School Board Business Meeting 6 p.m. 1-24-22

001everyone welcome it's 6 p.m and welcome to the business meeting for the school district of indian river county school board it is monday january 24th 2022 and we are meeting in the joanne islette jr teacher education center at this time i'd like to call the meeting to order at 6 pm and i'd like everyone to please stand and recognize for the pledge of allegiance will be led by sebastian river high school's navy junior rotc under the direction of lieutenant commander lcdr james landis usn retired and master sergeant msgt michael hussey usmc retired gentlemen ready how about nice and gentlemen please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god others march host others

002ready two host march oh thank you gentlemen and women [Laughter] gentlemen and women thank you your turn thank you that helps i appreciate that okay all right we are to the adoption of the orders of the day are there any items that board members wish to move from consent to action seeing none then i'd like to call for a motion to accept the orders of the day so move okay i'm sorry who is the second doctor oh mr barefoot thank you all right all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed it's 500 vote thank you okay at this time i'd like to turn it over to um dr moore for our presentations thank you madam chair we do have a couple of presentations and i'll turn over to miss maddox to present those uh

003this evening hello good evening everyone i'm gonna blossom over here thank you for being here with us tonight at this meeting we have a few presentations for you tonight one of them i'm very excited about actually i'm excited about all three of them captain i saw you looking at me i'm excited about yours too but we have our stars of the year finalist video first and that is highlighting our five teacher of the year and five employee of the year finalists we picked them up on december 16th at their schools we surprised them for being one of the finalists and we had a very special lunch in their honor and our gala was rescheduled to january 27th our stars of the year gala will be at sebastian river high school from six to we try

004to keep it around seven uh maybe shortly after the theme is peace love and sdirc and it is a 70s gala so if you choose to attend you're more than welcome to we encourage you to dress in theme bring your disco fever with you so now brooks would you please play our finalist video i'm kristen maddox your public information officer and today is one of our favorite days of the entire year join us as we pick up our 10 stars of the year finalists from each of their campuses we don't have to go far for the first stop it's right here [Music] [Applause] you have been selected as our district representative one of five [Applause] [Music] surprise kyle so you interviewed to be one of the finalists for the school district of indian river county

005employee of the year uh and you have been selected as one of those five finalists so congratulations [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so you interviewed to be a teacher finalist of the year of over 150 teachers you are one of five finalists for the school district of indian river county [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you have been selected as one of the five finalists so congratulations [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you are one of five finalists as district employee of the year [Music] [Applause] [Music] you were identified by your school's teacher of the year you went you interviewed uh for the district and now you have been identified as one of five finalists for the entire district of indian river county congratulations [Music] [Applause] i have all the teachers 150 teachers this is one of the five finalists

006for teacher of the year [Music] [Applause] [Music] come on up here please [Music] we're going to celebrate uh your accomplishment of being one of the five finalists for the school district of indiana river county for teacher of the year [Music] [Applause] [Music] in this room is your employee of the year which is mr banks right over here [Applause] jason congratulations this is for you [Applause] [Music] hey mr conway how are you pretty good so i know you're dealing with a tough time and we are all praying for you and your father make sure he gets uh well a little bit better but when he wakes up and goes through surgery can you please tell him you've been identified as one of the five finalists for the school district of indian river county as teacher of

007the year so we're [Applause] [Music] congratulations to our finalists again on the 27th we will be announcing our district employee of the year and our district teacher of the year and they will be going to compete at the state level this week our teachers who were our finalists have been recording lesson plans in their rooms with their classrooms to submit for the final review of our committee to choose our teacher of the year so again that was wonderful it's one of our favorite times of the year dr moore's on campus so much i don't think some of them knew that we were there to even surprise them because they just expect to see him but um it was it was a wonderful time for our next two pro no performances tonight our next two check

008presentations we have our casual for a cause december cause and that's the salvation army captain if you'd like to come up here please if you're not familiar with casual for a cause it's a day during the month we have a predetermined organizations that we have for january through december and it's a day that our students teachers staff members in exchange for a donation can dress casually and the donations they all go to our the organization of our choice and this year we've changed our calendar around a lot and we've we've joined with a lot of local organizations to support those organizations and the salvation army you guys have been on our calendar for quite a few years now the school district of indian river county raised 1957.35 and storm grove middle school they raised the

009most money with 431 dollars and 85 cents would you like to say anything i would i just want to say a a a sincere and heartfelt thank you to you all from the the school district and to all of the the teachers who and and local staff at the schools that helps make this happen um and going above and beyond um you know and teaching kids or demonstrating values you know for the kids like on how to give back to your community um we're especially proud this year of the smaller schools that that really stepped up um and are making an outsized impact in our community by the way they're just teaching these kids values like that so we're grateful for the support of the district and for all the schools that participated this year

010god bless you guys and if you would just stick around for a minute we're going to do one picture at the end so one more presentation this is for the daisy hope center do we have a representative from daisy hope here today perfect hello so we chose daisy hope this year this was their first year on the casual for a cause calendar and we're looking forward to several more years again that was for january and in exchange for a donation students and staff they got to wear casual clothes the total that the school district of indian river county raised was three thousand sixty six dollars and twenty two cents and again storm grove uh raised the most money with five hundred and seventy one dollars and thirty cents and mrs millemann has your those aren't

011the real ones don't worry would you like to say a few words all right i just want to thank everyone in the school district for thinking of us and having us on our calendar um we're after school tutoring program it's in wabasso off of 510 we tutor students ages 5 to after school so just a big thank you from our staff to everyone in the district and before we take a picture i was just reminded to mention that we also had red kettles in each one of our schools this year so thank you if you were on any of those campuses and you donated um an additional 2 200 and 82 cents was raised in the red kettles and the the winner this year was the small and mighty fellsmere elementary that's right congratulations okay

012can we get a picture please i'll get um two individual ones and then a group shot mr brooks over here will help us out if we can get this out of your way sorry okay it yeah just shoot them on the picture there take turns congratulations and that concludes our presentations okay thank you okay before we go to citizen input i'd just like to say um recognize alicia alicia reese and peggy poisel for filling in and we have nancy esplin back she is our board secretary and she has been out and we are so thankful that she has returned so nancy thank you for being back here we appreciate that [Applause] all right at this time it is time for citizen input these are the guidelines for citizen input according to the school board policy

013zero one six nine point one each statement made by the member of the public shall be limited to three minutes in duration persons will be recognized in order in which the requests were received the time shall start when the speaker is at the podium and the school board attorney will be the official time keeper you will hear a beep at the end of your three minutes persons may speak for up to three minutes at the beginning of the business meeting during citizen input as indicated on the order of the business and for up to three minutes to each action item during the action agenda and each board member discussion item as indicated on the order of business persons may only speak once about any given item the time period may be extended by the presiding

014officer only the individual submitting a speaker's form is allowed to address the board and time may not be yielded to other speakers during the meeting please refrain from clapping or outbursts of any sort so that we can proceed with dignity and with decorum and by not infringing on any individual's first amendment rights i need to remind everyone to direct all comments to the chair not to the individual board members or to the superintendent board members may or may not address any citizen input statements at the end of all citizen input comments as board members listen to citizens without interruption citizens are asked to give board members the same respect as per florida statute 1001.372 subsections 3 the presiding officer of any district school board may order the removal from a public meeting held by the

015district school board of any person interfering with the expeditious expertise thank you expeditious or orderly process of such meeting provided such officer has first issued a warning and continued interference with the orderly process of the meeting will result in removal at this time we'll call the first person and the person on the deck so john crappie is first and karen jordan is second mr crappie the microphone is yours happy new year 2022 a new year right um back in april i came to the first meeting i came to and dr mark mccain spoke about mental health and he talked about the children and they're suffering from mental health and i and i watched the um the workshops again and i i'm starting to hear mental health coming up all the sudden i'm thinking wow didn't

016didn't the people in this room for the last two years tell you that you're going to have a mental health problem and you're going to have children who have post-traumatic stress disorder and coveted stress disorder well now we're here and so we we told you you didn't listen nobody wanted to listen to the parents that came into this room tell you about what was happening now we want it now we want to focus on mental health we want to bring mental health consultants in all of a sudden well i'm telling you right now that that's not the case right now what we're going to do is we're going to take those seats back that are available uh the upcoming election we're going to take our power back and we're going to take that and we're

017not going to have this happen anymore because we're the ones in this community that's going to have to clean up the mess that was caused by the mass mandates and the quarantining and etc except dr moore i'm speaking do you want to look at me or no oh okay appreciate it so anyway so so obviously again i've proven my point that nobody wants to listen to what we have to say here but this time you're going to listen because we're going to make sure that you listen because we're going to vote out the folks didn't want to didn't want to look out for the kids mental health i get emails and and and text message ever since i got fired from my job for speaking out about mental health that they send us messages and

018tell us that you know my kid wants to wear a mask now because you know she wants to hide her face because she feels she doesn't feel good about herself anymore and then i rather wear the mask they're not even wearing it for coven dr mark said he wasn't he wasn't treating pete for covet he was treating people for mental disorders depression attempted suicides and he came in here and spoke about that i came in here spoke about that i let you know that that was going to happen but nobody wants to seem to listen i don't understand why but we the people this community are going to take our power back and those seats that are available they're going to be they're going to come back in the into the right frame of mind

019they're going to come back into the people's power and you're going to listen to them and the people that are going to take those seats are going to listen to the folks of this community and dr moore you just sit there and keep playing with your phone all you want if you don't want to listen to what we have to say i don't know what you're doing but you're not paying attention so we talked about this and your seat is next too because we because that's going to happen next is it that we're going to take the power back and then you're going to you're going to go too because this isn't going to happen anymore we can't have this our mental health of our children are being affected and nobody seems to care nobody

020wants to worry about it they want to be after the fact we want to be reactive instead of proactive it's time to be proactive and make sure this never happens again because we're going to have to clean this up the people of this room are going to have to clean up the fallout and that's what's going to happen and we're going to have to take the responsibility because we're taking our power back we're doing it because we are free and sovereign beings and being free is our birthright and that's how that that's all we're going to do and then and you guys you want to be a part of that that's fine we we want you to be a part of it we want you to be a part of that taking care of our

021children's mental health because it's a real serious problem and a lot of people are really upset about it all right appreciate it thank you mr crappie okay we have karen jordan next and maureen is it slosser sloster will be on deck thank you good evening my name is karen jordan i live in sebastian uh it's hard to beat that discussion that just came so i won't even try but what i'd like to see indian river county do is to go back to some basics i think i'm asking too much to go back to bring god into our church into our schools so okay if i can't do that what i'd like to do is to go back to 1786 when dr benjamin rush said the following three things he said a lot more than that

022teach our children to love and serve god teach our children to love and serve their country and threes to teach our children uh not our children our students to love and serve their families those are some pretty basics and if that's still too far back for you in terms of basics how about just reading writing and arithmetic basics and i even thought about going back to adam and eve but i don't think anyone would appreciate all of us being sinless and running around naked with our leaves on us so i'm and i'm a christian i'm a sinner and i want you to know that going back to reading and writing in arithmetic is something that is inherent to us we need it we have to have it as was mentioned by the gentleman before me

023communications i came to three school board meetings last year did not talk at any of them but i just like now look at all the rules we have to follow if i could tell you what those rules were i i would but i don't know what they are i guess i could look them up but i have only three minutes to talk uh there's not enough communication i'd like to see the seven of us yes of meet just one-on-one with us maybe that's been done but not to my knowledge listen to the board we want to listen to you because all of our lives are busy most of us work don't work well those that are retired i can be here that's okay but for the people that work they need me to help bring

024you all to understand that now my son was in lake county in volusia county when he was going through his sixth and seventh and eighth grade periods i'm i'm not directly involved but yet i am because when i can't walk and i'm on a cane those are the young people that will be caring for me and changing my diaper so please listen to us i know the animosity between the two is there but let's get a mediator if we have to i i was shown i was told last year in one of those meetings that some school boards don't make any money that they do it on a volunteer basis i'd like to see us vote thank you thank you y'all all right appreciate it very much um maureen saucer and susan baldwin zondeck good

025evening my name is maureen schlosser and i'm a registered voter here in indian river county i'm also a former classroom educator and school librarian and i'm also an active member of the american association of school librarians thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about first amendment rights and library policies i'm here to address a problem and offer a solution the problem is censorship award-winning professionally vetted books were removed from the shelves of our school libraries without due process and in violation of our student civil rights under the first amendment the decision to deny these books was based on an excerpt read from a youtube show and a list that is circulating the country book removal based on this criteria is censorship and violates federal law it opens a school district up to the

026possibility of litigation that will waste substantial taxpayer money only to result in having the books put back on the shelves according to the supreme court decision in island trees versus pico materials may not be removed from the libraries just for the ideas contained in them the court viewed school libraries as places for voluntary inquiry and specifically ruled that local school boards are limited by the first amendment when exercising their discretion to remove books from school libraries the solution library policies need to be implemented to show compliance with the first amendment the american library association has a tool kit to help craft a selection policy and a reconsideration policy for books a book selection policy helps school librarians consider materials that support the curriculum and the entire learning community a reconsideration policy outlines the process for

027handling formal complaints about a book the process begins with a conversation with the school librarian and in most cases after learning how and why a book was purchased for the library collection the issue is resolved to place a formal complaint a form is submitted and a reconsideration group meets to read the entire book review the form and make a decision during this process the book stays in circulation to comply with the first amendment numerous schools have sadly wasted substantial taxpayer money in litigation by not having these policies in place let's not make the same mistake let's get these professionally vetted books back on the shelves and put policies in place as other districts have done thank you all right susan baldwin and jennifer pippen and sandec hello and good evening um i've been attending school

028board meetings pretty regularly since the spring of 2020. we don't have children in the school system but we are taxpayers as a senior citizen and retiree i honestly thought i was done having to speak to school boards my kids are in their 30s however um apparently the good lord had other plans for me so i'll be here supporting parents as long as i must and i too am speaking tonight on the library books with explicit sexual content and crt i understand that the books in question have been removed from the shelves for the time being and that's wonderful thank you okay is the vetting process going on after all this has been going on since october 27th and um we haven't forgotten about it nor will we i don't believe there is a valid argument

029for some of the things some of the excerpts that i read that were sent to me um have any value in uh they really can be used as arguments for keeping the books bottom line is exposing young people to especially to sexually explicit content negatively affects their young undeveloped minds this can lead to adults in broken marriages i mean ask the spouse who's um where the other spouse got addicted to pornography and can lead and really can affect society at a whole you know and personally i don't care for how many awards a book gets but if it contains this kind of material it doesn't belong in the schools and you folks have taken the first step and i hope you continue thank you thank you jennifer pippen michael c marsh is on deck [Music]

030good evening my name is jennifer pippen and i'm the chairman for moms for liberty indian river florida and one of the co-founders for we the people indian river county our members believe parents should have a seat at the table when it comes to school security and protecting the children when safety was discussed at the last school board meeting parents agree with a partnership with the sheriff's office suggestions from our members include combining on on-campus school resource deputies with armed retired military or citizens with a concealed license that satisfies the stringent requirements of the sheriff's office in florida law another concern for our parents are the district policies and procedures concerning medical treatment for children some districts around our state are working to find the loopholes in the parental rights law we contend that our children's

031medical information should remain private including the baker act records no one at school has the right to our children's private medical information unless we the parents permit it this is covered under hipaa please do not continue to break the law if you're going to change policy furthermore any issue that arises at school affecting the mental well-being of our children must not be hidden from parents it's the parents right to direct the upbringing education medical care for their children no secret meetings or undisclosed information should ever be kept from parents by law we are out also asking for adequate discipline and accountability for student behavior application of these procedures should be the same for all races across the district it is unacceptable that the resource officers are punched in the face from time to time children

032are having sexual relations in cars and just told did not get pregnant fights happen daily with no accountability to many of these students citizens have been instructed by this board publicly reading the vulgar passages from the books that were in the libraries would not be appropriate yet you had these books made available to our children's libraries if these books do go back on the shelves we are in partnership with the sheriff's office to file a formal complaint thanks to the district's attempts to flood us with punitive procedures in order to object to the harmful obscene material you provide to our minor children we have plenty of documentation to provide to law enforcement legal repercussions will be sought if you knowingly put pornography in the hands of minors it is a it is a third degree

033felony here in the state of florida parents should be able to direct the moral upbringing of their students without being undermined at school how and when to discuss sexuality gender identity is the sole right and responsibility of the parents thank you and hopefully this year parents will have a seat at the table to partner with the school district thank you thank you michael c marsh and don wilkerson nassandeck this is just the first one right madam chair this is not the consent ones right this is input regular citizen input sure i'm all about policy good evening all um i hear the word partnerships keep getting echoed out so i want to come tonight and report to you i am michael c marsh president and founder of team success enterprises as well as your alternate on

034the mpo board i want to talk to you tonight about these partnerships in 2021 we had some very strong partnerships with the school district winning river county team success has an event known as the caring christmas cause on christmas day we go throughout not just indian river county this year we were able to go to saint lucie as well as martin county but i want to talk to you about some of the great individuals that you guys have within your school district when i reached out to find out the families that were most needed for these blessings not one not two but six schools reached back out and said here's a family we'll have them gain contact with you that means a lot when those principals staff members coaches reach out and say we know

035those kids that are in need on christmas day i would like to recognize one of your principals principal bagley from pelican island not only did she make sure that a family was going to be taken care of on christmas day but she got out her out of her bed to make sure that she personally delivered these gift cards on christmas day those are your principals your staff your coaches that partner with team success and that means a lot now we will change over to some hats because we wear many and tonight we're going to wear a lot of them but before we get to that we have two other great events that we're going to be partnering with our school district of indian river county in february on valentine's day we have a tasty treat

036to transportation where we will partner with our friends miss islet and transportation and make sure that over 150 bus drivers i didn't know you guys had so many and bus aides before i committed to it we have over 150 of them so but anyways we're going to feed them all and then in march march 25th we have our community resource fair over at united against poverty we want to make sure that these non-profits are talking to one another because we know that we have some great ones and we know here at the school district you guys partner with many of them so we've invited our friends at the school district of indian river county i will get that flyer out to all the board members as well as the superintendent we look forward for you

037guys having the table going to have 50 or more non-profits we're going to have local businesses and at the end of this event all the money raised we will be writing a check to unite against poverty for ged classes driver's license ids birth certificates those those items that the indigent out there are really in need of so this is very important and last but not least i want to recognize we will not in call individually because we're all about policy follow the florida state statute i've heard that before thank you to those school board members that constantly and consistently donate whether that's financially or your time whether that's you know putting cranberry and souffle cups on thanksgiving cutting turkeys uh making sure christmas presents are wrapped or making your generous gift of team success stronger

038together good night now thank you mr marsh don wilkerson's our last speaker good evening i'm i'm here tonight as a concerned parent and a citizen of indian river county i have two school-aged children at home my husband and i have decided not to allow our kids to attend public school for a multitude of reasons we are concerned about what is being taught in the classrooms we teach our children to treat others the way that they would like to be treated and to love their neighbors as themselves and also to be kind and respectful to everyone they come in contact with i for these reasons i do not believe that crt teaches these important character traits and that's why i strongly agree with it unfortunately i have seen and heard that crt is sprinkled in throughout

039the classroom cleverly disguised using various other nicknames i would like to ask this board to vote no on the savis advanced elective curriculum because it has crt and it is banned in florida per governor desantis our children will not benefit from this curriculum on another subject it's alarming and also infuriating to hear that over 149 books have been submitted for review for containing pornography and crt what are those books doing in our schools i'm just wondering if you could please tell us the criteria and the process for which a book is allowed entry into school libraries i have also heard from concerned parents about the constant fights and the bullying especially at vero beach high school and oslo middle school as parents we want to know that safety is a priority in our schools unfortunately

040a lot of parents are losing faith that their children are truly safe in schools these are only a few but some major reasons that my children are not in public school right now thank you thank you miss wilkerson you want to mention something go ahead i thought there were some more that was our sorry i thought i thought there were more um citizen input later comments later um i just wanted to mention one thing that uh something that was mentioned about the library books being a violation of the first amendment rights and that books were being removed from libraries in an effort to violate the first memory that is not what is happening here in the school district of indian river county what is happening however is a full review of the statutory requirements that

041we are obligated to follow as elected officials we are responsible and we are we were elected to ensure that this district is following um the any of the statutory requirements that is that that falls within the purview of the school district and under the responsibilities of the um the school superintendent dr moore what we are doing is we have charged the superintendent with a full review of that process so that he can ensure what that vetting process will look like moving forward um so that these books do not end up on the shelves as they are many of them not all of them many of them do contain pornographic information graphic details uh things that are inappropriate for minor children things that should not be in our public school system we are not a public

042library system we are a public school system who happens to have libraries within them that's very very different so to just to bring this to a close there must be a process in place to ensure that anyone can object to instructional materials including library books that is what we are doing when those objections come in the superintendent has i am told a team of people looking into what those objections are and how those books are going to be either removed or not removed brought back to the board for a vote we're still waiting to hear what that final process is going to look like and also just to follow up with that same i don't i don't know where she is there she is sorry i didn't recognize you just to um give you some

043information in case you missed some other um meetings uh we have uh florida statute seven zero zero that identifies some definitions of some of those things that are uh prohibited as well as eight four seven point zero one two one zero zero six point four zero one zero zero six point two eight and 1006.34 are just three of the statutes of which uh speak specifically to the processes that are responsible for instructional materials and that includes library books okay thank you mr rosaro good okay um all right at this time is approval for consent agenda items i'm going to call for a motion to approve the consent agenda mr barefoot second dr schiff any discussion all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed vote carries 5-0 okay so there have been no items removed

044from consent to action and at this time we're going to hold our public hearing and adoption of volume 22 number one and special update okay which part do i need to read all right let's see this item deals with the adoption of new and revised school board policies dr moore have you documented that this public hearing was properly advised in accordance with state statutes yes we now recess this meeting to conduct the public hearing as advertised the public hearing is now in session dr maura there any written responses to the advertised public hearing to be read at this time no not this time not at this time the public is invited to address this issue at this time is there any individual or any individual representing the organization or on his or her own personal

045or public interest who wishes to speak all right seeing none all right and then i'd like to announce that the adoption of new and revised school board policies has been conducted pursuant to notice and that ample opportunity to address this issue has been provided to all the board meeting is recombined reconvened at this time okay i'd like to call for a motion so move dr jones a second mr rosario okay all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed carries vocaries50 all right the next public hearing public hearing and adoption of revised policy 169.1 this item deals with adoption of revised school board policy dr moore have you documented that this public hearing was properly advised in accordance with state statutes yes we now recess this meeting to conduct the public hearing is advertised the

046public hearing is now in session doctor moore are there any written responses to the advertised public hearing to be read at this time no no the public is invited to address this issue at this time is there an individual representing the organization or on his public his own personal or public interest to which wishes to speak okay hearing none i conclude that the adoption of the revised school board policy has been conducted pursuant to notice and that ample opportunity to address this issue has been provided to all the board meeting is reconvened at this time i call for a motion so moved mr barefoot second second okay dr jones any discussion all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed passes five zero okay item c updated public hearing for the adoption of math instructional

047materials i believe we have people that wish to speak to this item okay all right so at this point we'd like to receive any public comments and i believe we have a couple and the first one is mr marsh that was 13c correct ma'am yes just want to make sure i'm not speaking here yeah because you had down 13 a and b and but you didn't speak up so i oh i didn't know how we were i thought you called me because i put my name on i'm sorry would you like to speak to the public hearings that i brought up yes ma'am for ap that's why i put on it all right hold on one second so we just had public hearings and i closed them no one spoke but he had put in

048that he requested to speak to 13a a and b do you want to speak to them together do i get six minutes oh he gets three minutes so you want you want nine minutes is that what you're saying so per the policy i'm able to speak three minutes for each item on this that's what i'm saying so we can do it all together nine twelve minutes whatever whatever's easier for the board i think we have other people i want to speak i'm good with three minutes on a and come back do you want me to reopen the public hearing okay okay so mr marshall i'm sorry i should have made that more clear when i open the public hearing that's the time that okay you should speak so i'm going to reopen it for you

049thank you man so i'm going to go back to 13a public hearing and adoption of the new and revised school board policy and we do have a speaker so i'm reopening that don't you want to vote for us to reopen it yes sorry no we don't have to have a vote to reappend it to him no no i can just reopen it so at this time i'm reopening the public hearing hold on one second sorry we want to make sure we're doing everything legally well that's why i wrote it down it's public hearing day i opened it up i didn't realize that was the a that he wanted to speak to when i asked if there were any speakers he didn't come forward but he wrote his name down on the paper okay so that's

050why i asked the last time i was up here is this just for this or are we doing right here or voting again so do we have to vote free open hearing can we continue we're gonna take five minutes okay okay thank you we'll go sit down now yeah it's oh sorry 6 49. okay um sorry we've never had this before when someone asked to speak at an item if it's not a public hearing it just normally comes up but since these were public hearings then we call for who would like to speak during the public hearing but you actually asked to speak to the item which comes before the public hearing so my bad i apologize i didn't say that no problem madam chair so because we've already voted on now i have to

051ask the board to open that back up thank you chair yes i would recommend asking for a motion and second and vote to reopen the public hearings on items 13 amb okay yeah so so let me yeah let me explain to the board members thank you board members here's where robert's rules gets fun so because this was a public hearing during public hearings anyone that wants to speak to the public hearing item needs to speak during the public hearing but if they want to speak to it as the action item they can speak before the action item mr marsh did fill out the forms and give them to us ahead of time so i thought that's when he was going to speak but he didn't so he actually had the right to speak before the

052item so now i technically need to ask if you're willing to open the public hearing back up so i need a motion i'm sorry just a question if we open the public hearing back up but we've already voted on it do we have to somehow rescind that vote or undo that vote i'm thinking we're just opening the public hearing to just do that thank you uh chair um please we have a we have an attorney she's going to advise us thank you all what i would recommend is that at that time the chair asked the board members if anybody wishes to reopen the vote because they want to change their vote if not i think we can just let the vote stand okay so but we can hear from the um person that would like

053to speak yes if you reopen the public hearing so i don't need to ask for the reboot then to open it i would ask for a vote to reopen the public hearing oh yes i'm going to ask for vote then to reopen the public hearing so move okay second okay so now we've got to document that as the second time so the first i'm sorry the first was who dr johnson jones and the second was doctor dr schiff okay second go round no not yet excuse me okay um all those i can ask for the motion for the vote then but and then have him speak okay yes all right all those in favor aye aye no all right so 4041 sorry okay and now i can have mr marsh speak thank you madam chair

054i'm here tonight as the founder of mike for liberty as well as the founder of the really really we the people and i'm here to talk about public records which is a buzzword i heard in the workshop today so let's talk all about it let's actually address the elephant in the room mr marsh one second um thank you this clock i like my time the policy is on public records okay yeah the first poll i just want to make sure that we're with the right policy because the board members brought up that um we need to make sure that we're speaking to the correct policy so this is on public hearing and adoption of volume 22 number one which is um public records correct yes hold on 13 a says public participation at board meetings

055okay so 15a is public participation reading the wrong thing so i'm only given the the title here what's linked is public participation at board meetings and it's on our agenda as public hearing and adoption of volume 22 number one and special update right next public records that's what it says what i print out on board docs draft volume 22 number one special update 83 10 public records it's right here from board doc school district anywhere county that's correct would you like to see it yes if there's a problem that's what it's on okay that's what it's on so can i he's correct it's not here it's not what's on the superintendent is telling us that's what it's on that's the volume that's attached that is the volume yes that's the volume that's attached okay mr

056marshall i'm sorry we're going to restart your time thank you okay are we starting back at 3 or because it's going where are we starting from no all right that's fine we can make this quick we'll address the elephant in the room and we're not talking about our good republicans uh public records so if you dive into public records 8310 you have access to public records and it states such any individual may inspect and request copies of public records of the district during the regular business hours of the office in which such records are maintained the district may not require requests for public records to be in writing nor may the person requesting the information be required to disclose name address or phone number unless specifically required to do so by law well we have

057a problem here because in the workshop that's what we want to do we're looking at a board member brought up through the chair implementing a new public record system that asked for these things well we want to be in compliance with the law you cannot ask those things because that would be a direct violation of public record let's go further a custodian of public records and or his or her designee must promptly acknowledge requests to inspect or copy records promptly and respond to such requests in good faith there's not a problem in communications there's a problem with the custodian of some of these public records i've asked for a public record almost two months ago through the chair it's been almost two months and i have not got my public records request by the custodian

058the custodian is not sarah milnerman nor kristen maddox it's a board member the record that was turned over to me is not what i've requested i do not want to put the school district on a five-day notice but if this is the only way that i can obtain these public records then we will do so we spoke about this to numerous people at this point i'm asking what are we going to do we have the school board attorney here tonight we want to be in compliance of public record it's very simple the request states it will take not even 15 minutes to fulfill it went through communications communications wrote back to the custodian where's my record that's my question i leave here tonight and we will send this to the entire board superintendent madam attorney

059i want the record do i have to get an attorney to ask for the record this is very simple why are we wasting all this time we're so concerned to be in compliance and public record i mean after all we want to adopt a whole new public record system i think public records is amazing sarah millerman muy bueno but some custodians of public record no bueno so i leave you tonight asking when do i get my facebook messenger request that has been two months ago on one of these board members how much longer is it because that board member interacts with other political organizations stay tuned because we're going to find out together okay thank you mr marsh let's not laugh mr rosario it's about you i'm sorry no please don't don't speak to don't

060speak to board members she laughed at me hey you shut up you spoke to more like you all right all right can we help could we please stop please please thank you no problem madam chair thank you are we on b now hold on oh okay just checking okay thank you chair my recommendation would be if any board member if you want to ask if any board member wishes to ask for reconsideration of the vote because they want to change their vote if not i think we can just allow the vote to stand okay is there any board member that wishes to change their mind on the original vote no okay so we're fine on the original vote okay we are now to 13b i believe we have a guest speaker on that mr marsh

061hello madam chair yes this is public participation at meetings yes that is correct and i believe required instruction i'm sorry hold on we need to go back and ask for the vote again correct you need to go back and reopen the public hearing on this one yeah yep oh i want to make sure we're following robert's face followers challenging me tonight okay you're doing great ma'am jerry i'm trying all right so we're going to open up 13b again okay you need a motion and we need to vote on i do need a motion free move oh thank you dr schiff has um made the motion for 13b anyone second second okay dr jones second and this is the second go around that's how i'm writing that nancy okay this is draft volume 22 number one

062special update correct um po2215 revised 10 6 of 21. this is uh public hearing and adoption revised policy 169.1 169.1 169.1 public participation at meetings oh wait please hold okay um can i get a vote on on reopening this all those in favor aye aye aye no okay 4-1 so where's 13b on this the draft volume 22 number one special update the program of instruction that was 13 a that was 13. here it's listed under 13 a for the one i just yeah 13a is what you just spoke to 13b is on public participation in meetings okay so many policies all right let's go do that okay mr marsh ready ready okay well we don't got too much on this one but um once again i am michael uh mike for liberty i'm the co-founder

063of that we the really real we the people of indian river county um also i am the chair of the people against the re-election of wacky yaki i stand before you tonight mr marsh mr marsh please do not hold on it everyone else please let me handle it okay uh mr marsh you can't you can't call out board members okay i didn't say any board member's name no mr marsh everybody didn't say one board member's name mr marsh everyone gives titles okay well thank you just be mike for liberty and the really real people you should do something thank you well when someone laughs and she could say this is ridiculous that's not good for him either mr marsh yes please okay okay thank you all right so this is 169.1 and a moment here

064i just wanted to mention that uh after this gets adopted there will be no more signs i believe from reading this i believe once you guys adopt this um subsection f says no signs or placards shall be allowed in the board meeting room no board action shall be taken on requests made during public discussion unless the board declares the matter to be an emergency in accordance with current law any other request that the board chooses to take action on shall be placed on agenda for subsequent meeting so i just want to remind those tonight that once this is voted in we cannot bring signs or placards i guess my question to the board would that also mean certain shirts or are we just going for signs that we hold in hands i just want to

065make sure everyone understands because it sounds like this is going to be voted in tonight but i just want to point that out for those who may not have went through board docs and seen subsection f because i know a lot of times we bring our signs some signs are great some signs are yeah but you know once this gets voted in tonight we the people will no longer be bringing signs or placards here in the board meeting room if i interpret this correctly here and [Music] lastly we want to thank the fact that you guys do allow the public to speak we have the ability not just on one item to give cis an input but we do have the ability on all these on the consent um like i'm doing here tonight to

066prove the point that we are able to do so so as we keep saying that we want to take back our power this you know this is one of the ways we can take back our power find out what policies are being adopted and come up here and speak to them and for my last few seconds just a moment of silence a little prayer because things are a little tense in here thank you once again madam chair all right yeah please thank you uh and um lastly uh the next one for 13c do we go right to that or hold on a second okay okay is there anyone that would like to change your vote from the original vote on that item okay all right now we are reopening 13c can i get a motion

067oh i'm sorry we hadn't gotten to 13c yet okay and mr marsh you are not first speaker on this one so oh no bueno okay that's all right we need a moment anyway can we take uh we're going to take a minute so um mr rosario can join us again thank you i'm going to take a 709 board members let's take four minutes okay we are in agenda number 13c updated public hearing for adoption of math instructional materials this is to receive public comments about proposed order of adoption for the math instructional materials public hearing will be done on february 28th i'd like to call for a motion so move dr jones second second mr barefoot i saw your hand up first any discussion [Music] i have a discussion okay mrs cersario you you're recognized

068thank you um i uh brought this up before and i i just think that this is a little too premature for us to have this tonight um our process or what was proposed to us is that we are not going to vote on an official um curriculum until was the day it was april mr meyer just want to get it straight do i have that correct but through the chair there's not to be a vote tonight there is a vote to adopt meaning to select the bulk of them in february but then the vote to procure meaning to purchase uh only one um product that is in april so you asked your credit that's that's what i wanted to know so the final recommendation is coming to us in april tonight was just to open

069up for public comment and then on february 28th the after having this opened up for public comment um we would vote to approve the recommended adoption order of instructional materials so my question is what are we voting on on february 28th versus the final recommendation in april and why are there two votes when we could just wait until the final recommendation not counting the public hearing because i understand that we need to open at some point we need to open it up for public hearing but can you help explain that through the chair absolutely great question um so florida statutes require uh districts to go through a number of steps in order to formally complete the entirety of the process uh we have to have the open notice public hearing which is tonight that has

070to be on a separate date a separate meeting date than the vote to adopt districts must adopt in order to set forth the 30-day window for petitions so that's what would occur between february 28th and the 30 days after that that's also when we anticipate the state of florida to release the list of books that are approved by the commissioner so we anticipate receiving that april 1st which is around about the time that the 30-day petition window is over that gives the district the opportunity to defend any petitions if the district chooses to as i said the presentation on january the 10th we have not received the best and final offers for the cost nor the list that is official for us to select from from the state which is why we bring that final

071item to the board in april but at that point the the i think the the um benefit of doing things in this order this year is that the district is done we've done all the requisite steps we've reviewed the content we've allowed for the public hearing we've allowed for the public petition process and then we can make that final vote in april because what we learned last year was doing all of that after april led us not to get to the last step until i believe it was july the 5th which means that when we ordered those amplified books they did not arrive in time and that really put our teachers and our students and everyone at a disadvantage so by moving through these steps of this process at an earlier month we were going

072to be able to procure the books that last week in april which puts us at a better timeline of getting them before the school year starts so the doe has a call for guest reviewers um and the call for guests i mean we talked about this and the call for guest reviewers is held between january 14th and january 28th then after that i believe there is access to the materials access to the requested materials will be available via the flim system through the doe for two weeks that would be from the 14th to the 28th and then after that two-week period has ended of course access to the materials will be blocked so any there are people who have signed up i suppose to be this guest reviewer account a guest reviewer of the books

073that are being recommended or the books the math instructional materials adoption process and then at that point the doe it's my understanding that the doe will then make their final recommendation after these reviewers so us opening it up for public comment now prior to the doe doing what they're doing what they're supposed to do just seems too premature for me we should wait until the doe does their process and then open it up for public comment i would say anytime after the 28th which is right around the corner but if having one meeting a month is going to be the determiner for saying well we're not going to have time because we have one meeting a month that shouldn't be that shouldn't hold us up because we can have a special meeting anytime so through

074the chair respectfully disagree um and we've we've been through this and we've we've you know lobbied state government to change this it's unfortunate that the state has set these timelines to not give us their list until april 1st it's just impossible for us to go through the entirety of a district review and adoption process between april 1st and the time we need the materials to train teachers in the summer it would be much more beneficial if this day were to give us their lists october 1st then you know like you said we would have plenty of time to get everything done but if statute if they're not going to give us their list until april 1st we have to do portions of our process concurrently and i understand your your point of view i do

075i just disagree that you know we're we're reviewing materials which may not make the list and i get how frustrating that is to the community and to the teachers actually the teachers are more frustrated by anybody and myself also but the fact the matter is if we don't do this concurrently we put our kids at a disadvantage and that's not something that we're willing to do so all the content has been reviewed by those who wanted to be part of the committee we would love to hear the public's comment you know if there's petitions for any potential products like i said we'll wait to see when the state releases their final list and if the state doesn't put it on the list and there's no point in defending write a product that may have been

076petitioned but also if someone if they offer the financial offer is better for the district to go with a different product maybe than what there's a petition on maybe that's another reason we wouldn't select the product but all that would come in in april like i said it's a it's a process that we redesigned this year learning the lessons that we learned last year when we did not receive our books and time so the 20 days and the 30 days are those business days or those work days to my knowledge of calendar days but we've had more than enough more than enough yeah no i i know that the process began with the committee way back in august and september and i appreciate that and i appreciate all of the work that the committee members

077have done thus far you sending that information that you sent with that excel sheet is very very helpful a little disappointed that we didn't have more community members on that um on that committee review on that review committee for the math instructional materials very very few and parents very few um but we really should do better on that end um so i appreciate that so i get it i just think that we can actually begin public hearing in february and still have plenty of time i've looked at the calendar we can do february uh sometime in february for the 20 calendar days to open it up for public uh for the public hearing and then our 30 days can begin from march to april that would give us time to kind of hear back from

078the doe and we could when we open it up for public hearing we're not opening up for every single math curriculum which obviously i have issues with savvis also but we would just open it up at that point for the particular or the specific materials that the doe hopefully would let us know if they have any you know feedback or impact or who knows maybe they'll do what they did with hmh or you know not with hmh with the with um amplify when they requested that amplify they sent a notice to amplify to change certain things in their curriculum that makes a big difference so that's where i stand on it i just wanted to make uh you know make that public comment on that i know dr moore uh understand i mean knows how

079i feel about this as well any other board members want to say something yes dr jones well we have the public hearing for the adoption of math instructional materials tonight so it's on our action item so we have to go ahead with that and i'm just very hopeful that we get the information from the state at an appropriate time so when we do choose we get those books to our students and teachers and thank you again for moving this up because we were really behind the eight ball especially last you know last summer with our teachers not getting anything until july puts a lot of students behind two to get them ready so we have that on our um action item tonight so i think we need to hear it any other board members very

080good um just one one question i have is um the public still can speak throughout this whole thing right absolutely any point they can bring up their concerns they have with math materials until the final vote absolutely and i think that's you know as already mentioned tonight uh this board does allow public comment often i guess that maybe there was a concern in the past that boards were not doing that so that's why they put into statute to require there to be a meeting such as this one but absolutely this board allows open public comment at every one of the the meetings so um can certainly speak to it next month when it's for the vote either i don't anticipate there being an item in march but you know um certainly could be that and

081then obviously we'd have an item in april to have the final procurement which the public could speak to as well okay all right so we're gonna um have i need to have people be able to speak to this item before the vote correct yeah yes that is correct okay so at this point we're going to have people um speak to the board before we go ahead and do our bow and you okay okay um so the first one up is jennifer pippen and dec is thomas kenney good evening and thank you i am actually speaking on behalf of chris allen's work she has been on the committee for the math and she was also accepted as a department of education curriculum reviewer as well since last meeting so i did want to let you guys

082know that so i'm just going to review some of her notes from the advanced elective math curriculums from savis in the preface of the blitzer book mathematics for college liberal arts which could be taken by high school students here in indian river county depending on how apt they are with their mathematics in the preface it says measuring racial president excuse me presidents by age it's talking about racism embedded in american society dependent on age that contains critical race theory which is banned by the department of education page 62 there was a bar graph with measuring racial prejudice by age again and talking about how students must answer the four questions regarding themselves in this chart again critical race theory banned by the doe lesson on page 182 it says that it's not the case in

083the united states that's eradicated poverty or racism the answer to this is the united states has arrived eradicated neither poverty nor racism again crt banned in the treatment of contents later in the book it talks about time periods of racism and how it directly relates to the child doing the lesson in the book in magazines the mainstream media polls um on page 272 talks about non-profits and racism in these non-profits and mainstream media polls and how it relates to the child's understanding of these things scatter plots and correlation on page it's talking about present prejudice between relationships of interracial and education of adults in the system again crt and talking about education that is inappropriate for children so um i can go on and on and talk about these different bar graphs and things we

084have it on our moms for liberty site it is public record her notes and all of her very explicit detailed things and we've also submitted all of this information to the board to the department of education governor desantis all of our local representatives so we as an organization have done our due diligence in this in addressing this issue and we would just highly highly recommend you not adopting the savis and also the hmh from previous they have not changed their curriculum thank you okay thank you miss pippen thomas kenny's next and michael c marshes after that is thomas kenny here he's not here did he leave oh he's out there okay no problem the microphone is yours sir um this is a regard to curriculum and i want to refer you to this page here

085in the service materials there's a chart measuring racial prejudice this is done by a group that started as i guess i'm not sure if it was a phd project or a graduate project at harvard called project implicit project implicit is now a 501 c 3 where they do this data stuff what's funny about this it says that conservatives are more racist in their little chart here if you look at this graph it's really strange because i don't know how they came to that conclusion i'm going to go take the test i found it very funny because when i look at this it tells me that they would accuse frederick douglass of racism based on this because he was a conservative he was a republican he spent 18 months studying the constitution because what he found

086was that william lloyd garrison who he was mentored by um he wanted to get rid of the constitution because he thought it was a slave document douglas study for 18 months came away and found out that the constitution was most anti-slavery document that he had known and got totally behind it and started the north star but today with this this is in our curriculum this is ridiculous this is absurd every conservative black white chinese japanese you name it is being accused of racism implicitly look you can show this to your kids if you want to run a heartless school system heartless school system we can all be technocrats run these datas and ask all these complex questions and present them as some type of great new insight but it's not insight to the heart this

087is bs it's racist bs of the highest order and it's in a curriculum that's been endorsed by i don't know who but should not be picked here it's absurd project implicit they're implicitly racist thank you mr kenny michael c marsh and lamar noted giacomo is on deck should i wait just don't do it no one's talking to you good evening once again i'm admin from mike for liberty and uh we the really uh we the people here in indian river county and uh you know we're a little concerned about this math curriculum too but our stance is a little different let me tell you why before we start going after the math books can any of these people going after them do the polynomials that's in the problems probably not also i'm looking here and

088i see florida's best now i went to a very informative workshop that former board members uh justice and zork were at iron sharpens iron and i think that these are the industry experts on this and i would really hope that we can bring them back and get their feedback because the florida's best i listen to both of them and i think we're doing a grave disservice when it comes to this curriculum if we don't ask the experts miss justice and mrs zork just my opinion um also here excuse me before we start going after math books and i think one of the board members stated that it's sad that we didn't have more parents input you know who else doesn't challenge these math books or books in general educators are the first line of defense

089here in the school district of indian river county an organization recently said on c-span not one person should ever be able to ask for books to be removed a great organization a watchdog of school boards you guys might have heard of them so where's the educators i don't know how many are here tonight appendix h mwah great thing that we have how many educators how many parents how many concerned community members turned in those forms now i do public records shocking to some one so where's all the grave concern before we start asking for removal of curriculum let's bring in the educators because this is a new school district many river county and we have a lot of educators that will professionally speak against our superintendent or even what school board members are doing but

090they're not here are you are you speaking to the math adoption materials yes ma'am okay yes ma'am yes yes so first and foremost our first line of defense is our educators give them a voice and if they were given a voice then i guess math curriculum muy bueno in closing i really implore you guys uh tiffany justice did some great work when she was here and so did laura zork they both the best i went to a meeting i think we should ask your opinion guys i think we should all right that's all i got guys you have a great evening and i'll see you on the next trip thank you mr thank you lamar no to giacomo thank you very much i'm just going to talk about what's in the book sabbas the sabbath

091curriculum page 793 the chart shows a wage gap between gender and race the emphasis on the topic does not portray gender ethnicity fairness gender and ethnicity advocacy is biased page 380 okay this is mathematics for college liberal arts this would be for high school students page 380 number 72 question is about a male ricky ricardo drafted by military with gender bias that his savings account would be divided unproportionately if child was male versus female the problem nonchalantly states that draftee did not return home we'll never know what ricky was thinking of for his fate would have it he did not return from the war it makes the student figure out the money how the money would be divided based on gender of twins the emphasis is on this topic does not portray gender fairness gender

092advocacy and his bias it's also callous and warped in my opinion page 437 multiple questions regarding the emphasis that women lose 435 000.49 due to a pay gap the source of the data is time magazine page 714 number 61 mentions an anti-semitic joke about marriage and divorce why do you wish divorces cost so much because they're worth it this does not portray multicultural fairness and advocacy narratives within the book contain topics that are neither age appropriate nor engaging to the students examples or alcohol use divorce marijuana illegal activities gender bias racial prejudice etc chapter one intro page one the author's biased when it comes to global warming and climate crisis he talks about a climate crisis as if it's proven fact page 28 says problems 51 and funny there's strong scientific consensus that human activities

093are changing earth's climate the charts data ends in the year 2015 with average global temperatures appearing to increase but doesn't show how the earth's temperatures have decreased in years after content is not up to date with contemporary facts and concepts data is six years old uh page 411 lessons talk about modern emphasis on ideal body shape is a major cause of eating disorders among adolescent women never mentions that eating disorders are happen to men too um page 828 the level of significance of lessons talks about the relationship between education and prejudice there's no source for the data this happens a lot there's a lot of bias and and sources are not provided page 3 page 198 chapter 3. should the death penalty be abolished should roe v wade be overturned are online class is a

094good idea should recreational marijuana be legalized i mean i thought this was math should grades be abolished should the electoral college be replaced with popular vote no bias there i mean i think it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of bias and political correctness and indoctrination going on in math thank you oh thank you miss no to giacomo um board members anyone like to speak okay i actually have a question um mrs pippen you brought up that it was the savas college book is that the book that all of you are the same book because i was told i believe mr meyer in our conversation we talked about two books of concern one was the college book and what was the other one that was of concern to some people the chair i don't want

095to misquote the speakers or they may correct me but what i'm aware of is some concerns in a pre-calculus book and the math for college is that is that correct ap so it's ap it's ap calculus i don't i don't believe this ap advanced placement has their own um curriculum adoption from that company they have a separate one right but this is this would be for the uh pre-calculus courses that are offered by the high school this is ap math right here i i mean i don't know what you're holding up but i know that when the florida department of education does instructional materials adoptions they do them for the course codes listed in the state course code directory and that's for high school pre-calculus is what that book is is uh bidding to be

096approved for that course so that all board members are aware and i think you know this is the the time to make us aware because this is when we want to hear from the public so i've heard concerns about the college book in savas and i've heard concerns about the pre-calculus book in savas i've had other people say savas all the way across but i've also read some of the reports and i believe you brought up one of the reviewers and i read her review that she liked the cevascated eight is that correct so through the chair i mean i think if you look we there's an excel file that you can look at you can see where each reviewer rated um each of the products whether it be sixth grade math with a certain

097vendor or the precalculus or the certain vendor using the rubric that was board approved in august and then so there are scores that are there off the top of my head i couldn't tell you which reviewers rated which product higher or lower but it's all there okay so is that what you're stating right now is that available for anybody to see yeah i mean that's okay i want to make sure people know that because i've heard a couple of things i've heard savas all the way across please know and yet i'm hearing about two specific books of savas so i want to make sure that people are very specific with this because i'd hate to throw out something that was really good if the rest of it was good but just the higher level books

098were of concern that's why i'm bringing that up okay hold on one second i was just going to say madam chair until we know what books are state adopted you know we also go from there because some of these may be on the state adoption list some may not right but now is our time to hear from the public that's why i wanted to find out what is the public concern about because i think some of the misconceptions that are out there is that it's one publisher all the way k to 12 that's bad and and like i'm hearing some people are very mixed reviews in this room about it so i wanted to make sure because i looked at the reviews with mr meyer and i did notice that the one particular viewer that

099you mentioned who is now on the state review t review group um mentioned her concerns about the two books that i brought up but not the others so i wanted to find out for sure what can we is it okay for us to come and pick them back up and ask about that you're the chair yeah i know i just want to make sure i'm not violating anything okay is that can is that correct can she come to the microphone mathematically the college level was a different curriculum than the ap elective can you say that in the microphone because i think that needs to be stated because there are people that are putting out there that savas is is um really bad k-12 and i want to make sure that people understand exactly what is

100being said yes so um again chris allen she apologized she can't be here she did with mr myers the pre-calculus and thinking mathematically the college level and the k-8 was a different curriculum than the ap elective so it was just it's different um you know the books are different from the k through eight electives so i think we need to get that message out there because i think there are people that are very confused you should see the emails we're getting so um there are people confused about that perfect i just want to make sure okay yes miss pip can i ask her a question madam chair sure why not this is to listen to the public so i'm okay with this um one of the the the two handouts that were sent to us

101um one of them is titled advance elective math i just want to confirm that that's what you have one is the savis advanced elective math and then the other one is the status ap math yes that's correct okay thank you okay thank you i wanted that very clear because some people are are writing to us telling us that savas all the way across as a terrible curriculum i want people to really understand what's being said so um there are just two books that are of concern and they're the higher level books the higher level books okay we just want to make sure that mr marsh is it about the book specifically what about the book specifically i don't know at this time how many students zero i don't know mr meyer so to the chair

102um we haven't adopted nor procured the book so no one's this is you know a proposal for next year uh historically we have about 100 kids at sebastian river and 100 kids at very beach to take that course okay but we're hoping to have more about something i understand so so i think for us to know what concerns that people have about specific books because i don't want it thrown out there that one publisher is bad um that's what kind of happened last time with one publisher so i just want to make sure that we're very very careful as to what we're saying about um what the concerns are and which books we have concerns with so it's two books that i've heard of the the savas pre-calculus and the savas college book are the

103only two that have really come up as concerns is that correct mr meyer okay okay thank you are we good there okay and i've been told that we do not vote on this because even though it has it on my little um agenda item over here there is no vote on this okay board members because this is just open to listen to public uh hearing there will be a vote in february okay moving on to item 13d approval of board protocols before we bring this item up um we have a speaker to this item first i'm going to call for the motion so move okay second that's um dr jones for the first dr shift for the second all right any discussion board members or do you want to listen to um input first implicit

104okay we have one speaker michael c marsh there's actually a policy i'm going to speak about every time i come up here a board member leaves the room i mean there's a policy right on that about professionalism through the chair and we'll actually go over that right now roles and authority of the board members the indian river county school board is responsible for public schools in river county the board acts collectively to enforce local and state rules determines local policy and procedure consistent with such rules and operates in the best interests of any river county schools and its students another one i will highlight the board creates reviews and evaluates policies and protocols regularly board members cannot represent any action will or intent of the board corporate in a public setting except with board approval

105or consensus at a duly noticed business meaning discussion session or workshop let's talk about the roles of the superintendent the one i want to highlight is the superintendent provides leadership to continually improve the educational experience of all students by being a viable presence in the schools while offering support encouragement guidance and feedback to all faculty staff students and families and lastly in board meetings board members are expected to be prepared for all meetings by having read all relevant documents conducted any necessary research and held meetings with the superintendent or other relevant district personnel prior to the meeting board members shall make every effort to not provide last-minute materials at the meeting for consideration by the board so meeting expectation expectations school board members are expected to model appropriate behavior including courtesy active listening and respect

106ongoing professional developmental board members board members are encouraged to stay current on educational issues including legislative and other legal issues affecting our educational policy and lastly board members are expected to complete an ethics training once a year you know what's not on there weaponizing the school district against concerned citizens right now i put a public record request in and i want to know how much it costs us the taxpayers for a school board member to get a public record is that on board protocols mr marshall yes ma'am it is okay so there was flash drives correct me if i'm wrong that was given out to the school board extensive research hours and hours that's not on protocol it's but it's hard you can speak to you can speak to that and next citizen input courtesy

107and decorum i i know that's that's at the next citizen okay well specifically how much it costs to taxpayers that's important okay you want to bring that up in the next citizen input that is by all means you're right yeah okay tens of thousands if i would request that so in closing i want to go back because a lot of times we hear so much negative and i want to end with a positive in 2020 a great publication vero news pointed out that superintendent moore through the chair obliterates bad schools he doesn't just go into bad schools he fixes them i urge you great news source ray mcnulty obliterates bad schools was the quote that is what we're seeing here in the school district of indian river county guys have a great night thank you

108all for actually listening and not walking out of the room appreciate you thank you mr marsh okay board members anyone like to have a discussion on their approval of board protocols dr jones um just a very special thank you um to dr jacobs who is our facilitator i looked back at our email we started this in august of last year and it took um time for probably every discussion and dr moore also let us put it on the workshop and when we complete completed the florida master board training i thought that was great and through the fsba training it said that most school boards do have protocols so i just want to thank the whole board for working on that um dr jacobs for facilitating that and i think that we did a good job

109of what we need to do for our students in this county so i appreciate it thank you dr chef yeah i just want to highlight in light of our discussion this afternoon that while we may approve these protocols tonight as these are not policy and don't have to go out for public hearing they can also be amended at any time the board chooses and in light of our conversation this afternoon we realized that something we had not adequately discussed was the relationship of board members and public records requests and that we wanted to add that into protocol so i anticipate this will be coming back and that the uh how board members ask for information outside of the public records request process will be added at a future workshop okay mr barefoot good okay mr

110rosario i don't know you're good um yeah i'd just like to say that you know thank you dr jacobs for everything you did it was tough to corral this group so i appreciate that um we did discuss this for a long time through all our workshops if you'd like to go back and watch all those wonderful recordings you're more than welcome to um we went through all of our protocols word by word literally word by word and um tried to clean it up as best we could for being able to conduct really good meetings with a lot of production i'm going to address one thing that came up and that was the sign issue because i know we have signs tonight it's not it's not so much that it's not about yeah having signs of

111of concern that people you know want to be able to show us what they're concerned about it's more about obstructing other people's views obstructing cameras we've had people bring in signs for things that were offensive and really not in our control until they're on camera so if we are able to remove signs then we are able to remove that potentially happening so it wasn't anything one specific reason it was just a general we've had some other concerns and we did discuss that for quite a long time so um with that that's all i have to say all right i'm going to call for the vote those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed carries 5-0 okay all right with that we have the report from the superintendent thank you madam chair i do have

112a a brief report as you know um i was requested to provide a report on in january regarding where we were at the the library books this is will serve as that update some decisions that have been made moving forward as we reflected through the entire process not only the board approved process but part of the item is to overhaul and look at the the totality of how we're doing libraries in the checkout process one of the things that we will be adding is the opportunity for parents to know what their children are checking out so uh you can go on your focus app and you'll be able to at all times see any book that is being checked out that provides parents the opportunity uh to have a clear and deep understanding as to

113which books children their children are checking out we're also on the opposite end of that providing opportunities for parents to notify us if a book if they want their children to check out books or if there are individual books in which they do not want their parents to check out so as we talk about parental rights we're going to lead with that philosophy and empower parents the opportunity to have the conversations with their children regarding which books we'll be allowed to check out will be using the library or well they not at all or whether they simply monitor or not look at the library so that action is in the process of being implemented and as we come back in february will be fully implemented also one of the things that we're doing is convening

114a committee of a media specialist students and our facilities officer really to look at the space itself so when we look at the media centers as a whole we think there's our drastic opportunities to begin to reimagine what that space is so it can be better used by students and why not allow children to be the author of what that space looks like we will fund their dreams or imagine what they dream up there'll be a budget so it'll be a learning opportunity there uh there as well but an opportunity for media specialists to work with students to re-envision what that space is collaboration centers research tools that can be used and moving away from the outdated library in which children in today's world are not maximizing that particular design model but ultimately enhancing that

115we've also done a a look at the legal review to support the review process and i'll have uh our attorney reference uh where we are with that process uh thank you madame chair members of the board just giving a brief overview of the law and policy that comes into play with this issue under section 1006.28 florida statute school boards must have a process for parents and community members to ask for review and reconsideration of any material used in a classroom or made available in a school library that contains content that is either pornographic prohibited under section 847.012 florida statutes not suited to student needs and ability to comprehend or inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used so we have received under our board policy 9310 some requests from

116members of the public for reconsideration of our materials and there is a review committee that is going to review the books to determine if they contain this content that florida statutes tells us is prohibited now to give you an idea what legal definitions are for this prohibited content when we talk about prohibited under section 847.012 that's part of florida's obscenity code and that code gives us a definition in 847.001 of what obscene means and it specifically prohibits materials which a the average person applying contemporary community standards would find taken as a whole appeals to the period interest b depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct as specifically defined in that statute and see taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic political or scientific value so there when those materials are being

117reviewed the books will need to be looked at as a whole and it will be taken into consideration whether or not they contain any other serious literary artistic political or scientific value that is not the only content that we're looking for we're also looking for pornographic material pornographic material would be that material that portrays sexual subject matter and is for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal and then also thirdly we're also looking to make sure that materials are appropriate for the grade level and age group for which they are being assigned there have also been some challenges based on the idea of critical race theory now that is covered under a florida administrative code rule 6a dash 1.094124 that talks about required instruction under subsection 3b it states that instruction on certain required topics cannot

118suppress or distort historical events and it lists some of those events and then it also says that examples of theories that do distort historical events and are inconsistent with state board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the holocaust and the teaching of critical race theory meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice but the racism is embedded in american society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons so here that rule is designed at looking at instructional materials that are used in classrooms and not designed at looking at our library materials and so i just wanted to provide that i didn't want to go into too much detail but to give a brief overview of what the law and policies that the board needs

119to look at when they are thinking about this issue of reviewing their library materials thank you thank you so um as we finish this review now that we have this legal guidance it gives us a solid footing to make recommendations uh at the end of the day um a the process isn't done but we we think you're going to see books that are not age appropriate that are in a middle school being moved to a a high school and really taking a deep look at where we have these books uh and is in fact age appropriate and then really leading on the simple fact that we have parental um choice regarding who or which children are allowed to read this based on the rights of their parents so coming back in february we'll be able

120to uh bring an item to the board uh that captures or a presentation to the board that captures the the entire process where books were as mentioned um critical race theory is not something that these books in the media center are being used to teach they are supplemental uh materials that are in the library and will not be used for uh a teacher-led instruction for the for that purposes so that makes that process a little bit more streamlined inter in terms of clearing those books and then really looking at some of the language and content in the books as it relates to is it age appropriate in order to ensure those books are moved to where they are in fact age-appropriate whether it is completely off the shelf or whether it's moved from middle school

121to to high school only it's very important to know that these books are not in elementary school so a great deal of work has been done we are taking the time to review each and every single book with everything that's going on in schools as it relates to coverage for for classrooms and keeping classrooms open it is taking a great deal of time but what we will give assurances uh to this court through my uh to this court because that's where we're going to end up um assurances uh to this board uh we have a a solid uh legal backing uh we fully upheld board policy in terms of the review process and made decisions uh that represent all all children and ultimately choice thank you okay thank you dr moore all right open it

122up or did we do that already no that's under he was under superintendent's report so now it's a question now for him okay dr moore i have a question absolutely um thank you for um the proposal for parents to have the voice in the library system or you know moving forward when that when that is finally implemented where parents can actually um identify i don't know how that's going to look but of course identify how their children you know select books or take books out or not you know if that's the case um i don't know if that's through keywords or you know identifying through going through the media center specialist um however that works i just wanted to thank you for that update however i do have a question you mentioned what was mentioned

123was the review committee of the current appendix h submissions for the books that are now in question for you know whatever those are um who is on that selection committee or that review committee i've heard that we did not have a committee or initially we should have because we have a procedure that identifies we should have had a committee to vet the books i mean we've already talked about this already and then we heard that there would be a committee to review the books in question and now and then i heard that there wasn't a committee it was just the media center specialist reviewing all of those and now i'm hearing there is a review committee so can you just once and for all just clarify that i i don't know that it's ever not

124been the the media specialists who serve as that committee that's always been there's never been anything communicated outside of my mouth uh that it's been anything different so there shouldn't be any confusion that it's always been the 22 media specialists uh and members of mr meyer's team looking through each of these individual books you may be referring to there should have been a committee in order to place books on the shelves that was put in place in 2014. maybe that is a part of the the the confusion there and that is what we initially found at that that committee or so process was it being followed so the part of the corrective action that we're taking now is in order to ensure that that is in fact in play um moving forward um so the

125so when you bring us the final recommendation in february and a clear i i i'm supposing that the policy is going to be written rewritten or reproposed so that or proposed to us so that it is clear who's on that committee for vetting books moving forward and how the books received are going to be vetted to get on the shelves so um because that wasn't done before i'm just i guess i'm asking in advance is that going to be presented to us as well through the chair i don't think that's necessarily part of the policy change but as i operationalize that particular policy it is just standard operating procedure for an effective system to say this is who's on the committee this is how it's being done this is when it will convene uh when

126we receive you know this that or the other request so so bringing that to the board so um as we move forward if this continues and hopefully with the choice that we're providing parents everyone has the ability to say this is all right for my family this is not all right for my family resolves a lot of those particular issues but we will clearly define the process well it really doesn't because books that have pornographic information should not be available to children period they should not be available it really doesn't i mean it helps because it gives parents it makes parents feel like they're responsible or they have control over that particular area but it doesn't solve the problem that materials that are on the shelves with pornographic information or graphic sexual content is that

127shouldn't be there because it certainly is not age appropriate and absolutely and that's why we have a a school board attorney who's weighed in with multiple attorneys as well as the opinion of 22 different media specialists so this one opinion isn't laying on my shoulders but those who stand in front of children clearly understand law as it's being interpreted to make that to make that right decision well we just heard from our attorney and our attorney very clearly stated that books that have pornographic information sexual graphic content and is not age-appropriate should not be available so i i heard that very clearly and i appreciate you know that message because if this isn't done the right way and those books go back on the shelf we are going to wind up in court but but

128um you did mention something else about ensuring that they're not in elementary school so was that clear that you're only looking to make sure that these books are not in elementary or i think in all i think there are two books correct me if i'm wrong that were picture books that were in elementary school so we're looking at is it age appropriate uh is it pornographic uh looking at the totality of the definition and which she she just referenced mister did i to the chair um there were a few dr moore at least two um that were at the elementary school but then when we discussed moving them to an age ban that is more appropriate i think that's that's what you were referring to from our conversations that some books may move from elementary

129to middle or middle to high and certainly there would not be at the end of this process any books at the elementary school level that would anywhere come close to the definitions and statute and and we're using i just want to be clear we are using the statute um 847.001 that actually has the definitions there right through the chair yes we will be using the guidance from legal counsel to make the determination of our procedures moving forward guidance from legal counsel you're not looking at the statute yourself you're just determining everything you're just waiting on council through the chair miss resort you don't twist my words against me i gave you you just but i'm just clarifying because that's what you said mr meyer it's just it's just standard practice that when you're you're dealing

130with statute you you you loop in uh your lawyer uh who can review not only the interpretation but case law and give you solid grounds in in which to act so um yes we're just not reading it and interpreting it ourselves we're a little bit smarter than that uh and looking at multiple interpretations uh with those who have law degrees in order to ensure that we're getting this absolutely right so you know we we don't go to jail so we're doing both we're doing both then we're using the statutes and using our legal counsel yes yes yes i mean yeah okay dr schiff yeah so uh what i hear in this conversation is that we are going um to ensure that we follow statute by relying on the advice of the attorney and the attorneys

131with whom she may consult to ensure that there is agreement around following statute and that we follow what is defined as pornographic and what is not defined as pornographic what i also appreciate about this conversation is what i heard you say dr moore is that we are we've talked a lot about parental rights here and that what we will be doing moving forward is honoring the rights of all parents to make a determination following legal statute of what they consider to be appropriate for their children by allowing them access to those books that are checked out by their students so that they may have some say and some review over that but that we not make decisions for all parents from the district but we allow parents as in statute again the right to make

132determinations for their children am i hearing that correctly you're hearing that correct thank you go ahead mr sorry so am i too and i hope the answer is no am i to understand that we are not going to receive books to vote on of the 130 i don't even know what the number is right now 145 are you am i hearing that the only recommendation is to open up for parents to choose what library books and everything else is going to remain on the shelves no no recommendation has come forward yet so so all of those books have been vetted no that that's the process in which they're in so okay this is just an update um okay i don't have a crystal ball but but i i don't everyone's not gonna be happy here

133let's let's be honest they're gonna be people who are saying that's pornographic and that should not be on the shelves and you're gonna have others who's saying um that is that is it is not pornographic and that's just the truth and we could you know go back and forth all day long some people see it one way others see it uh a different way as a system uh we're having a comprehensive legal review in order to ensure that we are standing on solid ground and making decisions so the what was interesting and maybe um miss shattuck can kind of help with this what's interesting in is in all of the statutes that i have studied i can't even believe that i remember remember them by by heart right now um what and of all of

134the definitions that are in 847.001 the one definition that i have not found is age appropriate what is grade and age appropriate who makes that decision because as far as i'm concerned if it's age if it if there is no definition of age or grade appropriate then the lens through which i would recommend is if you would give that to your child in church and let your child read that book in a church service if you the answer is no then it's not age appropriate that's my personal you know lens through which i'm even at home if you are allowing your child to read it and it's okay that's fine that's on you you can do that but if the people who are here in this district would not let their children read that book

135that's the lens through which i would personally you know would would would think we would use uh in this process but thus far i have not seen a definition for grade and age appropriate so dr moore miss shattuck is there any legal definition for that and if so if not then dr moore what are we doing about that um thank you um chair i one thing i'd like to say is you're talking about the definitions in 847.001 and those are the definitions for the obscenity code the obscenity code is not in the education code and it's really more of a criminal code and it does not talk about age and grade appropriate the statute that talks about agent grade appropriate is 106 1006.28 florida statutes which is in the education code this is um two

136different things so this one you know doesn't have any criminal aspect to it this is a code written for educators and it's up to the educators to make those decisions whether things are great and age appropriate and what you have in 100 6.28 is it says that you need to have a process for parents and community members to ask for reconsideration when they disagree with the determinations that a district's already made and that's why we also have this process in 9310 where we do have an ability for members to fill out forms request reconsideration and then that goes to a review committee and they're the ones who are making that determination of whether things are agent grade appropriate and as um superintendent moore discussed they are our media specialists so these are people that have

137the experience and knowledge to make those kind of determinations because that's what they needed to get those positions to begin with but those books can we have a quiet please please if you'd like to speak please go outside this is our business meeting thank you dr moore your definition please if you have any or what we're going to use with regard to determining what is age i think miss shattuck just clearly articulated the the stance in which which the date the district takes um in addition to that the only thing i can add based on the conversation is uh we don't want to create a system in which we're denying parental rights and then when we make decisions as to what is or is not appropriate for for children we're taking away those specific rights

138so when looking at the supplemental resources that are available in a library this isn't not core instruction it's not being assigned as as such it is a simply referring back to a school board attorney convening the 22 members of the team to make recommendations to me in order to determine what is the most appropriate process moving forward that has been legally vetted and prepared so when we uh bring something to this board it is something that can be defended one last comment okay it's it's interesting though that you know when it comes to curriculum or masks or mental health and wellness you know the the the parental rights bill was the wrong thing to do oh how dare you know parents claim to have parental rights um but now it seems appropriate that when the

139tables are turned and when you want to when some want to use that in their defense to keep these disgusting books on the shelves that now all of a sudden we don't want to impede on parental rights it's just very very um it's really very disheartening to use a a kind word so i really hope that this ends in a good way otherwise you're right we will end up in court yes miss dr jones mr meyer i think we're at about about 145 in the books where's the committee i mean just how many have you been able to process to the chair the the first work that we did was to norm on you know the the expectations um and the procedures and then we were awaiting you know further guidance we had a new

140attorney as dr doran mentioned we've been through um credit quite a tremendous time here with the omicron spike and so quite honestly we haven't made as much headway as we would like so we don't have anything to report back as any final recommendations so we are you know i think understanding more the direction that we are going to go with this and the media specialists feel as so now they're ready to start making some final determinations of you know the direction that we'll end up and just in general whenever this is finished we have the recommendations from the committee and we go from there one thing i did check with dr is um and as a former high school middle school principal i was concerned years ago but even more so um how many books

141are being checked out of the library i mean we've got a big picture here as far as our i think it was a vero beach high school am i correct 100 in the last year that was uh through the cheering up in the last year prior i think it was in december when they pulled that that number for me okay sometime in december with 3 000 students so and i think in general when we look at this with our media specialist where are we going to go with those spaces dr moore i think that's important and i like everybody to be involved in that and having parents involved with that too because kids are either reading on their kindle or or whatever it may be so um but whenever we have that recommendation from the

142committee we can move from there thank you anyone else no um i i have a question about the review committee um you mentioned 22 media specialists and mr myers team so are those content specialists that are also looking at reviewing these books that's correct okay so for example as a science teacher i know that certain topics i want to make sure fifth graders know but i want to make sure third graders don't get exposed to so you have people like that that are looking at those books i mean to this point the challenges have been specific to the obscenity code so we've been focused more on are the books in violation of that not so much as um you know the different types of science content i mean there's specific objections to each one of

143the titles that we're trying to work through and norm on what that would look like i'm talking about the grade level appropriateness of some of that because there are some touchy subjects out there and those touchy subjects you know some parents are very uncomfortable with their child being exposed to those touchy subjects early in life so that's that's my point is you have content specialists that are also looking at this i mean i think you've got me off track with thinking about the science as a specifically i just use that as an example because you know titles that have any science content so it's been mostly around these novels and the stories in which they're presenting so a lot of that comes with i guess the age appropriate to answer your question about that a

144specific example would be what the state board of education has approved recently as their best standards book list so within what the state board has approved for novels at each grade level that gives us an opportunity to see what that entity feels is appropriate and that's what we've been looking at and so the ela specialists have been comparing some of the content of those books one of which is actually on the state board's list approved by the state board of education is challenged here locally so that's an interesting situation that that board approved it and now we're being you know challenged that it violates those statutes so and so um out of these 145 books then it takes a while because you have to read every single one of them certainly if the challenge is

145uh for the obscenity code as michelle presented you know we have to determine from the entirety of the entire work if it holds literary merit so you know a review of the entire book not just one excerpt is important to consider well what man if you have sexually graphic material from cover to cover and the entire thing is explicitly x-rated we have movies that are rated x r pg 13 pg and g they're rated by age and obviously those ratings are given because of the content of the material so i i can't even believe that i'm listening to what i'm listening to i i i every time this comes up i'm speechless that it just seems like there is a defending of these materials and how and why they should remain on the shelves because

146the doe approved one as if that couldn't have been a mistake i mean who knows i don't think you've read the entire book i think that the excerpts that we're getting from miss pippen are one sentence excerpt so you bring up movie ratings titanic is a pg-13 movie it has nudity in it that does not make it a pornographic movie so these books while they may actually have a sentence or a paragraph or something in it that's sexually uh explicit in nature does not make it pornographic when taken as a whole okay there are plenty of movies plenty of songs plenty of everything um that has content that is not a porn movie a porn book or whatnot so our our specialists are looking at them entirely um i don't think that miss pippen did

147i don't think she read the entire book she submitted 151 documents that said she read the entire book i don't think that's true but i know that we're going through everything okay first of all this isn't about a particular person who submitted them secondly no it isn't it i'm not i did not bring up any particular person what i'm bringing up is our review process and what mrs barrenborg mentioned or question was are our media specialists reading and vetting those books from cover to cover and if they are that should take time that was the initial question and your answer to that is no they aren't they're only taking a look at reviews and comparing them with things like you know websites so my question is to just clarify are they reading those books cover

148to govern not if mrs pippen did it are we reading those books cover to cover that's the question through the chair some of the books have been read cover to cover not all of them has been ready to cover cover yet because if that we do read them cover the cover then we can make an informed decision to say that those books in its entirety is not age appropriate or it is age-appropriate because if we assume that miss pippin did or did not do that what she did or did not do is not up for question a paul a a form appendix h was submitted with following our policy with the objection and now it's up to us to properly vet that book and so it doesn't really matter whether she did or didn't are

149we doing it we need to make sure that we're doing that in order for us to for a good recommendation to come forward he did tell me that they were trying to read through all the books i'm sure um i i will bring to a board a recommendation that has been thoroughly reviewed is legally sound so the board can take the appropriate action whether it be a yes vote or a no vote i understand how the board members feel regarding their their beliefs around this particular situation it is my responsibility to create a a process that is sound and that item will come before the board for the five board members to take um their their authority by placing a vote okay thank you sir all right with that it's uh board member matters we'll

150start down with mr barefoot i have none you have none dr schiff if i had any i've forgotten them um at this time i don't have any okay uh dr jones yep the mlk parade was great most the board members were there a lot of staff members on our trailer and uh i know ms barenborg and dr schifr at the park afterward and it was a really good celebration thank you um miss behrenberg i did get to the flc for one of the vaping um holding the signs at parent uh pickup of the day and i talked with our substance abuse three of the ladies who were there and um thank you for that proclamation that you signed and we really really need to get on that in our elementary schools before they get to

151middle and high school believe it or not vaping is a problem in elementary school the mcam meeting is on wednesday um plural board members to join in that was supposed to be here but they're going to wait another month because of covet and just concerns there so again the moonshot community action network with early learning resources is absolutely essential to the school district so i thank them for their support i think a lot of us were on the esc parent advisory zoo meeting that was wonderful with rachel moray and her team and also the parent engagement meeting mr seymour with dr kawi and her team and mr seymour was on that the other night so keeping involved with all that i think is very good a special thank you to our guest speaker today our

152discussion johnny thornton he is a climate and culture task force chair thank you to mr seymour for getting that going listening to our community especially in areas of advocacy and equity and access in your department i think is crucial so i just i thought it was a really good presentation and hopefully some board members we can get to some of those meetings thank you thank you mr rosario um thank you i i just wanted to apologize to everyone for kind of being m.i.a for the last month i did have covid um from before new year's so it just seemed like which it was it felt like a month that i was testing positive positive positive i literally just tested negative last week so um i did not attend the teacher star patrol or you know

153martin luther king parade um obviously i wouldn't do that while i'm still sick or had symptoms or anything like that so i do want to apologize to you all i certainly wasn't going to make that you know make all of the events so thank you for letting you all know now thank you for um for being forgiving and for understanding about that that's it that's it okay um yeah just to update like i mentioned this afternoon the treasure coast council local governments meeting was focused on vaping and the concerns on vaping and just again i'm going to keep bringing it up because the public needs to know how how concerned we should be about this because kids are vaping and it's nicotine in their body and one little vape is 20 cigarettes and they're doing

154300 puffs in that one little vape container and that's um worth 200 cigarettes and they consume one a day some kids so that's like having 20 cigarettes a day it's pretty scary um the other thing that's scary is how open and available it is now because the ordinances have been lifted because of home rule so i know that that's a concern going to tallahassee the esc advisory committee meeting was great thank you to board members that participated transitioning students to their future is really really important and they had a follow-up meeting that i actually attended on saturday morning and that was interesting it was done by the project 10 transition education network and we have career camps here where we're putting our kids in little camps where they're working and they're going out in what

155i love the indian river was able to talk about and which different than st lucie was also speaking about what they do there and but we find out what the child wants to do when they're older and graduating and we try to fit them with that job instead of you know you'll make coffee or you'll um buy groceries or you'll do this so i think that's wonderful i have a niece who's been bagging groceries for 35 years now and um she loves it and she would you know every week loves to go back or groceries but i think that um i think it's great that we're reaching out letting kids decide what they want to do in life and transitioning for that and so more parents that need to be aware of that of course

156can contact miss moray now they mentioned a mock apartment are we making an apartment building or apartment room in the high school in the schools i can't wait to go see that on our walk okay sebastian okay okay great and then um of course mlk parade was wonderful and i'm glad that they actually got to have it i know it was on again off again on again off again so it was nice that we were able to have it and that's all i have all right so superintend is closing uh good evening everyone okay anyone object to me closing the meeting no okay it's 8 30. everyone have a great evening you