OCPS | 2022-08-16 Rule Development Workshop

001good morning everyone and welcome to the orange county school board's rural development workshop which has been scheduled for today for the purpose of discussing the following school board policies ij instructional materials ijl library materials selection and adoption kec challenge materials policy and i am b teaching about controversial issues the school board will be hearing public comments on the aforementioned school board policies board members are attending in person or telephonically so let me take roll call member gallow good morning madam chair good morning remember lopez good morning mom share good morning member cobra good morning chair good morning member gold good morning member felder that's right member felder is in route we'll check in her in with her when she gets here dr castro dental good morning good morning vice chair bird good morning good morning

002so all members are present except for member felder who we are expecting i want to remind the public that the board members will not be engaging in outside electronics or digital communication during the meeting so that we can focus on the meeting itself to my fellow board members and district staff and members of the public who may be speaking make sure your microphone is turned on and speak directly into it so that our youtube viewers and orange tv viewers can hear you clearly we will now rise for a moment of silence and i'll invite you to join us in the pledge of allegiance and now for the pledge i pledge to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and

003justice for all all right we have a number of ways that people can participate in public comments either here in person via email or telephonically we do have one speaker in person and mr pomerani callers no madam chair there are no callers no callers and we will take public comments as we address each of the policies individually generally our practice is we will hear from staff they'll give a presentation then we'll open it up to public comments because we want to hear from the public before the board begins discussing the matter we have the benefit of public input before that discussion and then we'll go to board discussion and then we'll move on we are not voting today but we are taking guidance from the board as to whether or not we are on course

004to move forward with a formal vote at a future meeting with that said i will turn to dr vasquez thank you madam chair and good morning our team is ready to present changes to four of our policies based on the feedback received from the board a few weeks ago and then after the presentation we'll open it up for discussions i'll turn it over to mr rob bixler thank you good morning chair jacobs members of the board dr vasquez today we'll be discussing the rule development workshop today our agenda we'll go over the timeline we will do a summary of actions proposed revisions next steps and then questions and discussions the tentative schedule we the cabinet reviewed electronically the policies in question we had our work session on july 12th the rural development workshop is today

005pending discussion today and if everything goes well we'll be for board approval on august 30th and it'll take effect once it's approved i will be reviewing the ij the ig instructional resource and materials policy the ijl library materials selection and adoption imb teaching about controversial issues and kec challenged materials policy the first revised policy we'll be looking at is ij which is instructional resources and materials and chair jacobs our plan was to go through the highlighted sections that we had gotten feedback on and get and make sure that we reviewed those with you if you have if you have a different way to do about to do this but that's what that was our plan is to go through those highlighted yellow sections is that okay yes okay let me clarify yes but if board

006members have areas of concern outside of those even if it's in the existing policy we want this is our opportunity to try to perfect it as much as possible so if we're not comfortable with it please speak up we can we can slow down if we need to because getting it right is more important than getting it fast absolutely so we'll start we'll go through and we'll go to the yellow sections but if we need to go back a slide or two just let us know we'll go back to the apologies to make some more revisions okay all right miss kibby good morning okay so the purpose of policy ij is being revised to include language from recently enacted laws and to clarify the process by which a parent or resident of the county can

007object to the board's adoption of instructional materials so revisions have been made to the existing policy language to include content formatting and terminology edits consistent with statutory language as well as the input and direction that we got from you during the july 12 meeting we made three changes to this policy based on guidance and that first change is on page five of the policy one of the concerns stated during the july 12 workshop was the advanced studies courses and how those instructional materials were impacted by the instructional materials policy so we added the following language the instructional materials for college board advanced placement international baccalaureate dual enrollment and cambridge assessment international education are not selected by the board the instructional materials may contain college-level content participation in these programs is voluntary an additional change that

008we made is we used a generic term for the associate superintendent who oversees curriculum rather than the specific title of the associate superintendent for curriculum and digital learning as that title is subject to change with reorganizations and such in section 4a we also referred specifically to statutes section 103.42 which was not there previously so those are all the changes on page five and then on page seven we changed under the objections to supplemental instructional materials already in use we changed the name of the form that is being referred to here to the request for reconsideration of media center materials or other reading materials as identified in policy ijl media center materials program selection and challenges so that was when we renamed the form because it had a little bit of a wonky name last time

009and those are all of the changes that we made to this school board policy based on your input from last time okay i have a couple of questions the form that we're referring to that was emailed to us from from a general from general counsel is that form being adopted also yes okay so the form is not in front of us but one concern i had with the form is one of the forms it specifically referenced deborah mcgill by name and as you were just pointing out in terms of wanting to be generic i thought that giving an individual's name and email address in a policy was not the best approach i don't know what the solution to that is there is a specific position but we don't have an email address i don't think

010associated with that position y'all following what i'm concerned about yeah right okay so i don't know where we go with that whether we could have an email address for the position so that if for any reason ms mcgill is gone for an extended period of time somebody else would be picking that up i don't know how that works dr vazquez madam chair we can establish an email account that's specifically for that purpose and then we would just assign the individual perfect perfect that way we can reassign individuals without having to change the policy great thank you another question i had so i appreciate the language that you put in about ap classes baccalaureate classes what i'm not sure about from a legal standpoint and i guess this question is probably to mr pomerani but i

011know this is not where we want to be in terms of the statute and to some extent maybe the lack of clarity or ambiguity but do we have the authority to even though it's not our instruction structural material the fact that it's not ours does that take us off the hook for not complying with florida statutes i wouldn't say we're not complying with florida statutes because there's also florida statutes that specifically authorize these programs and specifically authorize these programs as curriculum and specifically authorize these programs in order to be eligible for scholarships and the likes so i think the more specific statutory provisions authorizing these programs thank you would get us where we need to go great thank you for that clarification and i think i had one other do do we have an estimate

012of when we're going to have this information on our website in a searchable format is there a time frame for that the instructional materials are already on all of our school websites in researchable formats so every school website has an excel spreadsheet that includes the adopted instructional materials for their grade band okay okay let me go to vice chair bird are we're not taking public comment before we discuss oh my gosh yes we are okay thank you so much vice chair no it's okay i just i just do we have any members of the public that wish to speak miss farrell i'm so sorry ms farrell yes ma'am an advertisement the comment so he wasn't able to sign up for public comment and jen walked in at 1002 which you hadn't started the meeting okay

013but she was told since it was after the meeting she couldn't sign up okay no we'll go ahead and other people other than me here yeah thank you i was surprised mr pomerani there's no reason i can't accept their public comment is there our general policy is we have the sign up time and those folks are here all the time so you can waive the policy if you choose but and then the notice of these rule development workshops and the policies are also sent to cta regularly as part of our advertisement process but if you choose to waive the policy you may do so let me explain to the board why why i would miss farrell or miss cousins i think it was miss farrell sent me an email explaining that what was sent out

014in the notification didn't include how you would give public comment and so the there was some confusion and this is a time when most citizens actually aren't here for these meetings that we have at 10 o'clock in the morning so because of any confusion that could have been created by our notice i would like to entertain the comments is there any objection okay okay thank you very much absolutely thank you so of course my comment is going to be on the definition so you guys added the provision or you're talking about adding the provision for advanced placement and that would protect advanced placement and we know that any book written into the ela best standards will be protected those books are 70 written by white authors they are also largely written before the year 2000

015which that's also a time prior to us really allowing for marginalized voices to get published and they're mostly written by straight white men so and the only religious text available in the ela standards is the bible so you would only be protecting those textbooks with this as mr pomerania just said if it's in standards or if it's written into something that has more a more robust language then it's protected so what we would be doing without at least acknowledging that there could be literary value or educational value to sexual sexually explicit language or depictions in a book we're automatically ruling we're allowing we're allowing the policy to be discriminatory towards lgbtq plus and by pop voices and i'm not okay with that because we have a governor that says we don't have a problem with

016systemic you know systemic policies that would alienate or marginalize certain voices this would be that policy so i would just ask that you consider if you must persist with a definition to at least add the that lacks literary or educational value because then it extends the the ability for supplemental materials to be considered that might also contain the same language that's in or sexual experiences or depictions that are in romeo and juliet and other we know there's sexual content inside the ela best standards that will be protected so this would just allow for us to make other protections for those for other voices so thank you thank you next speaker i'm just let you all decide what order you're going in good morning everyone and thanks for letting us speak so i won't belabor the

017point because pretty much everything she just said is what i would have been saying but just to reiterate that the way it is defined currently i think might be a little too broad and could create a situation where some things aren't allowed that actually do have value for our schools and that end up hurting students because they don't have access to what they need the only other thing that i would suggest and it might not be very popular here i'm not sure but i would suggest that maybe we're moving a little bit too quickly i know we've had some meetings on this before but when there are still questions around policy that i think the board already shared the previous one that and when we don't have a lot of guidance from the state perhaps

018we should slow down that would be my only suggestion on this i have a couple of the comments for the other policy thanks thank you okay can i say one more thing yes i also i agree and i'll send some written comments as well regarding the other statement about i don't think that we if we got the announcement of being able to comment here i may have missed it so but i may have some other comments that i'll send later okay thank you thank you madam chair can we all know who mr mccracken is but can he just state his name for the record please number one and can we get a comment card filled out from them just so we have it for record keeping purposes that's a good point thank you sorry yes

019and i'm not sure what's required but clinton mccracken president of cta do you need my address there 10 20 webster avenue college park okay any comment there mr pomerani i'm going to ask are you the one doing the clock yes sir okay i am okay i wasn't sure if it was running last night yeah no it was it was oh and then i stopped it when he stopped and then i wondered because i thought he had more time left and i saw zero you did and then you walked away and yeah got it no problem no problem miss cousins are you up next i'm going to wait until the library understood thank you okay vice chair bird you're recognized thank you my first comments are on page five and they actually go along with the

020public comments that we received and i know that we had this discussion last time but you know going back and looking at what we have so far where it says any instructional material containing pornography or otherwise prohibited by section 847.012 which which you know i read completely excuse me and that description is pretty that statute is pretty clear about what is what is you know considered obscene because this chapter is called obscenity and one thing that it says specifically in there is while it does say the visual representation or image of the human body with nudity and sexual conduct sexual excitement blah blah blah but it also says which is harmful to minors so it's saying all of those things but and it also has to be harmful to minors and also with any book

021or pamphlet printed material same thing all those things are listed but it says and harmful to minor so i feel like this statute is very descriptive i don't know that i don't know that we need another definition if we do then i agree with our public comment that i think that it we definitely need to add something that says literary or educational value just because i do also have concerns you know this board has one mentality towards this but another board may not and that this the definition i feel that we put in there is real broad and i'm concerned about other books that may be that this may fall under so those are my comments about that one section i also in the next the two more paragraphs down it says if it is

022found that an instructional material does not meet the criteria set forth in this policy or that any other material contains prohibited content i'm i'm i'm confused about any other material why we have that one phrase in there because this particular policy is just for instructional material and we say that in that sentence so i'm not sure why we need to say any other material because that concerns me that someone could pull any material in the school including you know books and classrooms or whatever so that one sentence concerns me a little bit and then on page i got an idea yeah what to see if yeah let's stop on both of those and see if steph has any comment or counsel has any comment oh so i guess i'll lead off on the pornography definition

023the definition that was suggested let me try to get the microphone in front of me so you can hear me the definition that's that was suggested on this is concerning to me because if you look at the florida statute it's the definition that was suggested by the member of the public is concerning to me if you look at the florida statute it says that we are to prohibit pornography or materials prohibited by 847.012 allison that powerpoint that's on the thumb drive i've done a small powerpoint just to go through some of this will help clear up some of the questions that i think you all have so it'd be easier just for me to do it this way and allison i'll tell you to go to the next slide when i'm ready so you can

024go to slide number two oh you're getting in there you go so the statute says any material used in a classroom made available in a school library or included in a reading list that contains content that is pornographic or prohibited under 847 that or word is bolded and underlined for a very important reason it's a disjunctive phrase in in both grammar and in the law so it means either or so if it contains pornography or it contains materials prohibited under 847.012 you have to prohibit it and that becomes important go ahead and go the next slide please apparently i forgot to stop the clock i apologize because the statue says if it finds that there is prohibit if the school board finds that there is prohibited content under sub subparagraph b which i just read

025the school district shall continue the use of the material for any grade level or any use for which such use is inappropriate or unsuitable so if you can go to the next slide if it contains pornography or materials prohibited by 847.012 so while we didn't have a specific definition of pornography again we borrowed the one from child pornography and go to the next slide allison we have the definition of sexual conduct here i'm not going to go ahead and read it again because i've done it once and that was surely enough for a public meeting so we will go to the next slide but it is there for your perusal so now going to 847.012 this is your point vice chair bird this statute says it has to be harmful to minors right and it

026that is the standard for 847.012 but that is not the standard for pornography under the case law that we have so next slide and this 847.012 says an adult may not knowingly distribute to a minor on school property any material described in subsection three again subsection three is the material that is harmful to minors next slide harmful to minors has a definition it and by the way just so we're all we've heard harmful to minors and obscenity those are the identical standards they are one in the same and florida case law does say that so harmful to minors it's something that predominantly appeals to prurient shameful or morbid interest is patently offensive with the prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors and

027then c is the important portion taken as a whole is without serious literary artistic political or scientific value for minors so the definition that was suggested to you is it has to have some serious literary or artistic value that is the obscenity harmful to minor standards the bottom line is and i've read the case law on this you can have pornography that is not considered obscene and not considered harmful to minors under the statutory definitions if you adopt the definition that was suggested to you would be poor importing an obscenity standard into pornography and the legislature intended it to be two separate things pornography or materials prohibited under 847.012 which is harmful to minors or obscenity so my fear is if you adopt that definition you would be allowing materials that are pornographic in nature

028that would otherwise be prohibited by law because you're utilizing the more stringent obscenity and harmful to minor standard so if you go one more slide that's i meant to say more lenient i apologize and that's the obscenity definition which you see is exactly the same as the harmful to minor definition allison next slide again if it's poor if it contains either pornography or obscene materials or materials which are harmful to minors the usage must be discontinued and again pornography must be removed even if they don't meet the legal definition of obscenity and harmful to minors so that's my fear in adding that definition i understand completely why they wanted to add the definition but i think it expands pornography beyond what the legislature has intended so let's stay here for a minute we have a

029follow-up question from member gallow thank you madam chair so i think on the first slide you list the statute that depicts age appropriate i have to tell you i agree with mr mccracken on this we're not even going to get guidance from the department of education until 2023 they're not required to give it to us by statute till then the guidance that they give us could severely impact this policy that we're putting forward today and i do this does feel rushed to me like pushing this board are pushing forward this policy without clear direction from the department of education which we know will be coming to us feels like we're setting a policy and what it may mean today may mean something different once we're given that guidance and so i do feel rushed i

030feel like i don't know why we're in such a hurry to adopt this policy until we have all the information available to us from the department of education because i think we're going to be back revisiting this very shortly and we need to make sure we get it right it's too important not to get it right we need to make sure that we adhere to the law and we need to make sure that any policy that we adopt is good for our students and appropriate for our students so i just want to i agree with mr i think we're rushing this and i don't know that we need to i think we need to take a deep dive and make sure that we get it right and i think if we don't we're just going

031to be back here come january february and we're going to be discussing it again because we're going to have to make adjustments thank you thank you member gallo i wanted to speak to mr pomerini's comments about the use of the word or and you cover you covered the point that i was going to make that if we change pornography to mean a sub definition of obscenity then we then we that word or means nothing if the legislature didn't mean for pornography to mean something different than what's already defined in obscenity or in eight forty seven two oh one two then they wouldn't have written or pornography and under the rules of statutory construction when there is some lack of clarity or when you're looking for intent you have to try to give everything that you

032see some logical meaning and so therefore to to make it a subset of something that you is part of obscenity part of 847.012 means that you've eliminated pornography as a separate definition so i don't think we can define it as and when i looked at the language it would literally define it as what's already defined in obscenity so i did think that an independent of mr pomerani i thought what we needed to do was look for some guidance from the statute because there is no real clear guidance or legal definition of pornography that i could find so looking to it there's the definition for minors and if you take out the word minor it would stand to reason that would be pornography without it being subject to having a minor involved and while it might

033not be what everybody wants it to say it is what it says and i do feel very strongly that we need to abide by this law and i understand very much miss farrell's comments and i think she makes some very good observations about how what happens with ap and with back baccalaureate and i personally don't think that anybody thought i'm not going to give anybody enough credit you probably will to that they thought through this and said that they wanted it to be biased but i see where she's coming from but i also see that this is a matter of law and i also understand where you're coming from that waiting might be the right thing to do although it troubles me a little bit that we are in a situation where it is unclear

034what the direction is from this board and if we're going to continue to have material in our libraries that by most people's standards would be pornographic and i want to clarify one other thing it doesn't it says if it contains content if the material contains content that is photographic that's pretty clear language it does not say if the material is pornographic on the whole it does not say if it has pornographic but has some value it's very clear if it has content that means any content it doesn't mean the entire thing so i think that gives i honestly when we were discussing this in the very beginning i hadn't discovered the statute that referenced pornography separate but i think that's pretty clear that it's supposed to mean something different it's supposed to be the content

035not the whole that we're looking at and i worry about not giving some direction but i will tell you where we are right now i am i am not comfortable with this language and i'll talk longer later about my discomfort with the library material in particular let me go to vice chair do we want to come back to you because yes we do because you had the second issue that i wanted to stop on madam chair yes and i just had one thing follow up yeah board member gallo i certainly understand not wanting to rush it and i certainly wish that the legislature when they had passed 1467 would have had the training ready to go for for our personnel prior to january 1st the only concern we have from a legal perspective is the

036effective date of that bill was july 1 2022. and so we could have a parent coming to challenge us between now and december 31st about hey a material in your library is pornographic so from that standpoint it would be better in my view if we had some guidance for our district staff to when applying any rules to any any decision making to a challenge to have some guidance that we give them than not i would certainly agree with you if there was some lack of clarity and we were waiting for a little bit further guidance from the state that was going to come some sort of before january the state is engaging in rule making on you know library materials and they're engaging in having in what format books have to be posted on school

037websites on august 26th the state department of education is going to be doing that so we'll see if anything comes out of those rules and you're right we could be back here in january or february if the state gives guidance redoing the policy but given the fact that there could be challenges in the interim period that's why we're bringing it forward now okay let me go back to member bird on the second issue because i think we wanted to stop i wanted to stop there too because i'm he brought up something i hadn't even noticed and i don't know what it's supposed to mean yeah in letter d where it says if it's found in structural material does not meet the criteria set forth in this policy or that any other material contains prohibited content

038i just wanted to get some clarification about why we have that in there any other material since this is a great question we were talking and it's actually pulled right from statute it's a little it's that's in statute that's that's actually destroyed from statute and that statute is displayed on your screen right now yeah we pulled it straight from statute so it's probably a hold over from the old policy okay and then just real quick for a comment on the definition i if we move forward then i'm i'm just not understanding why we feel the need to define pornography when the state has not defined pornography if he we can't even find a good definition for pornography that's where i'm confused about why we are why we are trying to interject a definition for pornography

039i don't have a problem saying pornography that we don't want pornographic material included in these materials but i just don't know why we're trying to put a definition in there if a definition is not clearly defined anywhere else so that's my comment on that mr pomerani as i've told you the last time not only do you will you not see a state stat a state statute that defines pornography you won't see a federal statute that defines pornography justice potter steward in the decision of jacob ellis in 1964 says i know it when i see it that's the extent of the guidance we've gotten from the courts you know it's that we're not going to try to to define pornography but i know it when i see it that's that's what the guidance we've given so

040that's awful hard for the folks who are going to be reviewing these materials for to to give them a standard that says hey what the united states supreme court says is pornography is what you know when you see it they probably are going to need more guidance that would be the reason why i would say we're tr attempting to define it here in the closest analog that we have which is the child porn definition child pornography definition okay you want to move on to your next one oh i have i have a thought on why that language is there now that you pointed out this in statute so we have instructional material we have library material and then we have classroom libraries and so perhaps because i was thinking maybe we don't need it because

041we have it covered under libraries but the issue of classroom library material has come up over and over again and i really haven't had an answer because we don't speak to that so i think that could be the reason for that language any other material because we cover libraries instructional what about other materials that aren't in the library and they're not instructional possibility or i may be giving them more credit but that would be one reason for keeping it in yeah next let me think about why i had this circled sorry supplemental materials adopted oh okay this is just like kind of a formatting question number nine on page seven we have a paragraph that talks about objections to supplemental instructional materials already in use and then we have a whole another section of our

042policy that is about objections to instructional materials so i'm just curious about why we even have that number nine so number nine is there to point people in the direction of the challenge how to follow the challenge process for library media material specifically and then point out that there is a difference overall so the next section is about objections to the instructional materials process so textbook specifically versus nine which is the media center and other reading materials challenge process which is different okay i see that i think i think then maybe my question was why are we why do we even need to have that in this section in this policy if we have that already in the other policy that was my question about that one thank you i actually think that's a good

043observation because people that don't know there's a library section a separate policy and start seeing library intertwined here might then assume this is the only policy so it might be better to clearly delineate and not confuse member ghouls you're recognized i want to go back to pornography so i understand why we would want to define it but what if our definition is more restrictive than how it would be interpreted what if another district interprets it completely different what if the courts would take into account an entire body of work instead of one paragraph out of a out of a piece of literature that is developmentally appropriate so i have real concerns of us singularly defining it even though it would be prudent from an operational standpoint maybe but maybe not in the long run for

044the best interest of our students and for our operation so since you were looking at me i would assume that it was directed at me the courts could always look at this definition and say we're going to you know we may decide an issue differently you know obviously we try to draft our standards in accordance with what we think a court looking at this would do and you look at the case law the case law has says listen state has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors which extends to shielding minors from the influence of literature that's not obscene by an adult standard so they the courts have said there is a difference between obscenity that is not protected for adults or minors pornography is protected for adults but the

045courts have said we will protect children from pornography even though we will allow pornography to be viewed by adults so could another board come in look at this another school board in the state look at this definition differently i'm sure they do we have 67 different districts and not all of our policies are the same you know does that necessarily give me pause on our definition no it's the best that definition we have given what we've the guidance we've gotten in case law is the best definition we have with respect to the lack of guidance that the state has issued on this so i completely get the concerns and i wish there was a case law because you guys know it if there was a case i would be up here citing it to you

046saying pornography for minors is this and it would take there's not this is always the most dangerous area that we have when we try to define these things but given our best guess of what the case law and limited guidance has said this is what the best that we can come up with follow up on that mr pomerani so i and to my fellow board members so here's my opinion on this i don't want to define this and have it be the precedent i would prefer and i know we don't necessarily want to be the case study on this so to speak but somebody's going to be in this state there's just no question in my mind that there this is such a polarized issue that it's going to have to go through the court

047process before we truly figure out where it's all going to land in the short and maybe the long term i don't want to restrict us in a way because we're being so conservative and so precautionary that it could actually hurt us more and what we want to be able to do for our teachers which is i trust that our teachers always have the students best interest in mind and that they're going to bring forward things that they think are relevant for the time and highlighting the educational component while engaging in and really connecting with those students so i am not in favor of us including a definition when it has not been defined yet by the state what the definition of pornography is going back to your original statement as i know it when i

048see it what i think is and what you think is and what the chair thinks is and what people sitting in our audience think is probably are different and until the court says what we think it is it's all up to interpretation and i'd like to leave it that way follow it yes mr pomerani so the one point is there's two ways that this could get solved one we can go to the courts right the other way is the doe comes in and says hi we've forgotten a report that you have this book in there and we consider it to be pornography and you all knew or should have known that it was pornography and we are now sanctioning you for having it on your shelves those are the two ways that you that this

049could come to you and you know i always obviously you all have heard me say this my job is to protect this board as much as i can from a legal perspective you do a great job thank you ma'am i appreciate that but that's those are the two ways that this can happen this isn't just somebody suing us in state court saying or bringing a challenge under the parents bill of rights saying this is pornographic the state could come in and say we think this is and you should have received so another follow-up question to you mr pomerini if the state were to pick something out of a book that says it's again out of context but out of a book even if it's romeo and juliet what is our recourse if we are sanctioned

050what is the process to appeal that sanction you could file an action in state court saying that they were without authority to do so the standard would be very deferential to doe because it's the state statute that has been adopted and does the agency inter in the agency that has been designated to interpret state education law so they would get the benefit of the doubt more often than than not with that and we haven't been down this road with school districts challenging sanctions from the state that is a highly unpredictable thing but the standard generally is they will get deference in their determination and i understand all that and i certainly don't want pornography in front of our students but i am very cautious about us restricting interpretation too tightly or it being used too

051broadly and i don't see an easy path to resolution so i think at some point we have to follow the model of rosa parks and say nope we're not going to stand up so and without making it adding to laws that we don't need to add to if that makes sense that's just my opinion i don't know if my fellow board members agree thank you remember gould member castro dental thank you madam chair thank you member gould i concur our libraries are not full of pornography just want to get that out there yes thank you thank you this is a just a political device to divide but we need to deal with it i agree with my board members who have said we need to slow down this process and wait for the doe to

052give us guidance that doesn't mean we can't have these discussions because i think these are important and this isn't something that we can just discuss once or twice i think these discussions are important so we don't have to wait until january to have these discussions but if if someone believes or the doe thinks that we have a book in our library that they believe or someone believes is pornographic we have a challenge process they can go through and that will come before a committee of reasonable adults and using the community standards for that school i would hope that they could really examine the contents of a of a book and determine if it's appropriate or not or full of pornography or has whatever scenes that they find offensive but again i agree we should not

053define something that is so difficult to define and that has so many different definitions as member gold mentioned so i support slowing down the process and just kind of relying on the procedures we have now for a challenge i don't know if we've had many challenges out there other than the ones we've had recently that didn't go very far so i think we're getting worked up over something that's not really a problem thank you member cast general vice chair birds stepped away i'm sure she'll be right back i see you know i definitely see the reason for postponing it and the hesitancy that i have about postponing it is that when we do when we do have challenges coming forward one i was surprised that doe sent out a memo or correspondence clarifying that citizens

054could take their challenge directly to doe in fact that was the first thing they listed if you have a book that you're concerned about you can send it to dearly i thought i didn't think that would be number one but since it's listed as number one i can see a lot of people going to doe first i don't know exactly what that means but it does mean that they're going to be very engaged and watching very closely if they send it back to us which is what they're supposed to do under the statute so that we can make a determination so i know where i think the legislature is likely to go on this and it's not likely to be on the lenient side so i am also concerned about triggering laws that overcompensate because

055we don't take this seriously enough to define the issue and then the last concern that i have is that if we have a book challenge in one and this i've always had this concern if we have a book challenge in one school and the decision is there's nothing it doesn't violate it's not pornography and it doesn't violate 847.0.012 and another and another school defines that it is pornography okay then we have and that stands and it doesn't get challenged so we have the position that there's a book that's pornographic in one school so if it's pornographic it shouldn't be in any of our schools because it's not just a violation against us but i mean this is at least a misdemeanor to provide pornographic content to minors so how do how do we have 210

056schools getting to define pornography independently shouldn't this board define pornography if we are potentially going to be in violation of state law and we're going to have 210 schools that could define it differently i just i'm really struggling with that i know it may not seem likely that happens but i'm not sure what happens moving forward i do know that there's at least one one or two contents that i've read in books that i will not publicly say i would not feel comfortable i think it would be totally inappropriate for me to say that i thought about maybe we should poll or survey parents to get a sense of because there's this idea that different communities have different standards for pornography and you know you know it when you see it but there's things that

057i've read that i would not put in a poll i'm not sure that we could legally put it in a poll i don't i just know this organization wouldn't put in a poll and so if i'm that uncomfortable with something that's in a book of errors then shouldn't we be defining it in some way and we can't i strongly believe we can't define it the way 847 is because that's nonsensical to say that it's it's either obscene or obscene it's obscene or pornographic so it has to mean something different but i also understand that the board may not reach a consensus on what is pornography and so i wish that we could get a quicker answer out of doe on this issue because ultimately this issue is going to be decided by the state and

058it's going to be decided after districts do something they don't think we should do and then you become the lightning rod on the issue of which schools in central florida or which schools in the state of florida are giving pornography to their students and that's that's not the reputation that i want for our school and i know it's not the reputation any of us want for our schools those that's my comments member lopez thank you madam chair i also want to express my support of of not being so in a hurry to to complete this policy i feel that it's not only clear the fact of the definition not the definition of pornography but also in page five the consideration of the ethnic socioeconomic cultural religious physical and racial diversity of our society in accordance

059with section 1006.31 florida statue it's not clear either i try to go to the florida state statue 1006 and i would love to have more feedback on that one from mr palmerini because it's not clear either and i feel that in my case if i you know try to work this out and put it in the agenda next with my fellow school board members i feel that i'm not gonna vote in favor of any type of policy in the agenda something like that i'm gonna feel like i'm a and i'm not an honest person i don't believe this preemption is clear i believe that is a vehicle to to transform our students mentality but that's the way i feel and i respect you know every opinion as always but i don't feel comfortable with this

060policy at all i don't see i we have a lot of questions during the workstation we're still having the same conversations the same questions public comments say the same thing so it's not only us it's also our constituents having the same questions over and over and another question that i have the first one about the statue remember lopez do you want to stop and get try to get an answer for that or you want to do all your questions it's up to you okay okay so who can okay who wants to speak to that particular section remember lopez could you repeat which page it was on i'm sorry page five on top thank you the consideration of the ethnics one second on that mr pomerani in our red lines we did include the wording directly

061from statute so it does say the statute says include only instructional materials that accurately portray the ethnic socioeconomic cultural religious physical and racial diversity of our society including men and women in professional career and executive roles and the role and contributions of the entrepreneur and labor in the total development of this state in the united states so that is directly from statute yes because accurately appropriate can somebody describe that can somebody you know is kind of okay how you know so the same questions on that one so that statutory language comes from the duties of the department of education and school district instructional materials so it would be florida department of education who would adopt instructional materials that portray the ethnic socio-economic cultural religious physical and racial diversity of our society all of those things

062that would be its responsibility when it is adopting its instructional materials that it's going to approve for usage statewide that is all things that they should consider as you see sometimes that's a what's the word i want to use for it fluid situation depending on when a math textbook was adopted versus what they found in it after it was adopted however that's fdoe's responsibility statutorily yeah so i it seems to me like it's very subjective that's the way i feel my other question is about can we write a letter asking for clarifications on these questions that we are having here in our conversation dr vasquez madam chair if i may doe has published that they are having rule developing workshop the 26th of august so we may want to pause and see what the outcome

063of that rule developing session is and then hopefully it would be approved at their september board meeting and then come back and revisit they may have definitions they may not but it would provide us with more information and at least know what if any further guidance we would receive from the state at that point so what is the process do we follow in case we wait until that day so we have to start with workstation and then how it works well we wouldn't have to but we probably would because we would have new information that we would probably want to discuss and i have a handful of concerns about the library material that frankly i wasn't comfortable going forward with as it is so that would be something we could work session as well i

064think we're here and we probably ought to move through this process though but if we're not comfortable moving it forward to a public hearing a final vote this is the time to pause and i think that's a really good reason given the timing of it that we're not talking about a january input but hopefully something much sooner i that would be a way for us to get at what we hope to be more clarification from the state and then if they don't then at least we know then these are the issues that we then as a board need to still work through primarily the definition of pornography so we currently have a policy in place to challenge materials so that would continue and then we would be able to come back after we know more

065about what the state is recommending in the meanwhile can we send a message to our instructional personal to our teachers librarians so they feel more relaxed and less feel less pressure because i think that this is they're feeling a lot of pressure because just by thinking about be exclusive and not inclusive or being not fair you know can we send any type of message so they can feel more comfortable what we can do is remind them of the current policy that exists and the process for the challenge of any material as well as remind them that they can reach out if they do have questions or concerns about any of materials that they are using our staff has been assisting during the first few days of school and during pre-planning and answering questions absolutely we

066can do that thank you that will be all thank you member lopez remember gold i am definitely in favor of tabling this until we get more guidance in not creating boundaries that may box us in in a way that it's not good and i and i appreciate your comments chair about wanting to ensure you know the protections but at the same time i think we're gonna have to go through the process if something doesn't come out of the doe in order to figure out what those boundaries really are and it's unfortunate but i don't think that with the conflict in even classic literature to to what interpretation can be we can really know that and right now under this i think even things we would all consider classics could be challenged no i agree with

067you that they could be i think there's a good chance when we're all said and done that they may be out of libraries across the state of florida but we'll wait and see what ends up happening with the direction of fdo or doe and the direction of the legislature next year but we'll have to wait and see i don't want to jump to that conclusion i'm just saying i wouldn't rule it out yeah and a follow-up to that when you look at the highest functioning creative societies in history whether you're ty when they ebb and flow it is because there is well-rounded thought discussion process arts math science music all working together in an appreciation of outdoors we're losing our edge by all of this debate right now unfortunately we're losing our global edge and

068i know that seems like a stretch but it's really not when you look at what it takes to build grit and thought and resilience of kids and people in general and societies and i don't want to get ahead of the race in being constrictive to delivering brilliant minds that are wonderful citizens that are our next inventors our next leaders our next caregivers in any way shape or form so that's you know in a couple of words makes a big difference in the process so okay remember gallo thank you thank you madam chair i wanna i obviously agree with my fellow board members about taking a pause and making sure that we get this right i do because i think we're making this a little bit murky we're talking about instructional materials and we already have

069a process in place where there's a committee that reviews our instructional materials currently correct yes yes okay and the majority the vast majority of instruction materials that we use comes from the department of education's approved website correct correct so we're already doing everything that we can to ensure that we're abiding by the law without this policy so there's really no reason for us to push forward without taking a collective pause and waiting for the rules that come out the department of education because we're we're doing everything within our power to engage parents to bring parents to the table to make sure that we're using appropriate material we're using the approved list by the doe so if they're going to ding us then they're digging us on on instructional material that they have listed on their

070website is approved so i just want to point that out thank you remember cobert thank you i'm just going to try to be a bridge here i think we're for the most part all on the same page i think our only responsibility currently that we must do is make sure that our policies are aligned to statute those portions of these policies where we need to reference the statute or use statutory language that is our responsibility pushing it further i think is premature i do believe because this is a fluid issue and we are in the middle of culture wars that we are going to have to come back and address it you all will have to come back and address it probably in january not necessarily might be before november it could be but if

071we're if we're expecting some direction by the end of the month we could push back that next meeting that's easy to do but i do also think that we are going to at some point and it's going to need to be with direction from the state a definition i think it's really providing some standard and it's probably going to come from the state and whether we agree with it or disagree with it that's going to be the bottom line and i'm also hoping that we might have some people in tallahassee that could help us with some of these issues as well but yeah our only responsibility is to ensure these policies in front of us are aligned with the statute the other issues it is fluid we are going to have to come back and

072re readdress it so thank you member felder i did yes i did thank you chairperson jacobs i just sort of kind of want to reiterate what some of the other board members have said because i just can feel what teachers are going through and administrators if they have teachers who are somewhat like i was sort of rebellious in terms of what choosing what i was going to teach and i just hope that we do our best as a board and i believe that we will to ease the pressure on some of them because they are concerned because many of them are as astute as those of us who pay attention to legislation and they are concerned and again it's nothing i mean until we get clarity this seems to be an exercise of futility until

073we get clarity as to what the policy is secondly i don't know how many people listening most of them are teaching but i elect i'm hoping and believing that we will get information out to ease the minds of our teachers in terms of the material something else of right now british lit andrew marvel off with that girdle you know so i think that pornography but i'm just saying so that's my hope from this board that we'll get that clear thank you all right thank you so i think we have consensus on delaying any action to move this forward and we'll make a decision after we hear a little bit more in the rulemaking process about whether we're bringing this back for a work session and when okay so i still think we i think we'll

074reach the same conclusion on the second policy but we do have members of the public that came and have taken time so i think we should go through the presentation and hear from the public on i l j yeah yes okay school board policy ijl thank you library material selection and adoption policy ijl is being revised to include language from recently enacted laws to clarify the process by which a parent or resident of the county can request reconsideration of instructional materials and libraries and to incorporate language from policies imb and kec which are being recommended for repeal revisions have been made to the existing policy language to include content formatting and terminology edits consistent with statutory language and we've accounted for your direction from the july 12th workshop one of the major changes that we

075made is consistency which i believe school board member byrd pointed out last time so thank you we consistently use the term media center because that is how we refer to our school libraries if you will as media centers all throughout the district so you will see the word media center appear all throughout our policies including in our title oh sorry thank you all right so it should be on your screen now i apologize about that so all throughout the policy you're going to see media center instead of library the proposed title change and then i believe there was one more change that we made throughout for consistency those are the two changes that we made just consistently throughout the first large change is in section three 3a which is on page these pages are not

076numbered i apologize oh don't do that to us sorry sorry the features aren't numbered i apologize this would be a good time to pause and just make a just please everybody if you're giving any presentations any documents page numbers yes okay i mean that's not a scolding to you as just like everybody in the room everybody in the universe of ocps page numbers agree they may have just gotten cut off when we were pdfing these so under section three criterion procedures for selection of media center materials section a the standards to determine the propriety of media center material shall be in accordance with the section of 1006 florida statute so we just change that to say materials section 3b so towards the bottom of the second page where we had incorporated school board policy imb

077we made some significant changes there based on the july 12 workshop so the language has changed to the following the board may install a secular program of education including but not limited to an objective study of the bible and of religion as such media specialists may purchase religious materials and or materials about religious figures for the purpose of such objective study while using the materials no employee may indoctrinate any student with the viewpoint of a particular religion and then the next item when selecting materials whether purchased donated or otherwise made available to students the media specialist shall and that was just kind of cleaning up language at the direction of the school board members from last time we also made sure to consistently use the word materials as that was inconsistent in the previous version

078of the policy next major changes in this section are under the challenges to media center materials and other reading materials which is on page five if it had a number beginning with the preamble under that policy it says the following procedure shall be followed when the appropriateness of media center materials or other reading materials is questioned here and after challenge material this does not apply to state adopted textbooks in use in the classroom so clarifying that this policy is just for media center materials and other reading materials section one ends with the following individuals may file a challenge so just trying to clean up the language a little bit there section two this was referring to the temporary removal and the feedback that we received from the school board last time so this now reads

079that challenge materials shall not be removed immediately such material shall be available for student use pending a final decision notwithstanding the foregoing only the superintendent or designee may temporarily remove a challenge material during the pendency of a request for reconsideration if the superintendent or a designee believes it will be disruptive to the student learning environment if the challenge material were to remain available the next section begins with the process the school level informal request for reconsideration of media center materials or other reading materials this section just removed some language that was there previously a parent legal guardian a resident of the county who has a concern with the use of media center materials or other reading materials must first request in writing a conference with the principal director or assistant principal assistant director to discuss

080the use of the challenge material the principal director or assistant principal assistant director will schedule the conference within 10 working days of receiving the request the next section you're going to notice that we consistently refer to the name of the form so you will see that change throughout this section of the policy the form is called the request for reconsideration of media center materials or other reading materials so you're going to see that change several times throughout the rest of this policy section 4 school level formal request for reconsideration of media center materials or other reading materials the request for reconsideration of media center materials or other reading materials form must be filed by the parent legal guardian or resident of the county with the principal director assistant principal slash assistant director within 10 working

081days of the conference referenced above in the informal request process the only other change we made here is we refer to other reading materials to make sure that the name of the form was consistent here section b again making sure that we're consistent with the form title there section b4 item b4 one parent or legal guardian excluding the parent or legal guardian or resident of the county requesting the reconsideration as selected by the principal director or assistant principal assistant director would be on this committee we removed resident of the county based on direction from the school board on the july 12 workshop in preparation for its review the school literacy council shall receive a copy of the challenge material this was something that was not previously included in the school board policy so we wanted

082to make sure we added that based on your direction from last time again consistent use of the name of the form that supports this policy in reviewing the challenge material the school literacy council shall item 4 item e4 consider written input from students when available that was added based on direction from the school board and discussion from the school board from the july 12th workshop in the next item item f i or f1 i apologize is the addition of the time so this determination shall be valid for five years which was also based on direction for the school from the school board from last time and you'll see that reflected in the next item as well at the district level you'll see similar changes here to make sure that we mirrored the school level process

083so again change the words to make sure it said media center materials or other reading materials we use the associate superintendent who oversees curriculum rather than the specific title for the associate superintendent of curriculum and digital learning as that is a title that could change so you see that several times throughout to mirror the school literacy council makeup we also remove the resident of the county and retain the one parent or legal guardian representing the school grade but not from the originating school in preparation for its review these changes also mirror the school literacy council and include a copy of the challenge material that the district literacy council would be receiving further changes are just making sure that we use the consistent name of the form and then in section g in reviewing the challenge

084material the district literacy council shall consider written input from students when available again that was added based on school board member input and mirrors what happens at the school literacy council level the same goes for the time period again mirrors the decision at the school literacy council level and then the following changes and sections in the last two components of this section are the associate superintendent who oversees curriculum rather than the specific title so something more generic and then finally at the school board appeal level is the again who oversees curriculum the associate superintendent and then the school board shall review the challenge material and again consistent use of the name of the new form and those were all the changes that we made to ijl based on your input all right let's take a

085public comment this pharaoh hi again so i sent you kind of a lot of what we had concerns with in this policy i just want to make sure that i take the opportunity to just point out that if you were to use the definition of pornography as you guys have it currently written there you know any written or verbal or visual depiction of sexual conduct you are essentially saying any sexual conduct and the statute does not say anything containing sexual conduct it says anything containing pornography and there is a difference and so there is a difference and that difference is intent and the intent to arouse and that could be the entire work or it could be why like say in i know beloved would be an ap curriculum and protected but there's a sexual

086situation that happens there and it's there for a purpose and it's not for the purpose to arouse and so your definition is not complete and that's all i want to say about that you know section three could use a lot of additional language it we suggested what we saw in osceola and clay county policies going through oh the addition of imb being incorporated into section 3 did not quite make sense because the controversial issues policy which is much more thoughtfully written in other counties is actually to protect conversations that happen in the classroom and this is a policy about library books and so it doesn't make sense to move a policy that's supposed to protect controversial discussions in the classroom into a library policy so that was that issue the form and the things that

087are questioned our current form actually has that the complainant signs off that the material was reviewed in its entirety we're taking it seems we're taking that away now we didn't see an actual copy of the form but wanted to make sure that stays in there and then also other forms in other counties ask what the desired level of censorship is to some degree that the complaint is asking for so this would they give the complaint the opportunity to restrict their own child to remove the book in its entirety or in some cases mark it as sensitive content which would you know mean that a child can't check our student can't check out the book just on their own during self-checkout they'd have to have a conversation with the librarian first and then if you guys

088are doing this you know tiered policy you could add add it to a restricted content designation where if parents want their child on a restricted content profile then they could opt their child into restricted access to the library and then that's what you would basically make this distinction as so for the parents that do want more restriction they have that option thank you ms farrell all right who are we going to hear from next mr mcclinton mccracken i'm sorry clinton mccracken has anybody ever done that before called you mr mcclinton all the time i've never done that totally okay i'll answer to any of them so i just have a couple of questions again i would say ditto to everything that stefano just said i'm wondering just in the title where we say other reading

089materials i'm a little worried that this could be construed to be talking about classroom libraries when the previous work session i thought that the board was saying that we aren't talking about classroom libraries but just media center materials so i'm just concerned that because my understanding is with regard to classroom libraries unless they're being read as part of a lesson that the statute is not saying that those should be restricted so that's one concern and then i have a question about section 3b where it mentions the bible why we are specifically talking about that sacred book and not perhaps lots of other sacred books so i'm just confused on why how that's written that way and then the last thing is there's a section that's been struck out and i'm not quite sure why and

090that's on the next page where it says and it's the double i where it says the consideration of the broad racial ethnic socioeconomic and cultural diversity of the students of this state so i'm confused as to why we're removing that language which seems like it could have been helpful so that's all i've got thank you good observations thank you that's cousins good morning so since we're talking about pornography and particularly in the libraries what i would like to really caution you all about because i know that some people up here have rushed to the judgment that our all-time favorite book genderqueer is pornography which it's not it has never been proven to be so but i want you to be intentional if you decide to create your own definition of it because because of the

091message that the board sent by bowing down to the proud boy when he read the out of context excerpts out of the book back in october he's run with that narrative that book is porn and he's targeted my organization he's targeting me he ambushed me at a candidate's canvassing event last night following me with his camera screaming that i'm reading porn to my kids because of that book so if you're going to make a definition be intentional because that book is not porn and i let my 12 year old read it because they are non-binary and it was life affirming to them so i really want you to think hard about it before you make any decision like that because it's going to have impacts like that are going to go beyond just targeting me

092it will target other people in the community as well and i think that we want to protect our families of ocps so that's all i have to say thank you miss cousins and i regret that you've gone through that experience you might be surprised to know that i'm going through the same experience but i signed up for this and offered to serve in public office so it comes with the territory but i do regret how hostile it's getting on the outside i will say there are different opinions and the question with genderqueer isn't whether the book as a whole is porn it's a question of whether it contains any pornography and i think there are a white this is the problem with not having a definition of pornography it hasn't been proven but how can

093it be proven when there is no definition to prove it by so it's unfortunate that we have a state law that prohibits something without a definition of what it is exactly that is prohibiting and it leaves us all in a guessing game and the question is where do you want to fall on the side of guessing and the board is will at least to some extent come down on different sides of where they want to fall in that i suspect but all with the best of intentions i know so that's the last of our public comments i believe and we'll go on to but all very worthwhile comments and i appreciate them remember gallo thank you thank you madam chair and i do agree with with many of the comments that were made by our

094public speakers today i do have some questions i think it was b on page two this the one or is it the next bee let me see if there's an xb i don't i think it might be that yeah so and this and i think it was clinton that brought this up about the bible so maybe we can answer his question but the did this come from statute because i'm i'm and i know this is nitpicking but i'm i'm curious as to why we would use the term indoctrinate so i can answer that mourinho recognized thank you madam chair the first part the first sentence is directly from statute so when it references the bible and other religion unfortunately that is 1345 subsection one and that is a reproduction of it so obviously the second

095sentence says we can purchase religious materials that would be plural that would be different religions for the purpose of such comparative study indoctrinate is not in the statute but that's a general summarization of the case law as it currently stands today that we can't indoctrinate public school students with particular religious teachings in the classroom so that's that was the purpose of including that language that is on shaky ground i suspect that we'll be revisiting that at some point in the future with some supreme court decisions but as of today you cannot indoctrinate public school students with a teaching of a particular religious viewpoint okay there's not another word we could use the problem is with the word indoctrination yes yes because we are objective yeah it's already in there as an objective study well no

096employees may i mean i just indoctrinate i feel like if we're going to indoctrinate any students it's going to be for them to be proficient in reading by grade three not anything else so i don't know if there's like another word that we could use we can we can attempt to use another word on it but that's the case laws language that we get out of it that's why it was used it was used purposely okay all right and i know that we're and i i feel about this policy as i did the last one that if if there's gonna be rule making that happens in a week and a half that we pause until we determine what that rule making looks like and what the rules that come out of it but on page

097two or maybe page page two two is what i wrote down is there a two on page two no no none of the pages aren't oh item two responsibility and training what's the heading i didn't write it down all right so let's i'll come back to when i think of it on i do want to add i do i know that we had a conversation about taking written requests from students i do think that when we are talking about a district council it's already been vetted at the school site and by that point if it comes to the district it's come in the district because it's being challenged based on a rule or based on the outcome that the school council determined and i and i do think at that point we need we need

098there should be a student on it if the parent is okay with the student being on that book if the parent is okay with the student reading that book it should we should allow that student voice on that council i think it's imperative as we go through this because we are in unchartered territory this is new to us we have to follow the law we're committed to following the law but we need to do it in the least restrictive manner possible and to just take written a written comment isn't the same as having a dialogue with a student and hearing their point of view as questions are being asked as that dialogue happens on a committee and so i know that we're probably going to pause this but i think as a board we seriously

099need to look into allowing that student voice i just think it's important we're making decisions on behalf of them we're telling them what they can and can't do we're taking away their choices and i get that we're not that technically it'll be the parents because the parents get to ultimately choose but i just think that that student voice we already have the parental voice on that committee i think it's equally important important that we have the student voice and i've i've voiced that already and then just the other thing that i jotted down was just the five years i know that we came down that we wanted to have we didn't want to be looking at the same thing over and over again within a year and we came to five years i just you

100know i didn't know if maybe we would get more guidance from the department of education on the length when they do the rulemaking that's thank you that's my comments thank you thank you member gallow vice chair birth thank you i was just going to also point out the bible reference but that was already explained and then i agree with member gallow about that last sentence about indoctrination i understand that's where case law is right now but it's used that term is used in such a derogatory way towards our educators that i am very hesitant to put it inside our policy and further the use of that word just it aggravates me so bad so that would be my preference and i feel like we're already saying it by saying that by saying an objective study

101we're already describing that it needs to be objective we could even add words like factual and biased you know study of religion something to that effect but i just think using that word indoctrinate just further continues the use of that word and i'm tired of hearing it to be quite honest materials oh in materials on page three letter d we struck out and popular appeal materials should be considered for timeliness important subject matter quality of writing readability and property their appeal and we struck that and i'm just curious about why we struck that because i think that is for library books i think that's a pretty important reason that media specialists also select books one of the one of the areas of concern that came up when we were drafting revisions was that there is

102no legal definition of what popular appeal is and so popular appeal is subjective so we removed it because of that okay maybe we could think of some way to include in the needs of the child you know or desires of the students you know what they want to read you know what i'm trying to say i do believe that is included so if you look up under at the top of that same page item three consider materials based on reader interest so we are still capturing that kind of sentence what do you want to read yeah and actually in that same section up there i'd also written a note about with letter v consider materials that support the academic needs of students and faculty i'd like to see it also say something about the emotional

103or well-being emotional needs of students as well thank you remember bird that's good i was i don't know if it would be i don't know if this would be the place to throw it in but i'm i think it's important that we have material that stimulates critical thinking and i don't know if we could include that just put that down for a discussion under work session i do think we need a lot more of that and i've been interested to hear dr vezquez at some point how we how we go about teaching critical thinking because i'm just very focused on how important it is for our students to come out and know to question the things that they read and not to take everything that they see on the internet at face value i think

104that's going to be more and more and more important in terms of a skill set i had some specific suggestions here under oh i hate it doesn't have pages 2b i guess i made that point right i should stop belaboring i hate that it doesn't have page number center to be we say that prior to such training becoming available medial specialists and other personnel involved in the selection of school library materials shall consider the requirements contained in sections one thousand six twenty eight the other two and then one thousand six forty those two one thousand 1006 28 and 1640 i think are mandatory so i was not quite sure why we used the term consider the requirements when they're bound they're binding now 1006.283 and 1006.31 i don't think are mandatory for library materials but

105somebody should double check on that and i want to come back to when i get done there were a couple suggestions in public comments i think maybe i think mr mccracken had a suggestion or a question i want to make sure those get answered did you all happen to write those down goodbye that's right we did surmise that in statute where it says or other materials probably applies to classroom right materials which we think falls under the instructional materials i'm in let me back up three c and the list of requirements why aren't we requiring the compliance with florida statutes i mean i know we probably said it up above but i we talked about all these other things and i wasn't sure why we left out the statutes that have to be considered i

106believe it's captured in 3a criterion procedures for selection of media center and other reading materials the standards to determine the propriety of media center materials shall be in accordance with section 1006 0.40 yes you're right and 847 okay that's the same question that's a question i already asked about if we have a deadline that we want to put in under challenges to materials media center materials number two it says that the materials shall not be removed immediately such materials shall be available for student use pending final decision so i have two concerns here one i think that the superintendent should have the authority if the superintendent learns whether it's through a teacher or an employee of orange county public schools i don't know if the superintendent learns somehow or is reading a book and says

107is this in our library because i don't think it meets the criteria and it violates either the pornography definition whatever that ends up being or the 847 i think the supervisor in consultation with general counsel should be able to remove the book and then potentially take it through some sort of a process but i don't think the superintendent should be precluded and have to wait for a public objection and the reason for that is that this board is responsible for making sure that nothing that violates law we have a constitutional obligation to know what's in the library and make sure that there is no violation of law and if the superintendent doesn't have the authority if she sees something she thinks it's a violation of law to remove it unless and as citizen objects then

108i don't see i don't think we're going with three-minute time time limits right now for board members are we okay okay i just i think i don't feel comfortable that we have to wait for somebody to point out something if we know it's in our library it doesn't seem consistent with our constitutional duty and along that line if an abort if a material is challenged and it is based on violation of either of those i'm not i know this is very going to be very unpopular but i from a legal liability standpoint i feel pretty uncomfortable about leaving something on the library shelves as it goes through a very very long process if it's being if on the face of it seems pretty clear that there's a credible argument to be made that it may

109be in violation of state statutes so i think that we need to at least discuss some more as to whether or not we're once i don't know in the county if we knew that there was a pothole sometimes i should probably not use this explanation that's probably bad taste but if we knew there's a pothole we don't wait until somebody come well until lots of people complain or there's a violation as soon as we know there's a pothole we had we gave ourselves 24 hours to fix the pothole and so it seems to me if you think there might be pornography in the library or you determine that there's probably pornography in the library i don't think we necessarily wait to go through a process that could be several months the other the other issue

110is and it's not clear to me how this is going to work but what i understood and i don't think that policy is clear on this i understood that if there's a challenge in one school that whatever the result of that challenge of that challenge is upheld is upheld in that school only and it doesn't trickle or doesn't become a county-wide policy or determination it's just for that school and each school can reach its own determination and i think if you're talking about appropriateness that might make sense but i think if it's a determination in one school that the book violates florida statute then i don't think we can have another school determine that it doesn't i mean it either does or doesn't and if it's determined that it does then it shouldn't be in

111any of our libraries so i think we have to recognize that we are one entity and we can't have different determinations on what the law is which comes back to at some point we need to have a clear understanding of what pornography means so that we can have a uniform definition or there is going to be so much subjectivity that we're going to be all over the place and ultimately all of those are going to be coming to this board and we're going to need to decide how we're going to define that so that we can be consistent and fair and i think that was no i think i might have one more no that was it for me member castro dental did we wait wait wait did we take care of everything that was

112raised by mr mccracken we didn't what was the other issue mr mccracken and miss cousins and miss farrell if we missed any of your issues because i should have taken better notes but there were some specific things about language that i want to make sure that we at least discuss thank you there was one line that was struck out it's a double i small case eye on the third page i think about racial and socioeconomic recognizing the diversity of our state when you're selecting materials okay do we know why that got struck yes it is that language comes from 1006.31 and that is referenced in item 2b and is also in section 1d so what you're saying is it is someplace else it's not eliminated it's just eliminated from there so it's not redundant yes

113okay miss farrell miss cousins did we miss any of your observations thank you so the policy i believe it's 3b that you all were discussing with regards to the bible and that's imb being incorporated into here and again i really feel like it doesn't belong in this section anyway if you refer to the examples that we sent from osceola and clay there are better ways to incorporate all the different types of things that libraries can address and should address in terms of having books available all the different subject matter we sent that along to you the other thing was the challenge form and the things that have been removed from the challenge form and again going back to this idea that parents have the right to restrict their own children they don't have the right

114to restrict all children so if you go through this review process and the person's still not happy you know having these options that would allow parents that want to restrict their children to restrict their children while still keeping the book available to students whose parents just automatically are okay with an opt-in to the full library is the least restrictive way that you guys can continue and honor parents rights in education i'm sorry the parents bill of rights not parents rights and education right yeah so okay thank you and i was actually going to bring up imb and your observations on that when we got to imb but thank you for reminding us of both of those so mr pixlr jacob just real quickly i know that she hasn't seen the draft but the but there

115are two questions on the draft reconsideration question seven is what age group would you recommend this material if it's challenged and this question ten is what would you like the school to do about this material and one of the check marks is do not assign to my child so it's only it could be just that individual child so we did right we did capture that in the forum okay and then the question i think is does then we can come to it when we get to imb whether or not repealing it is the appropriate thing or not member caster dental thank you madam chair i just want to weigh in on some of the topics that were brought up the section that mentions the objective study of the bible was one i'm like wait why

116is it just the bible that there are many i don't know if we should write it i think we should write it in a different way where we do include other sacred texts the quran the torah even if they are included in the language indirectly i think we should make them more direct that last sentence again i agree we don't need that last sentence while using these materials no employee may indoctrinate i think that's a given and also some of the language like where it says the board may install a secular program of education that wording seems awkward to me when i mean we may not be installing a secular program is more clear in what we actually do with those texts so where it says books papers or utterances of a sectarian religious or

117denominational character i think that's that's more clear and when it comes to language that we just take from statutes i think we need to be careful that what we're replacing is more appropriate than what what we previously had and i want to make sure that it's clear not just for those who are looking to see if we are abiding by statutes but people who are actually looking for answers in what they can and cannot do so clarity i think is important not just matching the statute statutory language i agree with member gallo about including a student on the committee they can bring perspective about what what a student experiences these days and give us some relevant perspective i think the rather the other issues were addressed as well that's all i have all right thank

118you remember gold so i had two thoughts one is on the student maybe it's an immediate past student because i think we would be in violation of the law if we found a book to be not appropriate by exposing that one student in this process so maybe it's an immediate past student or someone that's still in touch in some way with our student body not too distant but protects us secondly i want to expand on the notion of the whole parental rights and you wouldn't know it from the way i've been talking today but john and i are pretty conservative parents we did not have halo in our house until both of our boys were whatever age it said on there they did not get to read harry potter right away in elementary school because

119i felt it was too dark but that was my choice i wasn't banning that book from our house and even against my will i didn't get to ban halo from my house when they got to the appropriate ages for it but i like this idea of not only protecting our kids and protecting parent choice but also protecting our staff if we have a mechanism that makes it easy for that choice to to give permission or or subscribe or unsubscribe and there's a lot of mechanisms out there right now about that i mean we all i subscribe and unsubscribe almost daily in our lives to whatever you know we look up they want you to subscribe for life and get information on it but i like that concept and i think if we could as we

120wait on what the state is going to do think about it more from that parental choice so that no matter what your household beliefs are what no matter what you're driven by in your value system you have the ability to have input in the school where in these in these more gray matters so that is just a thought i know it's not easy but i don't see a way around without us coming up with a lot of what i feel would be artificial definitions because they're not in state statute in order to put parameters around it but if we put it right into the family's hands we're appropriate again this is not a blanket thing i don't want my kid to learn math kind of a thing but where appropriate i think that meets the

121in what i would hope the intent of the law was of really giving families the choices that they think are most appropriate for their child and it could be different from one child to the next in a family true i wanted to follow up on the bible and indoctrination conversation i think one of the things remember castor dental i would be a little uncomfortable about putting the bible in the quran and trying to list because i inevitably we will leave out some religion so instead of that it seems to me that if we took the word bible out and used a more generic term sacred text whatever religious text some other we'll leave it to staff to try to figure out what a good definition of all of those would be so that we are

122not just because as you point out just because the legislature chose to use that language i don't think we have to use that language it's safer to use that language because we can point to where it came from but sometimes it means that we're owning it sounds like it's our voice and there been times when we've said we're going to send something out that the legend that does told us but we are going to have them own it we don't want it to be our you know as if that's our preference so and then in terms of the indoctrination i mean i think everybody understands i think i understand where the board is coming from that word we hear it we hear it over and over again we don't believe it's happening in our schools

123we don't support indoctrination and so putting it in there is kind of almost like saying yeah we have to have a law against indoctrination where we have a you know now we have a law against teaching gender from kindergarten to third when it wasn't happening anyway so we're a little i think we're all a little defensive about that and we don't want to well and we don't want to seem defensive so perhaps we could use a term like not used and you know teachers will not use attempt or will not attempt to persuade students regarding religious beliefs or something like that with saying the same thing without saying indoctrination but i think we do need to be on the other side of me says if it's in there then when people say we're doing it

124we can say you know what if somebody out of our 14 000 teachers is doing it they're in violation of our policy so if we don't have something clear in our policy and somebody is doing that and it can happen 14 000 is a lot and it can happen and we need to be able to say we have defined that is not okay so i think we could use different language remember castor dental you wanna do you wanna share with us i was asking mr pomerani if that separation of church and state is elsewhere in our policies is it no because up until about three months ago we all had a good understanding as to what that is yeah yeah i'm sorry for the editorial comment no but it's it's true and i don't think

125we should i don't think we should assume that everybody understands why this is here and is church and state and that's why it's here and it's important that we keep that separation i don't you know we wouldn't want a jewish child or a muslim child to be in a classroom where they felt like they were you know in a catholic school or something i mean that's just not that's not right it's not appropriate and we all agree with that we just are we just feel like we're echoing this indoctrination thing and we don't like that term so if we could find another way of saying it i think it still needs to i think it should still be said so it's clear to our teachers don't do this but call it there are other words

126member covert just a quick i want to voice my opinion on the student piece so i completely agree with member gallow remember castor dental that students should have some input but i also agree with member gold's comment about putting students in a particular situation and i think we had some conversation about this during our work session also i would err on the side of protecting our students when we are in the middle of these culture wars given experience like you know mrs cousins has been through other people up here have been through i just hesitate to put them in that position with some of the behavior that's out there and yes adults are making decisions for the children but i think that is the job of adults so just my two cents on that piece

127i don't know how we can work out a compromise where students could have input but i think the decision making should be done by the adults i would i would agree with that i do understand your concern about the students becoming targets and i understand member gold's concerned when we when it's you know we literally are not allowed to give to a student or share or loan to a student something that contains pornography and yet we haven't made up our mind and in the process of making up our mind if it's determined that it does and then we just have given it to him it doesn't seems it does i don't see how we justify that but the idea of somebody just out of school made sense but the idea of putting them in that

128position where then they become a target i think is something we should consider we went through this with the medical advisory committee and you know they signed up to give us advice they didn't sign up to dodge bullets but they did and i think this could be more contentious than that any further comments on this then we're going to move on to our next policy oh we left off too yeah you left them off when you came up well i put them in the email okay miss farrell come on up here because people will just hear me talking to myself and i won't know what this is about go ahead so there's two other things the substantial disruption the language that you are using doesn't quite it doesn't clearly state what tinker v des moines

129addressed and so it's not just belief of substantial disruption it's evidence of substantial disruption and so we had put that in our comments to you right the other one was that and this happened in clay county so at the school level the principal wrote in a challenge to the book all boys are blue they did not review the work in its entirety even though the policy was to review the work in its entirety and the media specialists objected to the way that the review was run and so the book was removed from the county and there was no further discussion and so i just thought this school level appeal should also be allowed by the media specialist in addition to the person that's bringing the complaint so whether you know that way if the decision

130to remove the book is made at the school level and the media specialist feels no this is appropriate for the school they should also be able to appeal the decision to the district level okay just because there is a history that it's been done unfairly and although this board might you know err on the side of caution if things go awry and we start censoring more and more we want to make sure that protection's there okay i think i follow you mr pomerani do you want you look like you're waiting madam chair i disagree with the statement of what the operative law was that she just stated okay there is we don't have to wait for the substantial disruption to occur if it is we are relatively sure it is likely to occur we can

131take action so i disagree that we have to sit here and wait for the disruption to occur before we take action so i have a disagreement with the law so mr obama we have some time because this is going to come back to us i would invite you to produce that evidence to the board so that whether it is you have to have evidence of or whether you believe it is likely to happen you'll have the case this afternoon it's from dallas it's the old fifth circuit but it's still binding in this circuit highlighted for us so we don't have to read the whole thing if we don't want to thank you and of course we invite the same from you ms farrell also i want to take up the issue of the media specialist

132if i'm understanding this right if the book is turned down the media specialist if she just he or she disagrees would have the ability to appeal the decision board thought on that while we're here because we're going to come back and probably have another workshop but i want to give the staff some grounds to work with so ms farrell's suggestion was if if the media specialist at the outcome at the school level is that the book is denied books off the shelf but the media specialist disagrees does the media specialist have the right to appeal that decision to the district level or is it only the person who brought the appeal that has that right huh you think anybody should have the right i'm sorry i think anybody who disagrees with with the decision should

133have the right to to take it a step further anybody at that school or anybody that's in knowledge of it disagrees with with the committee decision should have the right to bring it forward to the next step so you would say any citizen any resident that's eligible to bring a challenge has the right to appeal even if they didn't bring the challenge if it's in statute i mean if it's a statute that we allow which it is citizens or parents then yeah i believe that it's it's we should allow we should allow appeal of a decision that they believe to be incorrect regardless of what that decision is okay remember castro dental i don't i agree that we should allow others to appeal but maybe on a limited basis if they're parents of students at

134that school i don't think we just open it up to any citizen to appeal a school-level decision will be in never-ending appeals it's all one it's all one appeal process i mean it's not like it's gonna ping-pong back and forth the issue is the only person that has the ability to appeal the person who brought the challenge or is there anybody else and the suggestion from ms farrell was the media specialist if she just he or she disagrees could appeal it remember lopez i think that the media specialist is the expert i think that after analyzing because if not we're gonna i agree with board member caster dental because at the end somebody needs to you know say this is the reasons why we shouldn't ban this book or exclude this book to be you

135know part of of our media center we need experts on these topics and sometimes just because and this is something that i don't know bothers you but something that bothers me is the fact that if i believe that book is good that doesn't it's not enough it's not enough reason to ban a book and we're gonna find constituents or people that doesn't don't even have children in their system complaining about books and they're not even there they don't even have children there and for me that part i don't know as a parent concerned me a lot because i don't want somebody complaining for a book that they don't even i don't know i don't want to to i want i try to be politically correct so let me be more professional but you know that's

136i think that we have experts and the librarian at this point the media specialist is the expert on that topic and at the end after analyzing all the facts all the the content of the book you know the appropriate age the the pornography that i still don't think we have anything like that in our school system so that type of information i think that's the expert that's what i think so i don't know maybe okay so you know what i think i think we're not going to land that plane today but i think it's a topic that we need to put on the list of things that we're discussing at the work session okay because i don't think we've even had normally we have a little bit of time to kind of think through and

137massage it a little bit more and i'm not sure that was on everybody's radar screen and thank you for that all the information i did read it was comprehensive and it was helpful remember gallo thank you madam chair and i'll just i know that we're gonna discuss in a work session but if what if the media specialist gets it wrong i mean it should at least be apparent as well that's all i'm gonna say on that if it should be the media's parent or media specialist or a parent that attends that school not just one person because if we if a book gets banned and then the media special specialist agrees with it and then other parents are like well wait i don't i don't think this book's inappropriate for my child again we're restricting

138other children we're making decisions for other parents children so that's my two thoughts back to disruption i know that you've given mr pomerani some direction but if we could and i don't want to cause any trouble but i mean we need to define disruption what does disruption look like what does it sound like what does it feel like because that's very interpretive and so if we're going to pull a book or we're going to do something because it's just disruptive we've got to define what we believe to be disruptive and i know that we've been going back and forth about defining words today and i agree with remember gold about defining pornography but there's got to be some clear fair clarification because it's too subjective so i know sorry thank you mr fixture yes real

139quick just firm clear when we take this action back for us in regards to the media specialist having the ability potentially to challenge or question the decision in the policy the media specialist is on the committee right so they're a member of the committee so if the if they're part of the committee the committee decides the book is not appropriate are we you want us to look at that the media specialist has the provision to go outside the committee and challenge that yes that's that's something i think we should bring up at the next meeting is there anyone other than the person who brought the challenge that hasn't the right to appeal other than the person who brought the challenge just that was redundant you know what i'm saying and one suggestion was it would

140be it would be the media specialist let's say the media specialist said this book should remain on the shelves and every and then he or she was voted down should that person have the authority to go make their case to another or have they already had their vote okay so there's you know it's a credible argument either way i can see reasons for saying that person was the person who chose to have it in and gets one more shot at i can see arguments for that person already got a chance to make their case and vote i i'm not going to take a firm decision i think one of the benefits of all of us coming together is that as we debate things we learn from each other and you start thinking more broadly and

141it's a very good thing and that's why we make decisions as a board instead of individually so i think we should come back and have that conversation thank you member gobert those are exactly my notes that the media specialist is on the literary literary council therefore it is redundant so that is something we'll need to revisit all right or vice chair i think at one point when we were at our last meeting we discussed this very topic because i had a concern about the informal meeting between the principal and the parent and my concern was well what happens if the principal just caves to this parent what was the safeguard and i don't remember where that ended but that was my concern then and i think it seems like we had a resolution then when

142we spoke about it but now i don't remember what it was and i don't know if that is that the media specialist is also in that first informal meeting with the principal and the parent we'll go back and we'll check that thank you that's a good one yeah we'll go back and we'll check that okay thank you yeah because i do remember that conversation thank you remember lopez i just want to make a positive comment about after you know having these controversial conversations because they are we have controversial policies here to discuss i hope our students see this as a motivation to read more and you know i think that wow now that those is just fighting to ban books let's read more you know so yes so i expected to see more strong readers

143outside you know in our school system you know from so it's just that remember castor dental thank you madam chair i'm thinking about the different outcomes of the of a council or committee looking at a book and trying to establish a continuum of least restrictive to most restrictive so that when they're if a parent goes to a principal and has a concern that they wouldn't just jump to banning the book for everybody that your first step would be limit my child and then if that if the parent feels like they must go to the next level then they can initiate that literary committee and then they're looking at i don't know whether it's appropriate for everyone at that school but just kind of coming up with ways to allow access for the most number of

144students at the end of that continuum just a way to kind of look at how we're dealing with this that's all all right all right anything further on this so now we're going to move on to the next policy all right the next policy is imb teaching about controversial issues and this policy is being recommended for repeal since it is being incorporated into policy i j l okay public comment so as i stated before we don't believe that this policy should be incorporated into the library policy that other districts have used the controversial issues policy to make sure that conversations can happen so i'm just going to read some of the language from their policy for purposes of this policy a controversial issue is a topic on which opposing points of view have been promulgated

145by responsible opinion or likely to arouse both support and opposition in the community the school board will permit the introduction and proper educational use of controversial issues provided that there is use in the instructional program and then there's a b and c so a is related to the instructional goals of the course of study and level of maturity of the students b does not intend to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view c encourages open-mindedness and conducted in in the spirit of scholarly inquiry controversial issues related to the program may be initiated by the students themselves provided they are presented in the ordinary course of classroom instruction and is not substantially disruptive to the educational setting controversial issues may not be initiated by a source outside the schools unless prior approval has

146been given by the principal the board recognizes that a course of study or certain educational materials may contain content and or activities that some parents find objectionable if after careful personal review of the program lessons and or materials apparent indicates to the school that either the content or activities conflicts with his her religious beliefs or value system the school will consider a written request for his her child to be excused from the particular class for specified reasons the student however will not be excused from participating in the course and will be provided alternative learning activities during the times of which the parents requested absences the board recognizes the importance of respecting the religious and constitutional beliefs of its students and their parents as the term parents is defined in florida statute with that in mind

147with respect to district co-curricular programs okay so then it goes into other stuff happening outside the classroom the point is it addresses and protects freedom of expression freedom of speech in the classroom especially during these moments i feel as if it would be a huge disservice to the community to remove this policy and not to actually incorporate better language to protect our teachers and our students their right to discuss controversial issues in the classroom and really promote critical thinking and the development of critical thinking my kids are young they're in elementary school i see where this is going and this is a concern it's my parental right to express those concerns and i appreciate you allowing me to have those today thank you thank you anyone else all right board members remember gallo i wasn't

148sure if this was old or new so two things i do i'm not certain that we should repeal policies since we're pausing on the other policies it seems like we need to have policies in place until we land the plane on the policies that we're pausing so we might want to pull back the repeal is my opinion and i do i do like the idea and i do think that we need to review what other districts are doing in regards to adhering to the to the new laws that came out of tallahassee to make sure that we're looking at all avenues when we come to to figure out our policy i always think it's good practice to look at what what other districts do as well okay vice chair i think i think member gala

149just said i was gonna say i agree i think if we're gonna if we're gonna pause on the other ones then we should just pause on removing this one i did want to which we can cover this when we talk about it again but i did want to hear the reasoning for wanting to repeal from legal so couple reasons one the this was being incorporated in the other end of the policy second the no public fund shall be used either directly or indirectly for the benefit of any church sect or religious denomination or native any sectarian institution that's the blane amendment in the constitution and the united states supreme court in the recent cases over school vouchers have overruled the application of the blaine amendment in the public school context and said if you spend

150money on any other private group you must then also give it to a religious organization as well so from that standpoint we wanted to get rid of at least that provision because it's subsequently been overruled by the united states supreme court okay so that's just that one part though but not necessarily having having a policy relating to discussing controversial issues in the classroom no the only reason why we did this was you know it the second sentence was the books utterances of a religious or secular character should only be utilized for the purposes that we've talked about under the statute the comparative study of religion etc yeah this was not to say that folks can't talk about a controversial issue for the code for teachers when they do that they are under our collective bargaining

151agreement they're entitled to do it under the principles of professional conduct for the education profession in florida they are supposed to ensure that when they do discuss those issues that they are ensuring that okay if they give their opinion they are entitled to do it but it has to be they have to know this is my opinion this is not necessarily the opinion of the school board and you have to give equal time to both sides of the issue when they are discussing a controversial issue it's not meant to stop that or curtail that in many ways but what we had in this policy is these two sentences as you've seen before we haven't had a more robust version of the controversial issues policy okay okay thank you dr vasquez i'm sorry madam chair i

152was just going to make sure we understood that we're pausing on all of these but we are having the discussion because we have members of the public that are here to speak to it yes thank you and it might to some extent i hoped it might inform the work session not sure we're going very far on that but so we are on our next policy that would be kec challenge materials policy which we are also recommending for repeal since it is being incorporated into policy ijl okay any members of the public no no no okay we're good on that okay all right anything else board members mr pomerani madam chair there was an item 4.05 just for information purposes that we needed to get to as well please members of the board as you know

153i've been corresponding with you since last week about moder charter academy narcosi they have a k-8 school and a high school both of which were opening this year and both of which have located in saint cloud in an old charter school building down there obviously you all know saint cloud is not in orange county they had we have a charter contract with them that says that it's the model contract that the state promulgates and says any proposed change in location or additional location must be requested in writing to the sponsor and any new location must meet the same standards contained here in an applicable law and it also says the school shall not change locations without prior written approval from the sponsor superintendent or superintendent's designee that did not occur in this case that is

154a material violation of the charter contract in my opinion also the charter statute says a district school board may sponsor a charter school in the county over which the district school board has jurisdiction by moving out of orange county we are sponsoring technically right now a charter school that is outside of our jurisdiction i believe that to be a material violation of law with respect to this school now when school opened last week we had numerous deficiencies notated with respect to school safety we have received subsequently and i've passed it on to the board there was two issues the alyssa's alert system and the training for the threat assessment teams down there subsequently we have been provided with information that they have trained the instructional personnel the administrative personnel and the mental health personnel that

155would be on the threat assessment team we still want follow-up because there's a fourth member of that threat assessment team law enforcement so right now they would have to get a contract with saint cloud police department to provide the law enforcement services given where they are we're asking for follow-up on that alice's alert the system has apparently been installed also you all saw a list of violations that the these office of safe schools from the state department of education identified with respect to signage and and various other things they have provided correspondence to the office of safe schools indicating that they have completed that we have sent our school choice staff down to the school which is a double-edged sword because quite frankly we're sending our staff down to a different county to inspect the

156facility but we have sent our office of safe our school choice office down there to confirm whether or not those safety deficiencies have been identified dr kia scott is on the way back so obviously i will get the confirmation from her and we will pass it along when we get there if the safety issues are rectified so there are two bases in law if you're going to terminate a charter that you would do it one would be an immediate termination for health safety welfare violations if in fact the safety violations have been remedied i do not think we would be successful in recommending an immediate closure for for health safety and welfare however i still think that they are in violation of the charter contract and of law by moving down there without getting our

157permission and getting our sign off on it so i will be in consultation with the superintendent the superintendent designee about whether or not to bring an item to you at the next board meeting foreclosure of the charter school i think there are material violations of law on the contract but there's things that we have to look at because obviously if we move to terminate we have to prove it by clearing convincing evidence and if we lose we're on the hook for attorney's fees with them so it's not a proposition that's without risk but i did want to report to the board where we are today because i don't know that anybody has ever contemplated a charter school getting a charter from one county and then deciding to open up in another county without getting the

158permission of their sponsor i think that's completely something that's without contemplation but i do think that it's something that we need to look strongly at remedying it because you know we don't have the relationships with saint cloud pd and we don't have the relationships with the osceola county we have a great relationship with the osceola county school district but that would be like an osceola school moving up here and us having to provide oversight that wouldn't be right for us it wouldn't it's not right for osceola for them to be engaged so we will be bringing something back to you on this issue either a recommendation for closure or an explanation to this board as to why we don't think closure is appropriate but i did want to report to all of you so you

159have that information all right thank you mr pomerani member cobert is this new yes go ahead thank you chair i just would like to take a moment to thank both the members of the public who have come to participate with us today miss cousins ms farrell mr mccracken your professional demeanor your research and bringing the facts forward to us and the manner in which you've done it really help us to make good decisions so we all appreciate you and i'd also like to thank my fellow board members these are very controversial topics the public is not able to discuss them in a professional and even keeled manner what's going on out there is of personal concern to me so the manner in which this board handles controversial issues i am deeply grateful to all of

160you for your professionalism your thoughtfulness and the way you go about making these decisions in the best interests of our children and our employees so just my personal thanks thank you well thank you member gallow thank you madam chair so back to the to the charter to mater is it their intent to move back to orange county the following year they are they are indicating to us their intent is to move back in mid-october oh this is only okay pending the successful construction of their facility so their facilities not ready they needed a temporary housing facility for their students and students from orange county are traveling into osceola county currently that is our understanding there's also virtual virtual component of it but there is an in-person component as well an osceola county school board doesn't

161want to take temporary custody the indications from i've been speaking with the osceola general counsel and i don't think they want to be in that business all right thank you thank you i look forward to the update yes we all will all right dr vazquez anything further for the board today no i think we've done enough yeah i do awesome thank you team for good work on your side thank you thank you and good luck to allison thank you meeting is now adjourned good job can you ask him to be delayed a little bit longer you