're continuing to break federal law that protects students with disabilities and complex medical needs violates the ada our own state constitution has provisions that require that schools are safe you all know that schools aren't safe without mass we've seen the difference between this year and last we see the difference between private schools right now and public schools right now we elect you to do what is best for the schools here in pinellas don't allow the governor to make decisions that we don't want here in our community you know what the right thing to do is to protect our children's health we helped some of you get elected and when we did that we knew that you would make thoughtful decisions that are in the
131best interests of our children and we need you to stand with us we also want to recognize that what we're asking you to do requires a lot of courage there's it's a very tumultuous time fear is real there's fear of retaliation from those who seek to intimidate and bully including our governor but that's a small minority you heard one of the polls i guarantee you if you had a referendum tomorrow a mass mandate would pass easily we have the tools to fight back against this and the law is on your side i'm asking you to stand on the right side of history stand with the people who want to protect our children put maths on thank you the next group of speakers is stephanie lane josh wallace sweet megan dougherty and esther eugene good evening
132my name is josh wallace i have two daughters in pinellas county schools and i was going to come here today to talk about disappointment disappointment that there is a layered approach to safety with our students in schools it's not just masks we can do other things we can do social distancing we can do hand washing we have other ways to protect the students and the staff i know that things are out i was going to talk about that disappointment but i won't i was going to talk about the disappointment in parents having to pay for air filters to put in schools because the school district has said they will not follow that even though they say they follow the cdc guidelines and that is one of the recommendations from the cdc but i won't talk
133about that either and i won't talk about the disappointment how our social distancing is better here for adults than it is for our kids at school but i don't want to do that instead i want to say thank you thank you for giving me extra time with my daughter because she contracted covet at school 10 days 10 extra days with her because she's not at school thank you for the late nights with my oldest because she was concerned about her sister your inactions led to that thank you and thank you for giving my oldest the courage to write a letter to you and to write a letter to her school voicing her concern for the students and 13 other students write letters and hand delivered them to you yesterday thank you for giving her that
134courage and the other thing that i hope for my only wish my only hope in all of this is that the cdc can get some political appointments to dangle in front of some of you so you follow their guidance as fervently as you do the governors thank you thank you good evening chair cook and school board members esther eugene president of the saint petersburg branch naacp i'm going to read to make sure that i adhere to everything once again i stand before you because of a crisis that remains critical and of utmost importance to the naacp many this evening will speak on the need to adhere to an executive order however that order has been overruled in a court of law with the key piece of the determining factor being the measure that allows schools
135to circumvent the legislation if it is demonstrated that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest many will speak on parental rights and certainly we honor and respect those rights however let's work hard to balance those rights and the very real data provided by your dashboard from 8 25 one day after the last school board meeting until today there have been 3145 confirmed cases impacted individuals and of which those numbers 2672 are enrolled students roughly about 2.5 to 3.3 percent of total school body chair cook and vice chair long you guys you really are charged with uplifting your responsibility your commitment to your leadership and the mission and vision of the school board we must remain mission driven it is about the vision and the mission right there and on your
136website remain committed to it please it's important also that we put a voice to the students the instructors and the support staff that are currently battling this virus and then lastly i want to send respect and honor to the memory of mr josh sanders and his family really today we should have taken a moment to honor him because he died loving what he did for this county and this school system i am so disappointed that i look at one two three four school board members and not one person could second emotion but you're sitting up there with your mask on that's disappointing thank you good evening i haven't started talking i was just adjusting the mic okay i do it every time because i'm so short okay first of all i wanted to say you're
137welcome miss cook i noticed that you thanked me in the last video about the decorum in the room because that was all me stopping both sides from arguing and chanting so you're welcome because i understand that the laughter takes away from our time and so does the clapping i'd also like to point out that mr little liam took off his mask and put it right here i've been videotaping everybody's been touching this all day and multiple people have taken their mask off and put it right here and then put it right back on this is where everybody's been touching while they're talking that's what's going on i'd also like to point out that you were talking about disabled veterans i'd like to remind you had a veteran escorted out of here when she tried to
138come up and talk without her mass just a little reminder also my daughter came from pinellas park high and we were waiting on a list to take her to osceola she failed instantly when she went from pinellas park to osceola she was crying at home having anxiety talking about how all the teachers just showed videos and osceola high was actually teaching so it was really tough for her to go from that to that in the middle of school last year that's great i did withdraw both of my kids though permanently after a predatory teacher told them that they could not go to mom and dad with new problems because mom and dad only had old answers i'm still in the process of getting everything to you because i had covet i got over covin in
139two weeks my whole family should be dead because we're all completely immunocompromised with multiple immunodeficiencies and asthma and chronic bronchitis and i guess we should all be dead we're a freaking miracle up here i don't know how that all happened but i'd also like to discuss the fact that we don't need the parental bill of rights we don't need any of these things all these people talking about laws we were born with the bill of rights bill of rights says that we are allowed to say no to any medical treatment being pushed around on us we're allowed to do that and we don't need anything written after to do anything anything written after that it all supersedes to the constitution so no you don't have that rule and also if you did it i know
140a lot of parents just wouldn't if they didn't take their kids out of school they just wouldn't because they've realized now that they have rights that don't come from the governor they don't come from anybody but the fact too that you didn't get it the last time i mean i watched the video they told you three times even mr kapersky over and over again miss admin and it's edmond not edwards not edmonds it's edmond that you couldn't do it and again we still continue to do it and if it was such a big issue to the naacp they'd have been here before miss edmunds went online and asked her to ask them to come but they also had a public meeting mr kapersky with broward public comment wasn't allowed against sunshine law but also too
141i've been protesting i protested at your house i was there and if you want to know taking a picture of my car in the sunlight that's a better picture so if you'd like to it's out there it has chameleon color changing paint but if you can't clean up your own house that has rotting wood holes and a very lackluster lawn compared to the rest of it how can we expect you to do a good job you don't understand this you need to limit your comments to the board business the business of the districts not the home of any board member we're not going to talk about the home and yes you may have six seconds go ahead oh it's not gonna i just i don't think we can do six seconds so i gotta count
142to six while i'm talking so i can okay so i just want to know what you're going to do about the violations of the sunshine law and also if we can't speak here we will go to your house thank you welcome thank you good evening my name is megan doherty and what an example of decorum thank you all for your service this is the first time i've ever been to a meeting like this spoke to a meeting i watched all six hours of the meeting last month while i could i'm i was born at morton plant as well as our first presentation that woman the teacher there i went to dunedin middle dunedin high curtis fundamental i'm a member of pinellas county and i've got a first grader in pinellas county schools and i want
143to just share my personal experience because i feel like it's the only thing i can do which is i've known more people in the past month that have had kovid than in all of the last year i feel like it's knocking on our doors and we're not doing anything about it yesterday i came off quarantine with my daughter who was exposed because the one of the little girls that sits next to her and her classroom was positive and i knew her mother and her mother called me hysterically crying she couldn't believe that her daughter got positive her was positive and i said to my daughter were you wearing a mask and she said yes i said was she marrying a mask this is a six-year-old and she said no it's her choice her mother who
144i know and i didn't tell said she was wearing a mask we're asking six-year-olds i'm asking my six-year-old to make a decision with other six-year-olds about wearing a mask and it's like asking a kid do you want broccoli or donuts and they're not able to make that decision we are here to help them and allow them to go to a safe place to learn and if a mask just helps it a little bit and it doesn't mean you know we think about the mental health think of the mental health when they're quarantined this family i'm talking about has run out of coveted's days she's a school teacher the dad had it the first week the mom had it the second week and now the kid has it she's a teacher she's run out of covet
145days you know this i have friends on both sides of the aisle i don't have this conversation with them i know a woman who was covet positive had sent her kid to school and told her not to tell anyone i didn't have this conversation with them i don't i don't have these conversations but for you all i would plead with you to think and you put your head down at night are you allowing our schools to be as safe as possible these people can talk numbers all day long but let's look at the cdc let's look at what the american pediatrics association suggests you know i had a i don't have a lot of time left so i'll stop thank you good evening good evening my name is stephanie lane i have two daughters in
146the pinellas county school system one is too young to be vaccinated i'm here to urge you to enact a mask mandate last month i received a robocall from the department of health they said we're sorry your child has been exposed to covid and so she needs to stay in quarantine for x number of days ending on the date that they called me they called me the day she was supposed to end her quarantine obviously she did not quarantine thankfully she did not get sick the school never notified me ever the same month i received a text from a friend who said i'm sorry to tell you that my son has a positive for covid and i want to let you know because he sits next to your daughter in many of their classes and i
147said thank you so much neither the school nor the department of health ever contacted me the safety protocols that we have in place now are not enough they are not working we are not contract contact tracing enough and our students are paying the price additionally our kids are being dispersed excuse me to other classrooms because we have staff who were out due to covid now they're crunching even more kids into a smaller space again safety protocols not being enough we do have many awesome activities here in pinellas county schools to echo what some people said earlier unfortunately in both of my daughter's schools we are seeing many of those activities have to be curtailed drama and performance things are having to be cancelled because covid rates are so high we can't have people in auditoriums
148and we can't have children performing with no masks on so what's the point our kids aren't bothered by the masks they wear them they know it protects them it protects the people around them if our kids know it i would encourage you all to know it too so please please keep our students safe and active face covering mandate thank you thank you the next group of speakers will be kathy koenig susan wade julie russell janice sapiega and lisa perry welcome hi it's good to be here tonight and one of the reasons i'm here is because in my working lifetime i was a classroom teacher i was an educator committed to my career i taught for 35 years here in pinellas county in public schools and private schools from preschool through eighth grade i loved what
149i did it was what i was meant to do upon my retirement i substituted and i tutored for many years i guess the main reason the main thing i want to say to you tonight is how i am aching for the status of our school district during this overwhelming pandemic coveted time i have three grandchildren of course they're perfect and wonderful but i won't go down that road they attend north shore elementary in saint petersburg and their school is has a hard-working faculty they're devoted they're dedicated beyond description really they're bright they're loving but or however as many schools at this time their school needs stability it needs cohesion many many students and many countless faculty have been diagnosed with covid this school year and it just results in great confusion there has been a
150lack of establishing a safe healthy unified community so i am here to say that i believe that mandating wearing masks serves the greater good of all and through this unity the result is improved safety and health for all members of any and all school communities having said that i personally would like to thank caprice edmonds laura hine and nicole carr for their support of the suppo proposed proposed mandate of faculty staff and students wearing masks during the school day which was discussed at a recent meeting and although it didn't pass i am grateful for their support of this mandate and i am hopeful as discussion continues on this issue other board members will be inclined to enjoy excuse me to join this point of view on i think it was i don't know a few
151days ago in the paper there was an article by tampa bay columnist jeff solicek yeah time's up thank you welcome hi thank you good evening i am a speech language pathologist with the school system and i just wanted to talk for a moment about masks and speech and language development both the american academy of pediatrics and the american speech language and hearing association both state that there is no known evidence that use of face masks interferes with the speech and language development of children concerns are understandable among parents on this issue but young children are capable of using other clues such as gestures tone of voice and eye contact that can help facilitate that language development and children also get their time at home without masks to further facilitate that language development the bottom line
152is that we need to put our safety first and i commend our board members who are trying to do that tonight we know that in-person learning is best and masking will make it less likely that both children and staff will have to that will make it less likely that they will get sick or have to quarantine covid is stressing our school system at all levels from teachers to bus drivers to paraprofessionals to food service workers it's all overwhelming for our district and i worry about the health of our district moving forward i understand that there's a real fear of retaliation from a vocal minority of people who do not support masks but the majority of the community is on your side and they do support masks the law supports masks and so does the science
153i'd like you to join the other florida school boards and incidentally all the catholic schools in pinellas county are also requiring masks at this time please join them and do everything you can to help keep our students and our staff safe thank you before you leave thank you could you identify yourself i'm julie rosstall okay thank you and the last speaker with cat was kathy koenig all righty thank you and i'm going to remind people i just got to know it please remind them to introduce themselves jan sapiga from dunedin and i want to thank you for allowing me to speak this evening i would like to say to caprice edmond thank you so much along with dr nicole carr and laura hine for supporting a mask mandate for board members lisa kane carol cook
154bill dudley and eileen long currently you do not support a mask mandate and don't seem to really care about the facts or the data that's presented you won't even support a special meeting to discuss mandates or other options for mitigating the covet virus so since facts don't really seem to change your mind i'm just going to say this one thing the number of coveted cases so far this school year in the four county region of pinellas hillsboro pasco and hernando counties has nearly surpassed the number of cases for the entire 2021 school year this board is charged with the safety of all pinellas county students whenever a child is exposed to covet at school it puts the entire family and that family's entire support system at risk for contracting covid my husband and i have
155four grandchildren attending three different schools in pinellas county so far each of them has been quarantined a week because they were exposed to covet by a covert positive child in their classroom my ten-year-old who was cheering me on to come tonight grandson said please tell the board that not even half of the kids in my class are wearing masks all school board members need to look beyond the immediate ramifications of the rampant spread of covet in the classroom you need to look beyond what's just happening in the schools if you the school board isn't doing everything possible to contain this pandemic within your jurisdiction then aren't you morally and ethically responsible for the illness hospital and medical costs and possible death of members of pinellas county community who contract covid from your unmasked students all
156we need is for one of you one of you to have a change of heart miss edmond hein and carr please stay in the fight and know that your efforts are greatly appreciated by we citizens who care more about the greater good than by making a huge point about our right to choose thank you thank you welcome hi i'm lisa perry and i am a community activist as many people i work with off and on i'm here today as a pinellas parent i have two young children too young to get vaccinated i know something about courageous leadership as i have led a lot of efforts in collaboration with coalition partners trying to keep our community safe through covet 19. and i want to just first of all say thank you to caprice edmond for her
157courageous leadership and i hope that courageous leadership and fighting for the safety of our children is something that spreads and that i see more of from from those of you who may sit with us at the end of the day because i will tell you that my daughter has not been in school since the middle of kindergarten because she is immunocompromised she cannot return to school safely i will also beg the question what has changed from last year in 2020 as we started the school year i hosted with my organization a virtual event with dr grego who was who is very in favor of all of the mitigation efforts letting parents know that the pinellas county school board was going to do everything that they could to take care of our kids and keep them
158safe in school what i would like to know is what what changed the tune when our numbers are three times what they were at that point when we have a variant who's affecting children more so than others okay and i am trying to really talk slowly and calmly but i am very upset about what i heard earlier about mental health and the way that we talk to our children because i have had to have three conversations with my daughter who is sitting at home right now not able to join her kids to keep herself safe because her leadership is failing her the people she counts on for a good education one of her friends just passed away so let's talk about how do we talk about mental health to our kids and i and i
159really feel that there are simple mitigation efforts such as masks such as social distance spacing okay in the classrooms just contact tracing these items should be implemented right now and it is inexcusable that they are not available to make the school system safe that is your job that is why we have elected you okay you represent us and the kids and you know that and in most times i do believe that you do actually do a really great job in our school systems i have been very proud and grateful for your service and right now i am just going to ask you to please lead by the not lead by the example of the power but by the power of our example and join other school districts around the state who are standing up against
160policies that are killing our children and also putting thank you the next group of speakers will be patricia moser david jones nancy valardi nick wright and rod quillets just come on up some speakers aren't may not be here so it's even more important that you give your name welcome nancy velardi on august 2nd i asked for protections for the teachers through an mou here we are a month and a half later and i'm still struggling to bring myself to sign this document because of the level of protection reflected in that agreement while the numbers of cases have lowered a bit we are still in the throes of a surge and we have already seen over four 4 600 cases in our schools with 8 500 having to isolate or quarantine at one point or another
1613600 of those positive cases are children finding substitutes is a daily struggle and our mental health professionals are being pulled from their important duties of caring for students to cover classes more than 100 teachers have resigned or retired early since schools opened because they feel feel too vulnerable and they feel that you don't care for them we need to slow the spread in our schools and we can only do that with increased protocols and protections and this begins with you and a simple conversation our last mou had a minimum distance of for physical separation of three feet while this was not a great number compared to the recommended six it was at least a number we have no number this year which means our students and teachers can be jammed into small rooms with no
162social distancing we have no strong recommendations for virtual options for training and meetings for the teachers and staff it is left to the discretion of administrators and while i am a strong believer in common sense used to make decisions of this nature sadly common sense is not as common as we all hope it is clear language is needed to avoid crowded meetings and trainings for our educators mixing cohorts is foolhardy at this juncture as well as pushing in for specialized instruction it interferes with contact tracing we have so much access to technology and we sing the praises of it constantly why not use it creatively to protect both educators and students from unnecessary risk an abundance of caution has rarely been regretted especially when it comes to our health there have been days recently when
163i've become discouraged but generally i still believe that we can become true partners in improving pinellas county in many ways we have a new opportunity to work toward a better system of assessment and accountability after the governor's announcement today and i look forward to those discussions let's start by showing the employees that both of our organizations have an equal interest in protecting them from unnecessary risk let's make the extra effort to assure them that they are valued and they are respected and let's do it together my vision for this district is creative innovative collaboration that results in a joint celebration of higher learning opportunities and even finer ins thank you good evening david jones classroom assistant thank you throughout the past school year i currently have served as a classroom assistant i've assisted many teachers
164at several schools throughout the district during this time there are many occasions where the teachers will be forced to conduct their classroom lessons and activities without anyone to assist them i have inquired about substituting for child development associate position where a staff member had an emergency or needed to take off for a doctor's appointment the position was only one or two days an announcement was posted but no one filled the position leaving the teacher without anyone to assist her this happens a lot throughout the county i inquired to human resources about the question and they said to substitute for cda was changed years ago and the requirements such as the position would be filled by instruction or substitute bpk and kindergarten classes can be very challenging in many ways in addition to instructing and dealing
165with the needs of each student the teachers have planning grading forms filling out teachers are constantly moved on the move with projects they have to do it all they often left alone without any assistance not only is this detrimental to the teachers it creates problems for the students there are many situations and challenges that can occur with a small child for example a student working on his her ipad doing a lesson encounters problems but there is no one to provide additional help as the teacher is trying to instruct or assist other students the student is left alone when assisted when assisted present the student has a chance of getting needed in timely manner timely help thus learning continues and an instructional time is not wasted another example of situation which happens quite often while following
166the line outside the classroom a student gets upset with one of his peers and run off around the corner the teacher has to stop in line make the students wait while he or she deals with locating the runaway student again the teacher is left alone to deal with this issue a lot of students coming from activities for lunch time having problems with washing their hands because the faucet is too far to reach where the soap dispenser is out once again the teacher is alone and instructional time is lost in additional serving in the classroom i'm asking do you consider allowing classroom assistance to accompli to accompany classes on emergency basis for a cda when a shortage of when a cda is trying to take the position is not available i'm asking for you to consider
167a classroom assistant to come in for emergency i've been i've approached many other teachers and they've they are for this and also they've asked also that to add to this a classroom assistant to a company in case there's a shortage of volunteers and other staff to chaperone separate them from right thank you yeah right thank you third time's the time good evening good evening pardon me good evening martin chair members of the board and dr greco greg go and staff i think today i had the pleasure of holding three restorative circles with my classes and i was forced to admit by some of my students that i love my students and i said i love you guys and one little girl said to me by the way i mean a small teenager mr wright do
168you mean you like us i said yes i do like you i like all my classes like all my students and i said that to them because of this i'm saddened when one of my students become ill and have to leave the classroom i'm sad when there is hurt to any of them a friend of mine wrote an article in the challenger weekly challenger this week and i quote this from go davis's article in the challenger covet 19 especially the delta variant are viruses of opportunity they seek hosts irrespective of political affiliation religious orientation wealth or other social cultural variables that divide us however public policy influences infection rates to the extent individuals in the lower socioeconomic strata tend to have underlying conditions conducive to higher rates of infections this was brought up earlier this
169afternoon also the pinellas school district continues to enact public policy that adversely impacts scholars of all ethnicities with deleterious consequences gentlemen and ladies i stand here before you this afternoon like a month ago and i stand here today asking you begging you to please do your duties three members of the board this evening all in the past and one member this evening try to get the rest of you to go along and support her in her aim to have a discussion now i see four of you not wearing masks so you're safe enough in my classroom not all my students are safe okay i found this on the web for most perspectives i'm sorry unless alexa is talking to me okay i apologize so caprice edmonds thank you she took up some of your time
170good evening hi my name is patricia moser thank you and i am a mother of two that go to pinellas county schools i'm also a nurse so my background is nursing and i'm very passionate still about obviously public health and this is a public health emergency this isn't just a choice and this is other people putting their their rights above the rights of everybody else is it's not at any point i just don't understand and i don't understand where you all came from in a physician last year to be protective of our kids to this year to like just winging it and letting it go there is no contact racing there is no social distancing and whatever is reflective on the county counts and the school as far as transmission there is none because we
171hear from parents all the time hey by the way your kid plays basketball with my son who got coveted who was on a bus to jamerson and all those kids got exposed none of those parents were notified for 10 days and it never even hit it never even reflected on the school numbers so whatever numbers that we're seeing 3 000 supposedly between last meeting and this i think probably double it and then the impact of what that has not just on the kids that are there and the kids that have to be that have to quarantine it's the trickle effect of what happens to the rest of the family so you're putting the rest of the family at risk they're going to have to take off to quarantine they might lose their jobs they might
172lose their housing it's just such a selfish position from where you all come from and you have the power we elected you are our civil servants you are there to serve us to serve your constituents and i'm here advocating for my children who can't speak and if they would speak you know what my daughter says she wants to fire grego that was what she said i want to write him a letter mama i want to tell him he's fired because he's not protecting us why is it that adults can't put a mask on she went to kindergarten and she put a mask on she goes to play dates and she has to wear a mask she has no problem with it i'm also a nurse i've worn a mask in the or for nine hours
173in a row it does nothing to me to protect my patients and protect the other people that i work with so all of this talk look at the numbers look at the cdc guidelines listen to the experts i don't understand why this is falling on deaf ears i just feel that you are negligent in your positions and this negligence is going to continue to go down because you're affecting an entire community it's a public health issue it's not a school issue it's not just a mass issue it's the public health and whatever you decide affects the entire community and you live in our community and i can say that i commend caprice i am so sorry that she is being bullied by other people potentially here on the school board and being bullied by community
174members that's garbage and i feel so bad for her but you know what i'm gonna come for you all and i'm going to come for your seats and i'm going to rally my friends and i'm going to rally as much as we can to remove the thank you good evening good evening my name is rod quillets thank you i am from st petersburg i'm an infectious disease specialist clinical pharmacist and i'm the father of three three sons who have who are in the pinellas county school system one of whom is too young to be vaccinated that's right so i mean i've you know throughout this crisis i've i've you know i've been i've worked with with our physicians our nurses our team to help treat patients who are who are you know who are in
175the hospital with severe coven 19 to try to try to stay on top of all this you know constantly changing data as we're learning more and we're trying to judge the quality of the information that we have in order to do the best for the people who are already at a life-threatening stage and what what i'm asking is for everyone in the community including the school board to respect that the decisions that are made affect everyone and thankfully our children are not as vulnerable to kova 19 as older people or people who are more immunocompromised in general but children are dying they're you know and they certainly have the ability to transfer the disease to other more vulnerable people who may we may wind up caring for and often unsuccessfully so you know we talked
176about early at the beginning of this meeting about about freedom week and about the sacrifices that our founders made we're asking for a negligible sacrifice in terms of wearing a piece of cloth our kids are much more resilient than we give them credit for when we think that they can't rise up in a challenge in order to help protect themselves their friends their families you know so let's just use some common sense let's let's listen to the to the experts right we have advice from the cdc and yes you know what we have are people who've dedicated their lives to trying to help us in situations like this they're not all knowing we're all learning as because because this is a novel virus so you know recommendations do shift over time but we have to
177go with the best scientific data that we have and when we lack the best data we go with we go with the best consensus until we get more data and we revise and right now masks are part of the mitigation strategy that we need to be utilizing in our schools thank you very much thank you our next group of speakers will be e brenda lewis amy boyle denise del broon kelly palmatico and marjorie descovich 94. welcome thank you i am a retired pinellas county school employee i worked for the district for 26 years 22 of which i worked in transportation i have always been a cheerleader for the bus drivers and i will continue to be this year there are 400 car routes we now have 90 open routes on any given day dispatch has
178been covering 120 to 130 routes daily it's the district's job transportation's job to make sure that we transport children effectively in a timely and safe manner i don't know quite how that's unfolding at this point with a 30 percent shortage dr grego you said that you receive a call every night from dispatch i would urge you to ask how many open routes were there today how many routes were uncovered how many call offs were there and get sound information because it's sorely needed we hire new hires at 15.19 an hour a five-year driver makes 15 and 20 cents an hour how does that work a 26 year driver makes 18.84 sets i would challenge any one of you to raise a family to buy groceries when as the general rule in pinellas county rent is
179hundred dollars a month do you wonder why you don't have drivers today i know a lot of information came out i also know that in a few minutes this entire room's going to be filled with bus drivers i think it's ironic that information was delivered today equalized pay the 26 year driver after the pay is equalized gets 16.98 26 years safety how many students are on the bus now they're coming back to school social justice thank you and before you leave could you give us your name please absolutely no just right now tell us what your name is brynda lewis thank you hi mr person that's okay good thank you welcome hi good evening my name is kellie jean pometico and first of all i want to thank you all very much for your service
180i am the parent of a second grader who is attending who should be attending an art program at perkins elementary school i'm a homeowner i'm a taxpayer and i was grown and raised in pinellas county i went to northeast high school class of 94. mr dudley was my driver's ed teacher we won't talk about my driving record though we do elect all of you to do what's best for our schools and for our children and we just ask that you please do that please put in place a mask mandate for the 2021-22 school year i do want to speak a little bit about my experience as well my son went to school all last year wore a mask every day we no one in our families had covid and my son does have a primary
181immune deficiency and he was very excited about going to school this year and he went to the first two days of school and he came home and he was in tears at that night because he said 13 out of 17 students were not wearing masks and that he did not feel safe at school he now has anxiety he has a therapist he's seen a psychiatrist he goes to school at home i cannot work a lot of parents that are not able to show up are because they're homeschooling their children and they're trying to work a full-time job on top of that and they're not able to come here and speak and to trish moser's point there are a lot of we have a lot of numbers 3 000 children with covid and there's no record
182no contact tracing no one's telling anyone so that number has to be double triple quadruple it has to be because they're so especially for our asymptomatic kiddos things are worse now than they were when this whole thing started when we were on lockdown when we were wearing masks all children's are now seeing a hundred new pediatric coveted cases in the er a week that's what i discovered when i when my son told me he was too scared to go to school i needed to find out if his fears were affounded or unfounded and because i didn't want to encourage his anxiety but the truth of the matter is that there are a lot more pediatric cases and that i didn't feel safe sending him there either and i think you know do no harm is
183the most important thing and i think that it would be really i think it would be the right thing to do to please have our kids wear masks because it's not going to hurt the children who don't wear them but it is hurting the children who are not wearing them i think that made sense thank you so much thank you good evening good evening good evening my name is denise del broon i'm a parent of two fifth graders who are not old enough to be vaccinated i should have been home today for homework for dinner for bedtime but instead i'm here four of you have chosen to ignore what is happening in our schools so i'm here to tell you what's happening in our schools five weeks in no social distancing no outdoor lunches no
184outdoor instruction no separation sick children parents not being contacted so again five weeks in you can choose to ignore this but parents are talking to you this is what's happening i have emailed i have called multiple members i have had thank you caprice member edmunds for addressing some of our concerns but again i have contacted many of you this is what's happening five weeks in five weeks ago you chose to ignore this what will you do today when parents are telling you we are not being contacted we have had children positive cases in our classroom not one parent as parents we are buying air filters okay we are contacting each other we are creating spreadsheets to try to mitigate and manage this but nobody on this board not nobody four of you are choosing to
185ignore this and ignore us we voted you in yes my ten-year-olds cannot vote but i will vote and i vote at every single election it is your job to protect them your job they are minors if you're not concerned about litigation be concerned have some kind of have some kind of moral judgment to say is it okay to infect any child it doesn't how many children any child that is that is affected by this is too many we are waiting on you to act so now i go home to my ten-year-olds to tell them hey bud no meeting you were right nothing is going to change not tonight thank you thank you good evening my name is marjorie deskovich thank you thank you for allowing the opportunity to speak my the person before me she's
186got such passion and i certainly admire that i think i have the same and she said a couple of things the number one she votes i vote too and i do not vote for mass and here's why i have two kids they're twins they're gorgeous and they one of them has an autoimmune disorder from strep so and he doesn't get strep at any time he's exposed to it causes all kinds of problems you can only imagine the problems that come up when he's exposed to it and can't get it's on his face all day long i with the mask on i can't get the kid off antibiotics my other son has seasonal allergies which caused major problems for him last year because he every time you know he's got something going on he ended up
187with sores in his nose to the point where i had to pull him from school for two weeks just to allow that to heal so although i understand the passion and the concern everyone has for everyone's kids i don't think there's a person in this room that is not concerned for the kids and i know all of you are too i think you also have to think of all the kids it's not just one or two and it's not a public health for everyone this is not a one size fits all i applaud the decision that you've made to allow parents and in some cases the students to make those decisions and i think if people are concerned they definitely should wear that mask i am one who definitely does not want my kids to
188wear the mask it's more harmful than anything i don't need any more time that's it thank you very much thank you good evening good evening my name is amy boyle thank you i have two amazing grandchildren in pinellas county schools with whom i spent the last year and a half excuse me doing facilitating virtual school and then my pcs which was a wonderful option for the time in order to keep them safe and healthy for pinellas county schools to just throw open the doors in august of 2021 when numbers were at a record pace with the with the cases going up was just it was incredible to me i'm also a substitute teacher who is i'm on a waiver right now because of my concern for for my health and for my family's health and
189i get calls every single day i feel like we're sending kids into it's like russian roulette with a virus what we're sending them into today and it's it's it's not doing anybody any justice in terms of being able to to learn teachers and students are both suffering and there's no it's not getting back to normal it's not even a new version of it's disruptive to learning and a major hindrance to both teaching and learning i'm not telling y'all anything you don't already know about any of this what i truly don't understand is why you won't do the absolute minimum to protect all these innocent people who rely on each one of you to protect them every single day please mandate maths in school with medical opt-out i heard what the lady before me said i
190understand if there are legitimate issues then i'm sure she could get a medical opt out and do something about the contact tracing because i've heard time and time again about people finding out the day that their child can come back to school that they were supposed to be quarantining prior to that thank you the next group of speakers would be marty gonzalez lisa perry eric atwater lowell heinke and julia heinke good evening good evening my name is marty gonzalez and i grew up in st petersburg coach dudley was also in my driver's head i think he probably taught half of st petersburg to drive by now i am here today good evening ladies and gentlemen i'm here today to speak out against the mass mandate and i also want to thank you for supporting the
191florida parents bill of rights and our ability and to empower us to choose what is best for our children i have a nine-year-old son special needs he's dyslexic and the mass mandate having him wear a mask last year was awful trying to have him learn just in a normal setting is bad enough but then to put a mask on that the anxiety that we have we are on the route to getting a medical exemption however the anxiety i advocate for my children my child as well and i respect these parents that come in here and talk about their children but my child wakes up in the middle of the night because he's afraid of the masks a lot of parents say these kids are resilient kids are resilient but my personal experience is that i
192don't want my son waking up middle night afraid i am teaching faith over fear i'm teaching freedom over fear we have the responsibility to take care of our own health and that is all we're asking is the choice to do what we want to do for our children what we think is correct for ourselves and our families so thank you very much for your time and have a lovely evening thank you good evening yes thank you all for allowing me to speak eric i ordered thank you from south side st p i got a son that's in panacea county school and you know my thoughts on all the kids and you know like you know we got to put politics beside and use you know i'm saying what's real and coming up on the south
193side my dad taught me not to be selfish you know i'm saying i was taught to feed people and help people and you know in the work and i used to ask them why i'm working for them you know i'm saying you say because they i'm fortunate to have and you have so i sit back and think when i speak i try to know what i'm saying tell folks not to really just think about yourself i ain't just gonna say that my i want my son to be safe i want all kids to be safe you know i'm saying that when people come to my restaurant and be wanting me to hold a sign up and vote for them you know my brother mike used to really get involved in that and i kind of
194said bro they it's too much phoning and too much fake and it's not really real so i stayed out of it but you know these last couple of years you know i'm saying i'm able to vote and get involved and it's still a lot of phoning and a lot of faith you know i'm saying and i just want people to really think about their self don't say and say you won't be selfish or you won't look at no one's saying for the bigger picture you know i'm saying you know i watched some movies and i watched them in pinellas county school of martin luther king and all the movies you know black people fighting for this and fighting for that but to come here today to see asian rich people pope people all trying to
195say you know i'm saying i'm the same accord you know what i'm saying make me feel like you know martin did something you know i'm saying wrong people together you know what i'm saying to you know what i'm saying fight well for what's right you know you know i didn't really believe in the mass thing and didn't believe in that but when people in my family started dying and folks started getting sick and kids dying and yeah just a sad situation you know and i know for a fight capri is from south and she remember nobody bullying her and i salute her for standing up no i'm saying because it's a whole group of y'all and for her to stand up for something that's right don't say it's time to just do right and i'm
196asking y'all to go home and pray about it you know i'm saying that you don't make the right decision no i'm saying for the kids not for yourself and not for no check i feed people every day for free you know i'm saying kids po people and a lot of rich folks too i feed them for free because that's what my daddy taught me so y'all do the right thing thank you good evening hello my name is lowell bruce heinke i go by bruce i'm a radiologist in bay care and md and we've been seeing just rampant raging cases of covid as a radiologist i see this you know a lot of cases where there have hit somewhat of a peak but actually i'm not sure that it'll plateau right now about 25 percent of
197population are under 19 but about 30 percent of new cases are in that age group so that rate is going up and so it is definitely a threat it's a threat to the school staff about 25 percent of school staff have medical pre-existing conditions and as far as like children's hospital their icu is at peak volume and they dr perno at children's hospital you know urges mask mandates especially since you know the vaccine is not available yet and so you know we have to mitigate the risk of of even asymptomatic carriers we don't know the long-term effects of covet so you know when people lose their sense of smell and taste those are basically nerve endings coming from the brain so you know there's brain people reported brain fog people's lungs will probably never return
198to normal after getting this so and it's just running it's you know florida is so bad as far as you know its rates and there has been a study of they can get the rate down to about one percent of transmission if masks are used that was a study of 114 school districts that had mask policies they were able to get it down that alters the need for masks it actually allows people to quarantine in school like if they're you know if you get the transmission rate low and do contact tracing they can people quarantined can actually if they're asymptomatic stay in school with masks so until the thank you the next group of speakers is ginger brengel mary gressel christian strecker annette wiley and eva kiss good evening my name is ginger bringle i'm
199a library media technology specialist here with pinellas county schools and after hearing the slew of misinformation being spewed forth tonight i actually changed my topic at the last minute because i believe that now more than ever we need to bring back our strong library programs school librarians teach research skills digital citizenship critical thinking and the ability to evaluate online information and differentiate fact from fiction in addition all school library impact studies prove that strong library programs produce students with better scores in reading stronger information literacy skills and higher graduation rates unfortunately in recent years partly due to the pandemic our district has chosen to relegate librarians into the role of technology technicians something by the way that i did not get my master's in library science to do this job sucks up more than half
200of our days now we are also being forced to cover classes they are being placed in our libraries and so we are being exposed to hundreds of students a day who are not in our herd so to speak we are also required to act as test proctors all year long something else that takes away from our job as librarians in fact our recent change was made to our job description they threw the ts in there without asking us for our input so we are now library technology information or library media technology specialist i can't even say it's so many words but you know what i'm a librarian and i will always be a librarian i'm asking that you place a full-time technology technician in every single school at the high school level we need an
201assistant to that technology technician and allow the librarians to step up and teach our students and to do what we do best and that is to instill a love of reading and to teach them those skills of information literacy let us do this so we can have future generations of educated citizens thank you good evening good evening my name is mary gresley and i teach special education at richard o'jacobson technical high school tonight i want to talk to you about my concern about masks and my concern is simply this we need to do something as a district to help get the spread of covet under control masks are essential in helping to reduce the spread of covid myself along with my colleagues here tonight believe that they do in fact help decrease the spread of
202covid not just that but they also decrease other illnesses as well such as the common cold and flu that we have in our district every single year i know that i didn't miss any school last year because i didn't get cold or the flu because i wore a mask and because of the cleaning safety protocols we had in place there's no virtual option this year there's no alternative plan if students become sick what if the teachers become sick what if the teacher is admitted to the hospital because they had an underlying condition that was exacerbated by covid or being exposed to a student that doesn't wear masks who carry those illnesses to school maybe that student didn't know that they were a carrier maybe they knew that they were sick but came to school anyways
203because they felt it was important to be there maybe they just didn't care but whatever the reason masks are an important part of keeping our teachers support professionals bus drivers and substitutes safe and able to continue our work to help educate our students we as a district are a leader in florida other districts look at us as to what we're doing in situations but now i feel like we're just sitting on our hands and shrugging our shoulders and saying we don't want to rock the boat teachers are dying they're leaving for other careers or retiring because they don't want to sub you state you care about our health and well-being please i implore you have a discussion regarding the use of masks in school we trust you to protect us and keep us safe to
204provide us with safe and secure working conditions that help this and that help this district run smoothly and appearance and perception is everything please again have a discussion open a dialogue with each other what's the big deal about talking about it make a decision regarding this you're not going to make everyone happy we know that but that's the beauty of being a human being you don't have to like or disagree anything that anyone else wants or has but when it comes to a public health crisis we should all be willing to thank you good evening hello again kristen strecker thank you as i'm sure you all know a few people have mentioned this but what the are not situation is and i just wanted to kind of give it like perspective because a few people
205have mentioned that and it kind of goes hand in hand with a few of the parents saying they got the phone call after the quarantine period was over which says your kid didn't get sick it doesn't just being exposed doesn't guarantee your kid is going to get sick so i do think we should look at the bigger picture but that's a different topic just for comparison measles are not is 12 to 18 meaning one person can infect 12 to 18 people pertussis is 12 to 17. rubella is six to seven chickenpox is ten to twelve as i'm sure you are aware the current level of covid are not in florida is less than one yes you heard that right it's currently less than one that so that means like i said and these parents kind
206of reiterated the what my point is just because one kid in the class is symptomatic doesn't mean everybody in the class is going to get sick i think kids should stay home if they're sick absolutely but quarantining healthy kids and you know just creating mayhem is not the answer okay anyway i went off my little tangent here oh okay so the last five weeks our cases have actually been dropping in florida if you actually look at the numbers instead of listening to the media and they've yeah the cases have been dropping after the last five weeks even with all the testing that's going on for kids to go back to school and people to go back to work it's still dropping and we should be celebrating that we're finally heading in the right direction but
207of course now we're back here you know going through this whole thing over again over and over and over anyway let's see like i said before i want to talk about i do think we should have discussions about mitigation efforts but the ones that actually make sense you know like i said not quarantining healthy people not the contact tracing we know is useless because these kids get together outside of school they get together on the playground like they're they're mixing and mingling all day long so i think contact tracing is very hard with kids i also think masking is very hard with kids when you send a kid in a mask they're not wearing it properly we all know that and i think for parents to be putting this pressure on their children and their
208own fear is very sad to me i really i think that's sad i think we need to look at the actual media i mean instead of the media look at the actual data and try to just take this you know bigger picture approach thank you good evening i'm annette wiley i'm back again it's the second time i've come back and as i said the last time i did resign not because of my health but because i cannot be a part of the lies and we've heard from teachers and i'm going to let you hear from a teacher later but right now i want to take a moment of silence to remember the educators and staff workers in schools 68 adults have died including a teacher from here one teacher from here but there's been more
209because i've been to other funerals but right now i'd like us to take a moment of silence and remember josh sanders from pinellas county schools there have been 14 children who have died in in florida i look around and i came here tonight thinking i would see leadership and the only person i saw leadership from was caprice edmond and it makes me sad because you represent children and that's who i'm here for the children i come with an experience of 35 years working with special needs kids last time i heard you listen to people make up excuses and reasons on masks and then i heard doctors and nurses from all children's come and beg you beg you to mandate masks and instead of listening to the experts the one that went to school the ones
210that are incubating these kids you ignored them and you hide behind a governor who is a bully we have bullying programs in pinellas county schools i spent the first half of my teaching career at hamilton distant i started teaching with bill corbett i'm astonished and quite frankly discouraged for kids i come tonight to advocate for the safety of all staff and students within the building but especially my students with down syndrome these children have heart and lung issues i have a child that was in my school that's five years old he ended up in the hospital he was diagnosed with covid and leukemia he has siblings in school his siblings now are putting him at risk because we don't mandate masks what about the asd child who has a legitimate concern about a mass because
211of sensory what about the child that's fighting cancer all of these children require us as the adults to lead i don't wear this mask anymore to protect myself i'm vaccinated i wear it to show respect for those who can't be vaccinated or choose not to be vaccinated thank you our next group of speakers will be patrick moogan sharon mitchum theresa frost catherine stevens and renee chia hello i'm patrick mugan i teach at pinellas park middle school i'm one of your employees i'd first like to say that the response tonight to just the suggestion of having a discussion about possible mitigation and safety strategies the fact that was not passed is a joke there is no social distancing happening on campuses you know this there is no mass mandate you know this there is no contact
212tracing that is anything real and you know this but i walk out there and i can use the water fountain in my school the water fountains are turned off why to stop the spread how's that stopping the spread we have no water fountains on just one water bottle filler for 1 300 people on campus daily so first of all can we get some water now after we get some water i'd like some of your time so i'm going to bring the workers perspective again as i often do when i speak to you and remind you that your teachers work based on a contract that you agree to a contract is an agreement right okay my contracted hours are 8 50 a.m to 4 20 p.m during the school week i have outside of my classroom
213time 460 minutes to myself to do my job now if you think to yourself oh that's a lot of time it's about seven and a half hours mr mugen you're absolutely right and if the only thing i had to do in that seven and a half hours was great and plan i wouldn't be as upset as i am right now but ask any teacher we lose at least one planning period a week now i'm talking middle school now we can't speak high school elementary we lose at least one planning period a week to either force plc or some other compulsory meeting at least 30 minutes a week minimum to iep meetings and 504 meetings not that they're not important but it's just facts those that's time we're losing now if i'm only grading for each
214student one minute one minute per week per student that's 144 minutes make a couple parent phone calls there's 20 minutes heaven forbid i use the restroom there's another 20 minutes updating the standards on my board i teach two classes so i got to do that twice so that's 50 minutes a week putting my stuff on canvas which isn't required however administrators throughout your district are telling teachers that it is we're talking 10 minutes a day 60 minutes iss work and absentee work at least minimum five minutes a day but definitely more so 25 minutes i'm left with 47 minutes but i'm not done because i still need a plan for my two classes i still make copies of preparing materials i still need to complete iep planning notes i still need to complete data requests
215i still need to respond to emails i still need to clean up and organize my classroom i still need to share work with my colleagues isalina thank you we don't have time welcome good evening my name is theresa frost thank you and i have failed as a community leader because this is the first time i've ever come to a pinellas county school board meeting and i am here because i am so concerned as a community leader and a religious leader i am the director of youth and children at a local church here in pinellas county you see most of my youth they are vaccinated but we still require masks for every event that we have because there are members in our community in our church and in our families that are either too young or
216immunocompromised and cannot get the vaccine the delta variant has been running rampant in our state and i could sit here and tell you the data and the numbers but there's this thing called the cdc and the who and you know your own website has all of that for you but i do want to say is that i'm doing all that i can to keep my youth safe i'm doing all that i can to keep my kids who i love dearly safe they get masked every meeting that we have however you our school board members are refusing to do the same thing and that is hindering my ministry my youth understand that wearing our masks are keeping us safe why can't you even have a conversation there is already many places in florida that have lessened
217that have put in mass mandates the fact that you won't even have a conversation about contact tracing i didn't even know about the vent thing you should parents should not be buying filters maybe you should be providing that for your school and i'm going to echo that guy provide water to our kids and contact tracing i think that all of this is important and should be part of the conversation and the fact that when caprice edmund asked for that there was silence that is not okay caprice i want to thank you so much for not backing down for doing what is right and using your voice laura hine and someone else i think people have said y'all have done stuff in the past again i have failed and not come to meetings in the past
218thank you but for the rest of you i just ask you to step up and have a conversation that's what i'm asking for right now maybe the next time i'll be here telling you that we should definitely be mandating masks but we should definitely have a conversation to track our kids to to make sure that we are doing all that we can to keep safe i just learned that one of our own pinellas county educators died because of kovid and also i heard the t none of y'all went to his funeral that's not okay people are dying that's not okay thank you i think we need to clear something up but keep hearing that we're not willing to have a conversation we're not willing to have a conversation and i'm not i'm not picking on
219you the request was to have a special meeting to discuss it we are going to be discussing it at our workshop next tuesday and so we will be discussing it we have been discussing it and so it's not as though we've said oh well you know so we will be discussing it some more and clarifying things that have been said that some of us may have questions about and also clearing up some of the things that may or may not the impressions may or may not be true as to what's happening so we're gonna we are going to have a conversation yeah and yeah another one as she said yes so come on out welcome there was other people in front of me i was supposed to be the fifth one so some of them
220may have gone home and so if they come in we'll take them in whatever the order that's part of the reason why we're asking people to give names okay okay thank you renee chia again from dunedin hello hello i believe you've had the conversation we've all been having this conversation over and over and over here so since we're doing it again i'd encourage everyone to go to the pinellas county florida kova data website and i shared this last time we were here anyone can pull it up on their phone last time we were here the infection rates were rising you could see the curve and it was sort of they were still going up right now we're now coming down at a stark v rate you know like all of these spikes do it's coming
221down and once again if you go from new cases instead of talking about the case data and you go to deaths once again you can see it's been flatlined there's been zero deaths in pinellas county since june 2nd zero so this is pinellas county data so anyway i don't interrupt you so anyway i think you're doing the right thing thank you very much and the reason i really came here tonight the reason i came here tonight was to talk about crt once again and i know i talked about it according to the contract problem that i saw on that one agenda item but as you know from the last time i was here i was aware of some materials that were in the classroom and i have gone through your process i've submitted the materials
222for review and this process is going pretty slow i'm hoping to get something back hopefully pretty soon but it's been since the last meeting and i still haven't received a response back that's a pretty slow response rate as this teacher continues to teach that curriculum in their classroom and that's a concern to me i would still like to encourage you to have a task force to look through all of the county curriculum and again i would be happy to be a parent on that task force you know my degree is in cultural anthropology and i have a certificate in applied cultural anthropology from chico state i've written ethnographies i understand cultural anthropology and crt is not cultural diversity training it's very different it is marxist rabble it has a very different tone it has a
223very different agenda and it is not objective science like anthropology should be and that's very offensive to me and the first time i came here when i did list out you know a number of things that i would identify as marxist rabble and i said a few things it was not hyperbole those are literally things that were said to my child in a classroom in california all white males raise your hand the second amendment was written so that white men could have guns all of those different things were said to my child that's not cultural anthropology that's not history that's not the constitution thank you our next group of speakers will be barbara du michelle sarah miles alicia santana brad de court and christina goodard hi i'm barbara dumoschel welcome i spoke again before and
224there are two trains of thought one is the media the government it's just not true a mask cannot keep out a microorganism whether it's cloth or paper a microorganism goes right through a mass sales right through it not only that when you're wearing a mask it's open on the sides microorganisms go right through and it's exasperating sickness and disease because a child is touching their face they're touching everything they're touching their mask they're adjusting their mask not just a child anybody and you're actually making it worse for yourself the top doctors in the world and scientists in the world are being censored and there is right now it the curtain is going to roll up and there's going to be a lot of shock and awe because the science that you're quoting is fake it's
225false it's not from the top scientists in the world by the way 18 countries have put a pause on the vaccine because of the real data that it is causing disease and sickness and actually causing covid so sixty percent of the people that are going in the hospital are admitted because they were double baxed they're they're they're getting covered from the vaccine that is the real science you know they wear they wear masks in surgery and in the or my daughter is a nurse in the or and also on covid wing she's got a religious exemption for for all of this mandated stuff but they wear it there because they don't want the nose droplets and the saliva getting into the wound it's not to prevent the spread of any bacteria or virus virus goes
226right through a mask you can shake your heads but go go and look up the front line doctors two thousand doctors in the united states of america who have been censored and you can't find them by the way on the internet now it's very sad but you know okay i just let me see what else about the mask i mean the mask is just ridiculous and it's causing sickness it's causing disease it's causing psychological you know you can't just listen to one of your chosen picked experts from a from the educational system who are just listening to all the media and all the fake news and all the fake science it's really maddening is that my buzzer that's a shame is that really my buzzer i have to stop oh okay that was somebody's phone
227i don't know i'm just oh 10 seconds oh boy critical race theory that is the most horrendous thing that has ever come down the pike in the united states of america oh by the way now your time's up thank you good evening good evening my name is sarah miles i stand before you today as a parent but also on behalf of students families staff and teachers that deserve our support the current guidelines and protocols in place tell us mostly what to do when not if our children are exposed and very little clarity on what is happening within the school environment to mitigate the risk of exposure somewhere in between there lies a vast black hole of communication the parents bill of rights section 4.02 says that information regarding our children's health should not be withheld
228my children have both been exposed on multiple occasions in their school and i have not been notified no notification of exposure violates our parents bill of rights under that section and a lot of time has been spent discussing the next section of the bill of rights and i'll assume that you've read that and are familiar with 101 4.03 it further states that the state must not infringe on a parent's rights without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest is it unreasonable to request that preventative measures be taken in doing so is doing so necessary to achieve a compelling state interest i think yes further in section 1014.2 it states that this section does not apply to parental action or decision that would end life but did you die
229is that the really the only question that we have to answer it can't be the only one no not all unreasonable or unlawful actions result in death in fact for many issues with regards to legality the end of life is not the only qualifier i point you to drinking alcohol and driving under the influence as well as owning a gun and that impacting the life or health care of someone else both of those are legal to do safely but when you harm someone else that is where the line has been crossed as we shift back to our schools florida statute states that we have a right to expect a safe system of education given the current lack of effective safety protocols we are being robbed of that right those who are immunocompromised are further being
230robbed of rights protected afforded to them under the americans with disabilities act they cannot rely on their immune systems mass mandates with a medical opt-out would allow for those that would have health issues preventing them to wear them to medically opt out we need to find a way to move forward and stop arguing on polarizing ends of the spectrum our kids deserve better if we will not follow the guidance from the medical community then what other measures are we going to do i have many ideas and will be happy to serve an exploratory committee social distancing by virtual learning within the schools spacing out lunches spreading out class changes additional time instruction for children to wash hands incentive for staff to wear a mask rather than a mandate the overwhelming majority of the medical community
231are crying out with the same message and i'd ask that you listen we are we call on all leaders in public private sectors of the american people to help us together we can keep our children safe they need our support and that is from leaders of our nation's children thank you good evening buenas my name is eliseo santana and i've been a resident of pinellas county for over 40 years and all four of my grown children have gone through pinellas county public school systems and i have currently nine grandchildren that are enrolled in our school system here in pinellas county and you know five of them have had their shots their beginning shots they've just been able to do it and every adult in my household which is a four generational household my mother-in-law up
232until this weekend was living with us and so my children and my grandchildren some of them live with me so it's a four generational household and so all of the grandchildren that are over 12 have received their shots and they're in the process the ones that we're concerned with is the ones that are under 12. and let me tell you that last year when the schools were closed i found that to be a tragedy i found that to be a loss for our children's educational process so i'm here before you tell me that we need i want our children to stay in school because that is the best learning process they have but i also want them to be safe and not only they to be safe but also it happens that when they look
233at the older people is they're thinking like maybe the parents when the parent when the children come from school and they interact with the parents but in my household is not just the parents that are exposed to the children that are in our school system that do not have a mask or but it is my wife and i whether grandparents we're the old people it is my mother-in-law that is that is being exposed now we all had our shots we've all had go through that process we've done everything in our power to do it and we want our children to go to school because i think that's the best i hold every single one of you because you're elected officials you are here you're in this county you're the ones that protect my people that
234live in this county it is your job to do that not the governor but yours and i want you to make the right decisions and protect my children protect my grandchildren protect my wife and protect my mother-in-law it is essential my children all wear masks when they go to school and we have a lot of tyrants that we're here speaking and they have been terrorizing the members that are here they have children or there are children like that in school and they're terrorizing my grandchildren that are wearing masks telling them they cannot thank you good evening good evening my name is brad decourty my pronouns are he his and him i understand the difference between a discussion and a meeting and i was disappointed last month when i came and asked for a meeting to
235to talk about mask the mask mandate and it was tur and it was voted no i thought maybe we'd have some hope tonight that we would have a meeting not a discussion not a workshop but a meeting where actually decisions can be made i find it irresponsible that was not take that was not taken up today especially from a district who voted tonight on their strategic goal to develop and sustain a rewarding healthy safe and secure environment that promotes the physical emotional and mental well-being of all students faculty and staff resulting in a culture of learning for the individual employee and student you voted on that tonight where is the safe and secure environment that i have to deal with every day i have students that they do not social distance they do not wear
236masks they do not tell people when they are sick the american academy of pediatrics and the cdc both recommend masks the cdc said it was masked inside even if you know all these other features are in place filters i don't know if they're the right filters windows they said oh windows should be open we can't open windows we can't open doors because of the armed assailant drills and protocols social distancing students were at six feet now they're at three feet they're putting more students into classrooms every single day it is not just my concern i'm not just concerned with me i'm like alessio i'm concerned with what goes home okay what i take home to my son what my students take home to their grandparents okay people live people these kids are living with their
237grandparents and parents and sick relatives and that's who we have to protect we have to protect everybody and we have to do everything we can to protect them and if it's a masked mandate then that's what we need to do there's you know we have to do everything we can we don't just have to have keep having discussions about in discussion and discussion there has to be a decision made and it has to be at a meeting not a workshop not a discussion but a meeting and when miss ed mrs edmonds called for a meeting and it was voted no that was irresponsible as far as i am concerned thank you thank you good evening hi good evening my government name is christina goddard but my real name is honey she her hers i am
238here today to talk about the mask mandate i have a seven-year-old and a seventeen-year-old and frankly it's absurd that they can't go to school and be safe and i think if you guys aren't gonna pass the mass mandate you really need to think about exactly how many dead children it's going to take is 13 dead children in florida enough what about 20 what about a hundred is it going to take a thousand you know you sit here and talk about percentages but this is someone's child this is a dead child this is a coffin that's three feet long an unnecessary coffin and that's ridiculous okay like i don't i don't know how to explain to you guys that you should care about other people because like you should and it should be really obvious like
239i'm a waitress okay i make like so little money and i go out of my way to do nice things for people all the time and to help people and to care about people and i show up to things like this because i care about my community because i want to see my community thrive you know and as far as the critical race theory i grew up in florida i had to go to school here i learned about every racist stupid slave holder and i never heard about that the fact that they own slaves or they would brush it over like george washington he's not a hero how is he a hero or columbus say we celebrate christopher columbus seriously like how how can you possibly justify that how can you justify the spin doctoring
240of history that has occurred in this state for the last hundred years and pretend like that doesn't need to change the kids are aware of it if you guys think that you're hiding this from your kids you're insane they're going to grow up and they're going to hate you for the lies you told them so congratulations you our next group of speakers will be tracy mcconnell susannah sean boyden van farber dr christy faust come on up good evening hi my name is tracy mcconnell and i teach third grade at pinellas central elementary school it's been a week since my husband and i both tested positive for covid getting covet has taught me many things i have learned that i have so many people that care about me i have learned that although you are vaccinated
241you can still catch covet and that we truly wear mass to protect others not ourselves i'm pointing this out because my husband and i followed all the coveted rules but we still caught covid i also realized that the employer that i have loved and given my all to every day did not do enough to protect me or my husband thankfully we got better because we were vaccinated and we were able to get the regeneron treatment early that is not the case for all teachers and it is certainly not the case for the kids that i teach every day i'm here to ask you for two things the first thing is i want you to please put in a mandatory mask mandate this is the only way you will be able to keep students and staff
242safe please understand i got sick friday night i know 100 percent i was in my classroom teaching shedding covet virus to students who cannot get vaccinated to kids with asthma and other serious health issues i was wearing a mask but many of them were not just think not all teachers wear masks if i wouldn't have been wearing a mask canelo's central would have had a super spreader event students sit in table groups with very little virus mitigation in place to keep them safe when we came back to school this year we all just fell right into same old same old well i'm here to tell you that doesn't work students and teachers are getting sick with covid even if the kova dashboard isn't up to date the other thing pinellas county schools needs to do
243better is to make sure people are getting notified and quarantined when they have been exposed i used to joke that i had a better chance of seeing a bigfoot than a quarantined student who was exposed at school i know why now when tested positive i was told by my school quarantines are done by the covid team but then the kovid team said it was done at the school this needs to be streamlined we are talking about the safety of staff and students if a staff member or a parent provide documentation of a positive test the teacher should be asked who is in close contact with the infected person then an immediate quarantine should happen we must stop treating kovid like it's a dirty secret people are not bad people because they catch kovid just contagious
244if you don't make changes now this is never going to get any better thank you good evening i'm dr christy faust my pronouns are she her i'm a former science teacher at st petersburg st petersburg high school and i took a long time to think before drafting these talking points because the truth is i'm mad i'm just really incredibly angry i'm angry we're still fighting the same safety battles as last year and that i felt forced to leave my teaching career to preserve my life and my health and i'm angry because school district administrators will stand on a pedestal promoting the wonders of stem programs while completely disregarding scientific data when implementing policy regarding covid19 i'm also angry and terribly disappointed that dr carr and mrs hein did not second mrs edsman's motion pertaining to
245mass magnetics during this meeting thank you miss edmund mrs edmund for taking a stand for the safety of students and school employees so i wanted to walk into this room with flame on my tongue labeling those responsible for unsafe learning and working environments as bullies and cowards like i have in some of the emails that i've sent i own the tone of the words of the that i used in those messages but i also realized i don't want to continue to spit vitriol and fire at this board and it district administrators doing so only sets me near to the camp that literally spit on pro science demonstrators at the last school board meeting i also realized that some school board members that have stood in the way of a mask mandate might truly think they
246are doing the right thing and as folks who are interested in doing the right thing for the people of pinellas county i'm hopefully will change your stance to one that is supported by science and public health you could choose to stand up for to the true bully the governor his executive order is not what is best for students and school employees legal or not you aren't alone anymore you could choose to join numerous school districts around the state and being heroes by making sure the students and school employees you are responsible for are as safe as possible by creating a mass mandate hillsborough county has said their mass mandate is working and they will be continuing it please show courage stand up for the safety of pinellas students and school employees and their families mandate
247mass for all school employees and for all students ages 4 and up with medical exemptions allowed also implement timely quarantine and positive case data for all schools there's still time to do the right thing thank you for your consideration thank you my name is van farber i'm a 20-year resident of clearwater i know all of you i think you all know me i want to start like your chairs tonight i want to clear the air i want to say i'm not holding my vote over anyone's head and i'm never coming to any of your houses unless i'm invited in which case i'll probably bring some wine i want you to know going back to my days as an educator maybe the language arts what's the difference between major surgery and minor surgery you know what
248when it's happening to someone else to me it's minor surgery when it's happening to me that's major surgery when parents send their kids to school if they're comfortable without the mask without the social distancing all right for them when my kids go to school or went to school my harvard son my wellesley daughter when they went to school any risk to me was a major risk that's how i look at it and now i look at our schools and i look at our school board i mean one of you was on my radio show one of you i discussed social issues with it at meetings one of you at a league of women voters meeting i we sat across the table and had discussions on issues i know all of you to be the best
249that we have in education and i know where i speak i'm a former teacher guidance counselor principal retired as assistant superintendent for secondary education in our school system we have magnet schools we have fundamental schools we have vocational school programs and i'm making a suggestion we schedule our teachers students change classes we allow students to pick schools and their parents that they're going to if parents want to send their kids to school without a mask without social distancing well let's have schools that have no masks and social dissonance and no social justice what i heard tonight it's pretty much a 50 50 divide because both sides are claiming a majority we have enough school builders for those parents like me who feel it's major surgery for my kid to go without a mask then let's
250have schools where everyone has a mask where everyone is social distance where the school buses are driven by drivers who are masked let's have that let's satisfy all our parents and let's keep our kids safe however our parents think it should be thank you very much thank you our next group of speakers will be shannon brooks stephanie west scotia brooks tory davis and blyth davenport good evening i am shannon brooks this is my daughter skyship rux she's one of the speakers tonight i'm gonna go first and pass it off to my daughter if that's all right so public safety public safety we're all hearing about public safety and you guys have seen me before here i personally don't believe that anybody should be wearing masks especially children but i think you guys did the greatest
251thing leaving it to the parents and i appreciate that i really do it should be up to the parents to make the decisions on their child's welfare we want to talk about public safety i don't understand why nobody's addressing the one thing that's important smoking i see smoking all the time people throw their ashes down on the ground and everything else and we're not talking about third cancer from cigarettes i mean you just touch it they don't have to be around it they just touch it and then they can pass it past it past it so if we're going to keep on going on with this public health what are we going to start doing are we going to start making people wear suits to go to school because kovid also gets on your clothes
252and it's not like people are sending their kids home and washing their their kids clothes half these people probably aren't doing it no offense guys the masks are dirty and that's a spreader and the fact that i'm hearing that children are afraid of germs that's terrifying that they're having nervous breakdown over germs germs are a part of life and everybody keeps ignoring the most important science natural science viruses are here they're here to stay they're gonna they've been here before us they're gonna be here after us they will be what takes us out and yeah we can use vaccines and whatnot but it has to be personal choice because if you don't have personal choice what do you have survival of fitness sucks but unfortunately it's the reality of our world and we need to
253respect other people to make those choices for themselves that's just the end of the story again i thank everybody for being here and everybody over here thank you for coming whether you disagree with me or not thank you for coming i love seeing people come i would like to see more children though i would really like to see the voices of children rised up i do it's sad to see that there's like what five kids here but we have so many adults and we don't have any idea if these adults are actually even in the county that actually worries me do we have an agenda coming outside and voicing for our children's education do they have a right to do that these are just ethical questions i have and i'll leave it all up to
254you to make those decisions i have my position on this again i'm going to give my time to my daughter here sky show brooks she's a little nervous so please just bear with her it's only seven seconds she signed up she signed up okay i'm sorry hello hello good morning there you go whenever i wear a mask i can't breathe in it and it and it hurts my ears very badly and i don't like it last year was really yeah last year was really hard with the mask because whenever i couldn't breathe i had to take the mask off and it was like every second so fortunately the one day when i didn't want to wear a mask in the teeth and the teacher yelled at me to wear the mask i cried and we
255just me and my mom went home and i just went online because i couldn't handle the mask it doesn't help me breathing i just don't like wearing the mask it doesn't help me get breathing i'll just say thank you and have a nice night thank you good evening good evening my name is stephanie west i am a community member and a mother here in pinellas county and i want to encourage the school board to continue to reject mask mandates i have some data from the american academy of pediatrics this is from today it is updated with the delta variant children who get coveted 19 have a 1.9 chance per percent chance of hospitalization and a 0.03 chance of death this means that they have an extremely low chance of being seriously affected by covid they
256actually have a higher percent chance of death from the flu or rsv in fact an unvaccinated child has less of a chance of death from covid than a fully vaccinated adult but was anyone trying to make mass mandates before coving no because this is not about protecting children children are safe our kids are safe this is also not about protecting adults every adult has had the opportunity by now to get vaccinated should they have gotten vaccinated if that was their choice even if they catch covet they have about a one percent chance of ending up hospitalized or dying from covid if they are fully vaccinated if they are not fully vaccinated that was by their choice and it is tantamount to child abuse to ask children to protect adults from their own choices so no
257it's not about protecting kids masking kids in schools is nothing more than a safety blanket to make adults feel safer however it's not and should never be a child's job to make sure adults feel safe if you want to feel safe if you feel like you need a mask then go ahead buy an n95 put it on yourself put it on your kid no one's saying you can't we're saying stop trying to force it on us over a virus that is not of significant risk to our children the fact is it's never going to be a zero percent risk covet is here it's not going away just like the flu never went away it's we're never going to be at zero cases but our children are as as close to zero as you can get
258for risk factors and that's not a reason to mask people if we play risks every day you get in the car you have a certain probability of dying from a car accident you take a regular vaccine you have a certain probability of dying and you as a person weigh that risk and you weigh that risk for your children and it is not okay to force that decision on other people to wear masks when our kids aren't in danger thank you thank you come around the side there you go hi i'm tori i've been here before but it's been a while anyways i just want need to thank you for letting us breathe thank you for making it a choice to wear muzzles instead of forcing us to be muzzled against our rights thank you i
259hope you have a good rest of your evening thank you good evening it'll pick you up okay thank you thank you for your time tonight my name is blai davenport i have two children in pinellas county schools so last month there was a fellow here who was mourning the way that masks hide his child's smile smile and hinder people's ability to see each other's emotions and i totally get that i too am grieving many of the parts of day-to-day life that covet has impacted or taken away and i too wish that certain statistics and studies reflected a reality where we can throw away our masks but clearly we are not there yet positivity rate is delivered 13 in florida we are making progress with vaccines seeing the case counts fall as the number of people
260getting the vaccine grows a mask mandate could be so very temporary and get us back to the pre-coped life and i think that's mostly what all of us want here i'm not looking to control anyone or trample on a parent's right to raise their children as they see fit i'm not asking anyone to break a law last month we asked you to have a meeting about a mask mandy having a conversation talking about this is not against the law and as we're seeing in courts even instituting a masked mandate is probably lawful as well what i am what i am asking us for for us all to understand is that our actions affect one another masks are a way to protect others and in doing so lessen the risk for ourselves i want i truly
261want our children to be in school together all of the kids i know whether they love school or not so much they appear so much happier when attending in person school they're showing less anxiety and they're showing more engagement with things that they love to do not just sit in front of the screen last month i thanked you all for being willing to lead during difficult times apparently i was talking to three of you then as of this reading just won last month four of you abdicated your responsibility to keep the children and educators of our county safe today i'm asking you to do the right thing and institute institute a temporary and lawful mask mandate thank you thank you our next group of speakers will be shantae wilson tangela butler brad rosenheim sean northrup
262and vicky matalovich come on forward any of you there you go and then state your name please good evening thank you for allowing me to speak my name is vikki matalovich veronic i am a pinellas county school bus driver i have worked here for five years transporting your son your daughter your grandson your granddaughter your niece and your nephew it is a huge responsibility and at times it is hazardous without mask many of our drivers are becoming sick i personally know of two drivers who have had to be taken by ambulance and have hospitalized masks are necessary to continue a safe workplace for everyone who does not want a mask mandate i want to know who is going to drive your child to school or teach them because our staff cannot and most importantly i'm
263appalled there's eight of you sitting up there with masks on eight of you what are you afraid of our governor or losing your paycheck let me talk about paychecks i've been here five years i make 15 20 an hour that's one penny more than a new hire but let's be honest my real pay it's called equalized pay i make 13.69 to get up every morning and drive your children to school safely in hazardous conditions can you live on 13.69 an hour and support your family it's insulting people it's absolutely insulting what you expect of us to do for this and to risk our lives and you can't even take your mask off because you might be worried about your governor and your paycheck and you want us to go home with this if you want
264to look i printed out my paycheck i printed it out it's insulting what you expect of us shame on each and every one of you that you can't even protect your teachers and your bus drivers and your staff yet you're sitting up there with mascot we need more money we need more drivers we need safe conditions now it's going to get too late people when your teachers can't show up for work and your bus drivers can't show up for work who's going to run this who's going to teach your kids who's going to get them to school people put your mask on and pay us a decent living that's all we're asking have a good night and thank you for your time thank you good evening my name is tangela butler and i have been
265a dedicated employee with the school board as a bus driver for 18 years i'm standing before you today and i urge you to please listen to me with a would listen to us with open minds as well as your hearts as we talk about our concerns as a bus driver and possible solutions my question for you today is why the drivers why have we been forgotten i'm not sure if any of you ever listened to the two-way radio to better understand what all our job entails but if you did you'd hear drivers doubling back to schools after they finished their runs taking out two and three more runs at a time just to get kids to and from school you hear drivers being cursed out and disrespected by students as well as parents you'd hear
266drivers being hit on the head by pencils while driving you hear children fighting and drivers having to pull over until pd is dispatched you'd hear children breaking the windows on the bus as well as six children vomiting and having seizures on the bus we do it all in bad weather and hazardous roads conditions at times and at the end of a two week work period some of the drivers can't even make rent with everything skyrocketing this is not something i think but this is something i've experienced personally i'm hearing it more and more from other drivers and it's heartbreaking we are your front line 18 years i've been a driver the last 15 straight years with no incidents no accidents but that's nothing compared to your more senior drivers and that's because we wake up
267every morning and put our best foot forward and all we were rewarded at this year was just a chick-fil-a chicken sandwich was that really the best the county could do and if so how did we get here why do we have so many unhappy and disappointed drivers why were why won't enough people apply for the job it's past time to get to the root of the problem and let's face it head on because all because we all know what that problem is it's time to put an end to this bus driver shortage it's going to take more than 15 dollars per hour and a 3.25 raise to retain to recruit retain and keep drivers it's just not enough to care for our families we just don't want to raise we need a raise if we're
268going to have any type of a chance to sport survival in today's economy it will take the faith of a school board to understand we are just as much the backbone as school teachers and as administrators as your office staff personnel we as bus drivers are deserving of a better wage and the 30 of us that were originally here we showed up today to show our concerns and allow you to see how determined we are to be successful it has always been our goal to deliver students safely timely and with enthusiasm please help us to accomplish this task and be able to support thank you good evening my name is chante wilson i work at a 49th street compound as a bus driver i am here today as a representative of pinellas county school bus
269drivers that have worked for pinellas school for over 20 to 30 years during those years i have developed a career for myself as a bus driver that not many other people that aren't in the same profession will understand we work long hours 5 a.m to sometimes 11 p.m at night and don't even get to see our families yes we do have through hours in between but during those hours we are trying to make our personal life function as best as possible we work those hours to try and maintain a wage to support our families we as bus drivers have not seen more than three dollars per hour change in pay rate during 17 or 20 years or 30 years that we have been here even those increases have only covered the cost of insurance rates
270rising and at part-time workers they don't even get that the cost of living have increased almost 40 percent in the last 17 years and inflation is rising over 5 percent for this year alone we have struggled to maintain our own lives with the same rate of pay and minimum increases that won't even cover the cost of living for our families most of school bus drivers try to find second jobs what with the hours that we work it leads little to none for the bus drivers who work full-time employ working full-time 36-30 plus hours a week to survive we must work a second job to make enough money to keep our families from being homeless we are committed to being school bus driver because we re we remain at pinellas county school even during all the
271struggles as any as everyone lives has changed due to the pandemic the needs for staff have changed as well we that are here before you are dedicated staff of bus drivers available to work and have and have during the most difficult of times we are all always hopeful that a raise in pay will come every year that will give us financial relief to the already overweight over overworked and underpaid bus driver staff by this year pinellas county school was some sub contract companies to transport students at much higher pay rates than what we already receive and this anyway is this any way to reward bus drivers that have remained committed at this point of exhaustion with higher pay rates the number of new drivers that will be gaining will soon result in bus running on
272time and getting your children safe to school we give ourselves and we try our best to assist with doing our jobs as well as multitude of drivers and bus assistant yes we are short but without bus drivers there is no transportation department thank you and god bless you thank you good evening good evening everybody my name is brad rosenheim i'm a professor of geological oceanography usf and proud parent of two students at midtown academy so first i haven't heard enough of us congratulate the students and teachers for improving their test performance on the fsa this past year that's great news i think not enough of us are thinking that they also did that during a year with a mask mandate right so it kind of takes the wind out of some of the arguments we've
273heard tonight but really what i want to really thank tonight is caprice edmund for making yet again a motion to discuss on the record and to try to get a an emergency meeting that a lot of us want to consider mass mandates and other health considerations to illustrate where we are right now at this point in the school year six weeks in and i'd like to illustrate some of the data from a private school in our county shore crest academy houses 100 1 000 students from k through and it's in st petersburg after much discussion much like ours divided about masks and other mandates they convened 18 experts they weren't saddled by a probably unconstitutional governor's order these 18 experts recommended a mass mandate and they went with it you know against the wishes of
274some parents and for the wishes of other to date they have had 2.9 percent of their students test positive for covet a little bit lower than pinellas county public schools which is about 3.2 percent so that might seem like a draw right look into the data a little bit more one-third of shorecrest's cases were in the first week of school it's because they changed the behavior of their students the students came from whatever they're doing in the summer they put on masks for six hours a day they change their hygiene and cases have gone down shorecrest now brags that they have not had one single case transmitted within the hallways of shortcrest buildings meanwhile at our public schools cases are rising rapidly just the opposite trend right we're at the cusp of passing our total
2752020-2021 caseload of covet cases we may have burned through the delta peak things are coming down now that's great there will be other variants and i hope that we're better prepared for that now that's just the news from the schools what does this do to our community the folks at shorecrest that i've spoken to are really mad at basically the seven leaders of the board up here because you govern over 100 000 students and that means that small percentage 3.3 positive cases of 100 000 students is a very large number to put out in our community that taxes our health care system and it creates lots of vectors for other parts of our community that's a dangerous game this inaction that you've decided to take has been dangerous for our community and i'm glad to
276follow a few bus drivers thank you our next group of speakers will be vicky snodgrass michelle raynor susan bucci barbara mellon and delphine brown delphine good evening i'm barbara mellon i am the mother of a first grader at garrison jones elementary school's magnet program in dunedin the dual language program i wanted to bring my son tonight but i realized that it would be a very late night for him for me picking him up from school briam all the way here and now it's almost 10 o'clock he's he's asleep right now i also want to mention that as a six-year-old he is able to stand up to his father my ex-husband and say daddy why aren't you wearing a mask why don't you care about other people i'm also what i'm going to say tonight is
277that i just i want to get this out of the way the school district which adopts a policy such as a mask mandate is acting within discretion given to it by the legislature in the florida parents bill of rights that's judge cooper i believe everyone i hope everyone read that decision i don't think anyone in this room will argue against personal liberty and autonomy everyone wants the ability to decide on their own accord what course of action is best however we mixed up our messages to a degree somewhere in our toxic individuality in our persistent selfishness we dug in so hard in the me not you mentality that we forgot to put our obligations to society put simply i believe it's not only our freedom to decide what to do with our bodies but it's
278our responsibility to do no harm to others with those decisions let's take a look at personal freedom though the act of wearing a mask appealing to the more selfish senses will prevent more major illnesses this means that those around you who are ill will have less of an impact should you be exposed we already know that due to the prevalence and variance and due to the negligence of our elected officials that breakthrough infections aren't rare now the onus is effectively on ourselves than to ensure that we are able to remain safe from people looking to do us harm at which point do we hold those people accountable not here to argue that i'm simply expressing that it's known the viral load is lessened by the simple practice of wearing a mask because i've broached the
279topic let's also discuss let's not doing harm this concept it's fairly easy to understand and yet somehow arrogance and passive complicity has given way for people to engage in subtle eugenics on public grounds with our funding and that is where the upfront has been committed because given everything known and suspected or muddied by things yet to be peer reviewed we know that in the very worst case mass protect ourselves and others this isn't refutable either you can have a bad faith argument mixing partial truth with something presumptive as we've seen but i won't entertain those notions as fact but address the simplest item the mask lowers the viral load and if all the accusations people were making are true they still save lives adults and children both directly through lessening viral loads shares and shares
280in public settings but also indirectly by lessening the number of people ending up in icus with something preventable and lastly there's the idea of public space this is where i feel we've missed the mark as a group attesting to a society a society we alienate people who have every right to participate and that's harm as well you're board that you are the board's decision to restrict at-risk children from an education is negligent as well as theft these individuals have contributed and they only want the best for children whose lives the board continues to threaten and i do feel this is an issue that should be revisited after everyone can get vaccinated my son asks when can he get his vaccine so he doesn't have to wear his mask regularly until then i thank you good
281evening i heard the young lady and she said no one has wiped off the counter i really do feel that should have been something that was incorporated in your meeting but anyway to everyone in their respective places my name is delphine brown i'm the education chair of the local branch saint petersburg branch of the naacp and i represent community alive my comments are directly to the school board i feel it necessary at this time to remind you that you represent all residents of pinellas county in regard to education i commend each board member that voted for mass mandates to you i say thank you for those that did not i invite you to our community where the more vulnerable are suffering i invite you to talk to now the guardian of five children whose parents
282died of covet this week go to the guardian whose daughter died and left three handicapped children go to all children's hospital and see the children hooked up to ventilators and tubes coming out of everywhere i want to remind you of the obligation and expectation you have to protect our children as far as mass mandates taking our rights away what about mandates that require frequent active shooter drills what about the elimination of peanut butter in schools these are all mandates to protect our children so why not the mass what about my rights my children like peanut butter and jelly i feel a certain kind of way exposing my children to the rigorous drills of active shooters however i know it will keep them safe most of all are parents and guardians who struggle every day with
283the fear of their child coming home being exposed and most of all catching the virus parents must work if their children are exposed it creates a household hardship you are leaders i implore you to make a decision for the health of our children i understand that we have lost at least myself personally have lost at least 10 family members and friends due to the virus if we are to get this thing under control we must put our own personal agenda thank you hi everybody hi it's susan bucci first i want to thank you for not seconding the motion of miss edmund i feel like you probably have done a lot more research than she has and i really wish that you would watch the high wire i keep saying it every time i come here
284you know i'd love to ask you but we're not allowed to ask questions but i'm going to guess that you have not watched it i don't feel like you're doing your homework to make a proper judgment about what's going on and everybody that i know everybody that i know when they follow a certain protocol they have not gone to the hospital not one so i'm thinking about the i'm making an observation hearing oh the hospital beds are filling up they're filling up because they haven't followed a certain protocol that's why they're there that's why it looks like it's a terrible thing but i mean i had coven i was sick for a week i was tired but i did what you needed to do and people just need to get educated in order to follow
285those guidelines and not wind up in the hospital then we wouldn't have those problems we need an education i really feel like you know we in my world i'm seeing all of these other professionals and very credentialed people that are totally opposite of what is being you know how you're being guided by the medical professionals here so i just feel like we need a symposium with both sides and that we can listen to both sides everybody needs to get educated and then maybe instead of it all being on your you know you've had to hear so many things tonight and i you know i just feel so badly for you that you had to sit here and listen to this but why should it be on your shoulders if we had like like a symposium
286where we heard both sides and let everybody vote let let the public vote and then maybe you know we could end all of this so that's it but thank you again okay thank you our next group of speakers will be amy bordeaux jacqueline rivas hajjar kadivar tony triola and jessica carroll good evening hi my name is amy bordeaux and my pronouns are she her and hers i am a graduate of pinellas county school i graduated in 84 from gibbs high school as a student body president i have two sons who are pinellas county graduates and my mother is a retired pinellas county school teacher my first in first grade i was bust and it was the beginning of integration and there were many people who were very much against it took heroes to come to
287where we are today with integration it's going to take heroes to co to take care of this covet situation it's a mask there are many other things that we are required to do it's a requirement so many i could bring you facts i could bring you statistics and so can everybody else in college one of my favorite classes was statistics because we were given a set of facts another group was given the same set of facts but we had to prove different things and everybody could prove what they needed to prove from the numbers they were given so what do we do if you know so what how do you know what's right you listen to professionals and so it's not okay so the cdc people want to say oh the cdc they're you know
288government they're this they're that i'm not talking the cdc i'm talking doctors from right here at john hopkins they're the ones we should be listening to and they're the ones they're saying that masks will help caprice esmen thank you i appreciate that you have stood up that you're getting bullied for that the idea of kids going to school and being bullied for wearing masks is just horrifying that if there was a mandate which there needs to be for public safety that would be gone so thank you very much for listening and your time thank you good evening hello i'm hajjar kadavar i'm a physician and a parent of two children who can't be vaccinated in this community thank you committee members and particularly ms edmond i am asking you all that you discuss all the
289protective measures including masks including what needs to change currently to get our children protected during this workshop that you're going to have on tuesday our public schools focus on making sure that children learn subjects such as math science and critical thinking as a member of the school board i ask you all to set an example for the children of the county don't allow misinformation cherry-picked information and bullying from desantis and other loud minorities to endanger children's health covenanting is a serious illness and it is spreading among children yes we are fortunate that it's not as deadly among children as adults but covet is simply not the flu data from the cdc shows that so far 486 children have died from covid which is anywhere between 700 to 240 percent higher than the flu how many
290additional protective measures would you all have mandated if 486 children had been shot weekly covet hospitalization rates are slowly balancing out and hopefully will continue to improve not worsen but we still need to be vigilant as it is continuing to spread over the last two weeks overall within the u.s there was about 10 percent increase in the cumulative cases finally we are still trying to understand long covet which makes symptoms such as fatigue chronic headaches difficulty concentrating insomnia and have been shown to occur and lasts sometimes up to months even in children who have mild symptoms and never go to the hospital rates of long covet in some studies have been as high as 30 percent but we are actively studying to see what are the true rates a majority of scientific studies published in
291scientific journals have shown the effectiveness of masks as a medical doctor with a degree in public health i want to be clear the science is not mixed even the georgia study that mr dudley you cited at the last minute meeting actually showed that masking decreased rates of covid19 by 37 percent the study did have some flaws and was unable to reach full to statistical significance but when you look at the major reviews which i have here overall they show that public mask wearing is most effective at reducing the spread of virus the and when universal masking is implemented because asymptomatic people need to have source control i ask you to follow the science follow the math thank you good evening my name is tony triola and i come to you tonight as the proud father
292of a beautiful 13 year old daughter who is in the seventh grade at john hopkins middle school for those of you looking down i appreciate your full attention every day i'm thankful for the rapid research and production of the vaccines which have without a doubt saved many thousands of lives i am also thankful my daughter was eligible to receive one of those potentially life-saving vaccines however our extended family and friend group includes parents and children who are under the age of 12 and therefore ineligible to receive the vaccine true for the thousands of children under 12 who attend pinellas county schools masks and social distancing is the only protection from the deadly virus covet 19. the science around masks and social distancing is settled they work but this isn't only about our children this is
293also about thousands of immune compromised family members our children go home on two on an everyday basis look at me can you tell if i'm healthy or sick you can't in fact i am immune compromised each week i receive a chemotherapy injection intended to reduce the effectiveness of my immune system in an effort to control a debilitating autoimmune disease because you all seem to have i'm sorry because you all seem to have one-third of the students that are john hopkins are under the age of 12. my daughter is exposed to masculist unvaccinated children every day potentially bringing a deadly virus home to her father but i am more concerned about our children according to official florida statistics since the 2021-22 school year began more than twice the amount of children have died from covet 19
294than all the children that died from in florida from the beginning of the pandemic this is not acceptable and tragically all these deaths were likely unnecessary while brave florida districts have instituted mass mandates this board all but three of you anyway ms edmunds thank you has put your heads in the sand and have done nothing if you could bring just one of these children back to life or if i could guarantee wearing a mask would save life wouldn't you do it i want to believe all of us would so guess what if we all wear masks we will save lives what if it was your child or yours this is personal all of us shame on you for pandering to an anti-mass platform that is only supported by a small minority of loud individuals masks
295are the only only effective if we all wear them my mask protects you thank you good evening everyone my name's jessica carroll i live in seminole it's late and i appreciate everyone who has stayed to listen to everybody talk i know it's been a long night so i've been coming to these meetings since the beginning of the year and i'm more find myself with an observation that the people showing up right now who are very want everyone to be masked they sound just as passionate as people like me did at the beginning of the year so that's a very difficult position for you guys to be in so i get that i understand it we've heard a lot of personal stories and some of them heartbreaking but we heard that at the beginning of the
296year too and we've heard a lot of hyperbole which also both sides so it's a difficult decision i'm going to make it short i oppose any mandate my obligations are to god and my family first and any decision medically for my family should be left with me and that's just how i feel and i think the board needs to get back to real issues in the state of florida in our county this bus driver situation i chatted with them downstairs that sounds pretty serious and i think we need to start addressing those issues and put the mask issue aside let parents decide thanks guys thank you our next group of speakers will be lauren bush sean white christian coffelt anthony simmons and amber simmons hi good evening my name is laura bush we are at
297an inflection point after seeing the last board meeting in this one as well it's predictable when someone gets up to speak which way they're leaning by whether they're wearing a mask or not as you can tell by my current mask you've already judged me to be of one mind you're not wrong however i would ask that we all actually listen to each other in this discourse for the parents that want their child to have the freedom to go to school without a mask on their face i hear you i want that too i do not disagree with you for the parents here that think it's their right to make decisions about their child's health i also agree i don't begrudge you that decision i want to make those same decisions as well for the parents
298who think the kids should be kids and we should let them enjoy a school year unfettered by a pandemic i couldn't agree with you more i hate that children are bearing a burden that even adults have a hard time comprehending we are not on opposing sides i want the same things for my child as you do yours i hear you i just hope you can hear me too my goals are the same as yours but it's how we go about getting there that seems to be the sticking point aggregate data has shown the most effective way to mitigate the risk of covert or threefold social distance get vaccinated and mask when you're around other people i realize there are still questions about these measures but if you look at studies showing communities that implemented these
299measures versus those that did not the results are hard to argue for example take our school system since school has started this year we have already far exceeded the case numbers the last school year realizing other variables are involved it's hard however not to see the correlation between taking mitigation measures last year such as masking and distancing and not see where we could have done more this year to make it a safe environment for students and staff masking at its core is a simple ask it's an ask of our community to help their neighbors especially those most vulnerable are children who cannot yet be vaccinated when reading the core values of pinellas county schools commitment to children families and communities was the first core value listed if that is really one of the core values
300you all believe so fervently in then putting a simple measure in place that can help our children families and communities stay safe should be a non-issue the question of masking is convoluted by arguments about scientific facts a parent's right to choose and legal consequences however when distilled down it is about the idea of community and our responsibilities as members of one as a member of a community i believe it is our obligation to care for those within it if we aren't willing to make a small sacrifice in doing so then we will also bear those consequences perhaps thank you thank you good evening good evening my name is kristen claffeld my pronouns are she her and hers and i thank you for the opportunity to speak as a pinellas county educator i do wish to
301speak to the issues of mass and covet capricio been hearing it all night but thank you so much we need you to be willing to explore the possibility of a mass mandate whether it comes in a workshop or a special meeting whatever it is this is lovely we have space in between all of you there's it's lovely to see people here and these wonderful wide aisles but at st pete high school i have about a foot in between the desks for me to walk down the aisles the desks are touching the front of the desk is touching the back of the chair these kids are stacked on top of each other and on top of me nobody is getting a buffer and our plant ops is so overworked and so understaffed they're barely emptying the
302trash at night i've come into trash not being emptied so do you really think they're doing anything else is are things getting wiped down or sprayed no they're not and i am heartbroken and so disappointed that so few people sitting up there have the courage to stand up and do what's right yes the governor issued an executive order that's all it is it's an executive order it is not a law he cannot trump a nor can the parent's bill of rights trump the state constitution which gives you the authority to make decisions for this school district i am unbelievably proud of alachua broward miami-dade they've stood up for what's right and that's what you need to do yeah he might try to come at you he's already been ruled against twice it's going to not
303be held up it's not constitutional thank you our next group of speakers will be dana hauser siobhan gorham maria scruggs yvette gao and nicole feigl good evening my name is dana hauser and i am a teacher at pinellas park high school i've been teaching in the county for 20 years and i'm so as the last speaker i'm so disappointed in all of you and some of you can't even look at the speakers when they're speaking and the fact that so many of us stayed so late and the overwhelming majority of us are asking you to do something so simple to ask the kids and teachers to mask up this is the covet absences have put such a burden on all of us okay i have so many students out quarantining they're already behind now they're
304getting further behind because they're out for two weeks at a time and then you expect educators to somehow catch these kids up i mean it just defies logic so much pressure and so much anxiety for all of us things are worse this year how can you sit there and not do what's so simple to protect people it's just ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself i mean really i just i think you we come into the school year and you act like it's normal it's not normal things are not okay we live it every day and it's scary and it's so unnecessary and i hope that you'll sit and think about what all of us have been saying to you because it's true we're cowering down to a vocal minority who doesn't speak truth
305at all they come up here and say the most ridiculous outlandish things and it feels like you don't care about us you don't care about our students that's all pinellas county says all the time students first really really doesn't seem like it and i'm just going to say one thing you know students are a lot smarter than you give them credit for one of my students by the way who a lot of them are very sick they come back and tell me how sick they were he just came back from being out and was and was in hospital a couple of days and he said something so profound he said you know i wore my mask last year and i didn't get sick and this year i didn't wear my mask and i got sick
306thank you good evening good evening my name is maria scruggs i'm the past president of the saint petersburg branch naacp and i currently serve as the chairperson of happy work not happy workers the phyllis wheatley rise to read campaign which is why i was actually coming tonight but thinking that the issue of the mask was for a vote i was obviously wrong so i've chosen to speak on the issues of the mask i'm not sure if you all are familiar with dr scott a rivsky or not but he is the state's surgeon general and the chief health officer for the state of florida on august 20 on august 6 2021 dr rifke's renewed emergency rule which stated students may wear masks or facial coverings as a mitigation measure however the school must allow four options
307out of the mask the only reason that i'm guessing that dr rizki's used the word may as opposed to shale was because of the fact that he will be stepping out of that position this month because of the political posturing that is occurring that has positioned him to probably make some decisions that were not popular florida state statute 381 gives the chief state officer not the governor the right to make decisions in a public health emergency folks this is not game time this is a public health emergency it is time the statue has been very clear as to who makes the decisions in a time such as this very distinguished body has a responsibility to act in the right of one hundred and four thousand children and seventeen thousand employees and while your public forum
308allows for all of the beautiful sentiment this is time that leaders have to stand up and stand tall when it's not popular and i applaud miss edmond i applaud ms carr i applaud mrs hars but the rest of you and particularly mr dudley i want to bring something to your mind because like many that have come before here i come under your tutelage and as in northeast high school you had to make a decision for you to be able to have 14 years successfully coaching football for 20 years coaching cross country there came a time when you had to make a decision that your students didn't have the right to they didn't have a right thank you good evening good evening my name is nicole figgle i'm a board certified general surgeon i don't have
309the statistics of a lot of doctors here i don't treat covid patients i'm very fortunate in that respect but i am apparent to two children in the pinellas county system who are not old enough to be vaccinated you know i came here tonight because i've watched prior meetings the ones during the day i'm at work but i watch them i leave them running on my desktop and i'm amazed at the number of vocal people here who tell personal stories about how the mask hurt their child and it just it just doesn't make any sense to me and so another parent mentioned earlier that at the beginning of i don't know what time frame she was referring to but there were significant people here to fight against masks but that to me and to the people
310that i associate with my friends my family is because nobody could ever look at such an educated group of people who have access to the same facts that we do and come up with anything less than a mask mandate it just blows the mind thank you so much ms edmund for for bringing this up please keep doing that more of us will be coming more of us will be putting our support behind it because obviously that's what you require i don't know what it is that the rest of you are looking for to know that this is an important topic and that it needs to be addressed and that we need masks my kids are too young we did a you know i stayed at home all last year my children stayed at home all
311last year i had a first grader doing my pcs which was bumpy in the beginning but smoothed out and by the end of the year was great and we saw how the numbers were last year we saw that they were low and we were so ready to go back to school this year my son thinks he'd rather stay home and play legos in between classes but i was so ready to bring him back and my daughter who started kindergarten was so excited for kindergarten we picked out a backpack and everything we did our school shopping we were ready to go and the friday before school started we were watching the delta the delta variant numbers and we were coming to the realization that not only were masks optional but all the other mitigation measures had
312been done away with and we just didn't feel comfortable sending them back it's not an all or nothing it's i understand the statistics my kids are not going to die if they get covered but they might get long covered they might give it to somebody else i have a 92 year old grandmother that they see on a regular basis you know i can't risk that and it's not fair to them so to the parents who say well if you mandate masks my child will stay home well i have two children who are at home because masks are not mandated if you would just bring back the masks and the other measures my kids could be in school where they belong thank you guys thank you good evening good evening i'm siobhan gorham this is a
313mask that people had to wear during the flu to not get infected because of science all we have to wear is this to those of you here today who want to stop wearing masks i hear you i understand that you are tired of this pandemic of the rules and the shutdowns and that it feels good to have some control over your interactions with the world i join you in grieving for what we've all lost and i'm sorry for your losses i am sorry that i seem like a person that wants to take more from you i do not i assure you i want to do as much as possible to get us all back to normal to eliminate this public health crisis masks can help get us there together to the school board members who
314voted not to have a meeting an emergency meeting to discuss the mask mandate you have failed your duty to do everything possible to protect our students our faculty members and our staff this is a duty you are paid for it is okay to change one's mind in the face of new information since our last meeting thirteen staff members in the miami-dade school system have died from covid related illnesses ten children in the state of florida have died of covid related illness that we know of the hospitals are full the hospital staff are overworked and there is a substitute teacher shortage a teacher shortage and a bus driver shortage please consider joining other courageous school boards who have put the health and safety of their schools ahead of the governor's political whims imagine your legacy as
315a school board who didn't do enough to keep their children health and healthy and safe and alive masks are effective public health mitigation and much less painful than illness or death your decision to tack on this important conversation to a workshop meeting with no public comment and no vote is cowardly and i urge you to reconsider having an emergency meeting to discuss in mask mandate thank you thank you our next group of speakers are elena vassell thank you kat denom ashley green terry davenport and jennifer shulman good evening hello can you can you hear me now yes sweet hi my name is elena i am an acupuncturist at cp community acupuncture and i'm going to bring it to the other side for a minute a lot of my patients are masque vaccine vaccine hesitant and
316they come to me and they ask me kind of how i feel about things and we're in a pandemic folks this is a state of emergency i need you to do your jobs i have an eight-year-old who is not able to get vaccinated i have friends who are immunocompromised my mother is sick the last four weeks have been hell i have seen everybody in my life in the saint pete area affected by kova 19 in four damn weeks this is really frustrating and disappointing caprice you're freaking awesome thank you so much for your service i'm tired i'm cold i haven't eaten anything neither have you i'm assuming please just please do your jobs that's i yeah that's all i got to say thank you good evening it's the members of the board and superintendent first
317and foremost miss edmond thank you so much for relentlessly advocating on behalf of the health and wellness and well-being of all of our students across the county i speak on behalf of umass mandate as well as all measures that prevent covet 19 from spreading amongst classrooms across our county our county's public schools failing to implement these safety measures are is just shameful as of now the majority of our county's private institutions including all catholic schools under the diocese of st petersburg shore shorecrust preparatory canterbury school of florida and admiral farragut academy require masks for all students teachers staff and on-campus visitors these private institutions are ensuring the safety and well-being of our students these institutions require tuition costs that many families cannot afford right now the ability to afford private tuition directly relates to the
318ability to procure proper health and safety measures health and safety is currently a private commodity rather than a public assurance this is absolutely shameful i ask that our school board please follow the example of these private institutions and ensure equal opportunity to health and safety to all of our students no matter what their income may be thank you very much thank you good evening to you right hi for those of you who have not met me before i am ashley green but most of you have heard me speak many a time and you got a little bit of a reprieve during the pandemic but welcome back i'm here and i'm here five and a half hours later i've written maybe like 10 speeches in my head i don't actually know which one i want to
319give anymore in part because this has been one of the most hopeless meetings i've ever been at and i've been to a lot of public meetings and i've spoken to a lot of public officials one of my speeches when i knew i was really going off the rails i was about to bring up hobbs and lock and leviathan and talk about balancing personal liberty and public safety and then i was like maybe we shouldn't talk about philosophy there was a moment where i was gonna go into maybe we need to have a rally for drunk driving since all of a sudden we care so much about personal liberty that public good is thrown out of the window that we should remove all the stop signs that we should let people text while driving i'm sure
320plenty of people think that they can do that safely but that as a society we have decided as a state we have decided to weigh the public good above that the speech i wrote on my phone was really to beg you all to protect my mom who is without question not according to me but according to many of you all according to people in this room that have worked with her one of the best teachers that pinellas county has to offer award-winning award-winning and knowing that she has sacrificed her body for decades waking up every day at 4 30 to get to boca ciega by five or six to stay until five or six to then come home and gray papers and tweak lesson plans to try and make sure that kids have the best
321possible experience and knowing that during her summer vacation she spends half of it collecting items to give to first-time college students who she knows their parents can't help them that it's one thing to talk about protecting the students but i'm so tired of nobody thinking about her that had some other witty witty things you know to say about how much we have clearly failed in teaching basic science if you can understand why you cover your mouth to cough or sneeze then you can probably understand the legitimacy of a mask it's not about preventing particles from coming in it's about preventing particles from going outward and raising the risk but honestly what i'm shocked by is that this is the most controversial thing i've ever come to speak to all about thank you group our next
322group of speakers michael walker caitlin norther jennifer christensen lyndon brown and katrina hawkins patricia dugan katrina davis good evening hi i'm katrina davis i've been coming here for the last year i appreciate you not for some asks on our kids we started the school year with our kids optional sounds like a lot of the schools the teachers are saying about 75 percent of the kids are without masks what are you guys going to do if you enforce masks and we pull all 75 percent of the kids out of your schools i think it's interesting that there's a picture of you guys all out there no social distancing no masks but you're all wearing them here social distance but i've talked to you guys about masks enough i'm here to talk to you guys today about
323getting water fountains in the schools i think it's ridiculous that kids are being dehydrated every day at school with no water some of the schools have one water filtration system for the entire school and i don't think that's good enough some of the schools their their kids are even getting yelled at for using them at the wrong times like kids are going to recess outside pe and they have no water they'll go to fill their waters in the bathroom and they get yelled at because it's not filtered but filtered water is not being given to them as an option and i don't think that's right so if you guys could if you're going to talk about this stuff at a workshop if you could figure out how to get more water in schools that would
324be great thank you thank you our last speaker is sean white okay good evening good evening not sure where to start i just want to say that i've i've sat here this is the first time i've had to speak publicly i'm doing this in prompt 2. so hopefully i can do this the best way possible but what i really want to do is i want to be able to let you guys understand that i think that a lot of people need to ask questions and be able to understand that this is a very sensitive subject obviously it's very emotional subject i've noticed that a lot of people are very very upset and it's hard for me to even talk about it because i understand where they're coming from but the problem is i feel that
325a lot of people are not actually doing the right research and everybody i while other people were in the background they were talking you know i was in the other room and i heard the people who were you know basically insulting them and they were attacking their sources and the problem is that we don't have any dialogue we have both sides just yelling at each other and we're not accomplishing anything and on top of all these other things that we've talked about we also refuse to talk about the cures there is treatments that exist and almost every single doctor that comes out and tries to explain these things to you guys it's it's like it just falls on deaf ears or immediately just they shoot it down they don't even want to have a discussion
326oh that person's crazy or they're attacked and what's going on is we're having serious issue with censorship if you have an opposing view it is censored that is happening and whether you believe it or not it's happening all the time and it's it doesn't solve anything it's vilifying the other side and so you're dehumanizing the other person who has a different view and when that happens is very dangerous and if anybody knows anything about history you know 1930s germany for example this happened before in the past one side controls the entire narrative they push that narrative to the point to where eventually you have people running around beating the crap out of a certain group as we all know labeling them not allowing them to own businesses and other things like that we all know
327that history we've talked about before and so i think the message really needs to be is that we need to ask questions are these are these sources that we're reading is it true who funds that company who funds the cdc all we do is we just take these information we just feed it to ourselves it's confirmation bias we already have our select narrative and all we do is we pick these things so that we can push it on the other side and attack them and nobody's talking thank you