School Board Business Meeting 6 p.m. 10-26-2021

001i'd like to call the school district of indian river county's business meeting to order it's october 2021 at six o'clock first item this evening is the pledge of allegiance to the flag the pledge will be led by the vero beach high schools air force junior rotc detachment o43 under the direction of wade e deuce chief master sergeant retired aerospace u.s air force and dean rasdell retired major u.s air force nice for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all march host others and salute ready two hosts orange oh [Applause] all right next order of business is the adoption of the orders of the day are there any consent items that school board members would like to move from consent to action um no i don't have one of those

002i do have something else i need to bring up all right mrs rosario you wanted to move yes i'd like to move discussion and item discussion 13 i'm sorry 15 a 15 a yes two election okay um we're also going to add start time for business meetings to discussion and we're also going to add removal of policy 0169.1 from november 16th public hearing to action are there any other items yeah i have two um the 9 28 minutes need a correction and i discussed that correction with ms esplin i was on teams and at the very beginning a call to the orders of the day i also voted but you didn't see me because i was on the screen over there until after so it's a minor little thing but i did vote for that

003okay so she's going to amend it for our next meeting and then um can you move my item 13a to the beginning of the meeting because we have some special guests with us to talk about that item done thank you any other changes to the agenda can i have a motion to approve the changes to the orders of the day i make a motion second mrs rosario dr jones all in favor all right nobody's opposed all right thank you very much and now proclamation we have proclamation of moonshot moment good evening everyone we have two special proclamations tonight we're going to start out with the learning alliance and moonshot moment faces of literacy marie o'brien is here from the learning alliance and she will be showing you some of our faces of literacy along with

004a presentation so marie please come up hi everybody and thank you very much dr moore and to the school board we're so happy to be here we are here today to talk to you about this next decade of work that we started about 10 years ago so some of you are going to recognize make sure i get the my left hand and get the next one some of you're going to recognize some of the faces and the work that was done here about 10 years ago and we're here today because we're very excited as we're moving into this next decade of work that we want to introduce and and bring back this campaign we call it the faces of early literacy today's readers are tomorrow's leaders and what it is is this is a community

005outreach campaign we use these giant black and white posters i'll hold one up in a minute and you can see how big they are i think you can see on the screen there as well um the posters really create this people notice them so when you're going to be around the county you're going to see the posters everywhere and it creates a learning conversation this is some posters that we did at the bracket library it's really cute the little girl there happened to be there and that was her poster we were pasting up so she helped paste that up the people who are involved in this it's everyone's here you know if you are a community leader if you care about taking a stand for children in early literacy then moonshot moment this is a

006literacy movement that we've created that we really need everyone to be moving forward these are some pictures from the gifford youth achievement center you see our friend mrs margaret ingram there in her astronaut space suit and she's here with us today it's just some more recap photos these are some of the banks were involved you see the three pictures there learning tracks preschool in sebastian uh that photo on the right those of you who were here a long time ago may remember the press journal building and again this is to give you an idea of the scale and what these giant posters look like and the reason you know what's the why why are we doing this third grade reading is really important it's this pivot point from kindergarten to third grade you're learning to

007read because after that you have to be able to learn read to learn and if you can't read by the end of third grade the statistics show that only one in six children will get caught up so our goal is that indian river county will be a literacy capital of the nation and we know that schools can't do it alone so that's why we've got a group here today and they'll join us after the proclamation is read for the photo some of the representatives from our group we call it m-can mca and moonshot community action network we all work together with the district our moonshot goal is that kids will be ready for kindergarten when they come to kindergarten and by the end of third grade at least 90 percent are reading on level i

008just see i think at the bottom you see there your literacy is the number one indicator of individual success and community prosperity so literacy really is the foundation for all learning and the way the campaign works um is it's part of this international movement called the inside out project we have these giant photos of they're going to be the faces of children from our county and um they're pasted up all over this was our biggest one that we did it's the hospital so you can imagine we had actually have the fire department paste those up um here are some that we did in fellsmere and on city in old city hall but again once the at each of these events when the posters are going up an event is held the community is brought in

009people talk about why they're doing this what they care about and they show their commitment to literacy so the the when um we're starting today today's the proclamation so we're so excited to dr jones for issuing this proclamation in november we'll be collecting photos uh december we have a kind of a big kickoff event in uh january in literacy week in january it's the last week in january you'll start to see these posters pasted up all over the county i hope that you guys will join the journey you'll talk about early literacy um learn about it and you know we're asking everyone to commit to it so i think okay back so with that we'll have uh dr jones read the proclamation thank you very much it certainly is my privilege to read this with

010all of our community members here mcan learning alliance and everyone else faces of early literacy today's readers are tomorrow's leaders designating 2022 as a year of the faces campaign to embrace early literacy as a top leadership priority whereas early literacy is a gateway to all learning whereas literacy is a key to individual success and economic prosperity with an eight dollar to one return pre-k to third grade and as much as thirteen dollar to one for quality early education whereas we know literacy doesn't just happen starting in kindergarten and schools cannot do it alone whereas children learn to read so they can read to learn if they do not read by third grade only one in six will succeed whereas while the nation has remained flat in literacy scores indian river county has grown from 53

011percent in 2015-16 to 60 percent for twenty twenty twenty one reading on grade level our moon shot goal is ninety percent whereas indian river county has been recognized nationally for our moonshot collective work nine times and the learning alliance and school district of indian river county partnerships have been recognized by the oak foundation as one of four national bright spots for academic programming whereas the state of florida chamber has proclaimed kindergarten readiness in third grade reading to be critical milestones so that we can become a top 10 economy by 2030. now therefore we the school district of indian river county agreed to co-lead the 2022 faces of early literacy today's readers are tomorrow's leaders with the moonshot community action network as we enter the next decade of our moonshot moment campaign we are committed to

012our moonshot moment goal for children to be ready for kindergarten and 90 reading on level by the end of third grade adopted this 26th day of october 2021 school board of indian river county yeah no way we can vote we are voted board members can i have a motion to approve the proclamation as read i'll make a motion i'll second all in favor all right congratulations congratulations i think if you are part of our moonshot community action network and you're here tonight if you want to come up we'll get a group photo thank you so much we're looking for oh absolutely thank you the posters in front do you do you all want us to hold those pictures so they could see it not at all we just put them up and we can be

013in the picture not at all yeah we can do that [Music] okay thank you thank you thank you thank you and just quickly but as the the team begins to depart stop right there um megan stop um just want to thank the the entire team um this isn't common this isn't what you find across our nation and your willingness to come and roll up your sleeves and get to work to create that literacy capital of america um is something that really pushes and drives me and i think each and every single one of you should celebrate your effort your willingness to come in and support we are transforming a school system and a school system cannot work in isolation and to have the opportunity to partner with each and every single one of you is

014a true pleasure uh to have the opportunity to be pushed by each and every single one of you um also a pleasure um so so thank you for so much there's so many great things about indian river county and those who are standing in that corner over there uh you're a bunch of those things so thank you very much for all you're doing for kids [Applause] okay every month not every month i'm sorry every october we recognize the vaping awareness month and we've been doing this for the past few years we are working with safer and um kylie savoy from the quit doc foundation we write a proclamation two years ago i believe and then last year we were dealing with covid so we did not but we are very very happy to have them

015back again today so that kylie can present some information to you about vaping awareness and we can read our proclamation kylie all right thank you good evening my name is kylie savoy and i am the project director for the quit doc foundation i would just like to thank the superintendent and the board today for presenting this proclamation on vaping so as kristen had mentioned this is our third year in a row having a proclamation designating october as vaping awareness month vaping continues to remain one of the number one problems among our youth these devices contain very high levels of nicotine and we are now facing a new generation that is addicted to nicotine and will likely suffer for this addiction for a lifetime and it was with the support of this community the school district

016the safer coalition and the substance awareness center that we are taking steps to lead the state of florida in preventing lifelong nicotine addiction and reaching youth who need treatment so i would like to turn it over to one of our safer swat youth who is going to read the proclamation deeming october vaping awareness month ariana whereas the federal government government declared youth e-cigarette use or vaping a nationwide epidemic and whereas youth vaping has increased dramatically across the country and in florida whereas in 2020 21.6 percent of high schoolers and 8.1 percent of middle schoolers used e-cigarettes whereas e-cigarettes are unsafe for kids teens and young young adults and whereas e-cigarettes typically contain nicotine which is a highly addictive chemical and the developing youth brain is more vulnerable to its effects including reduced impulse control deficiency

017and attention and cognition and mood disorders whereas e-cigarettes aerosol is not harmless water vapor and the aerosol that users breathe from an e-cigarette device and exhale can contain harmful and potential harmful substances including cancer-causing chemicals and heavy metals such as nickel 10 and lead whereas the focus of october 2021 is to get accurate information about youth and e-cigarette use into the hands of our students and parents which is an important step to reversing this alarming trend in our schools and whereas indian river county is committed to the goals and objectives of vaping awareness month through a variety of public health activities and programs now therefore the school board of indian river county hereby proclaims october 2021 as vaping awareness month [Music] [Applause] can i have a motion to approve the proclamation i'll make a motion

018second all in favor aye very much for [Applause] i know i feel nothing same thing just once again before they get taken to dinner thank you for supporting and educating our our children and i know last year we had the opportunity to do a facebook live and i've never met anyone who can just know absolutely everything about vaping so the depth and skill in which you're able to talk through this crisis and how you're able to educate is something you should be very very proud of so thank you for all you're doing dr moore i was going to say the same thing kylie is like an encyclopedia of e-cigarette and vaping facts so if you ever me have any questions about anything signs to look at in your for your kids to see if they're

019vaping ways to stop please contact her it's amazing and we had a facebook live this year too so you can go back and watch that on youtube all right um our next presentation is a short video raise your hand if you are at the community uh choice and community extravaganza at the ig center so we had a huge turnout this year and it was amazing so we um put together a video for that it was held on saturday october 19th at the ig center and different school teams shared about the programs that were offered at their schools community partners shared information on services for students and families informative breakout sessions went throughout the day hands-on experiences for children shuttles from north county sites in my favorite kona ice was there i'd like to just thank

020cindy emerson and her team up in curriculum and instruction cindy organized this event and totally deserves a round of applause it's a great event and we hope you enjoy the video [Music] we are coming together for the first annual sdirc school choice and community extravaganza [Music] well we have really amped up our school choice and themes throughout the district offering unique programs so parents can pick the school that works best for their child so today every single school leadership team is here highlighting their programs and encouraging our families to pick the school that meets their needs [Music] part of our school choice theme is encouraging our schools to offer unique programs like our sebastian elementary cheerleaders and dance team and our gifford middle school drum line we have over nine breakout sessions taking place today

021so you can meet the superintendent and learn about achieve 2025 we have a spanish session for parent resources as well as six different ese partnership presentations taking place in our breakout rooms you can also come out for our health screenings parents can even come out for the focus on focus session to learn more about the resources we have available to them we have over 25 community partners that have come out to share about their programs the extracurricular activities that students can do and the partnership that we have with them within the community it's all about choice and voice and so it is a passion of mine to make sure that our parents know we are here to meet their needs for their child today was an incredible event and truly collaborative we want to thank

022all of our parents and families who came out today as well as our community partnerships and all the departments of sdirc because we are truly innovating our school district so when miss miss maddox refers to uh miss emerson's team uh the entire team is standing right there by that wall because she is a a team of one and of course the district team supported her but choices come so far the innovation that's taking place in our schools it's a strategic approach within our school improvement plans uh cindy i always say has one of the best jobs in the district because she's out creating and innovating but at that event it really you know gave you chills to see in a positive way uh the community support the volume of people that were there the community

023partners uh parents coming in and moving through the different uh booths really exploring where's the best fit for my son or daughter so it really was a great sign a great day very well coordinated i know we got bigger and bigger bigger and better plans moving in the future but absolutely outstanding job by miss emerson cni our principals out absolutely done it outstanding her and her team's support you're extraordinary and um and i'm sure you're already planning for next year so um our last but one of my favorite things every week is i'm getting my weeks and months confused today i don't know every school year is national school lunch week that was held last week and our food nutrition department did an amazing job of promoting national school lunch week it's it's one of

024the best weeks that we've had here as far as i'm concerned our cafeterias they put on different activities for the kids there were different tastings it there was a ton of information that we sent out about our cafeteria programs and tonight we have tracy simonton who's the director of food and nutrition services she will come up tracy bring your team with you if you would like and she has a short presentation for national school lunch week hey we're good good evening everyone um like kristen said national school lunch week is something that we look forward to every year so what we want to do is kind of give you a little snapshot of what our department has been doing and what opportunities we are giving the students to experience new and probably some fruits and

025vegetables that they've never experienced before okay so first thing we're going to talk about is on november 5th and 6th my team will be attending the florida school nutrition association annual conference and expo and while we're there we'll not only be learning from some of the most highly qualified professionals in the department and in child nutrition but my team will also be presenting one of the breakout sessions for other food service professionals around the state okay so anyone who has worked in a school cafeteria knows that the cardinal rule is do not touch the cook's cart they go crazy don't touch the cart all right so this training was developed by my team and is designed to incorporate puzzles and riddles and tasks associated with child nutrition to determine who stole the cook's cart could

026it be principal plumer david blanco the cafeteria manager ruby red dale the pre-k teacher coach caliente we have dusty greenfield the satellite worker or we have miss edna sapphire our school secretary but i'm not going to give away the secret i don't want anyone knowing who's responsible just yet okay second thing i want to highlight is our new marketing and quality control person that we have in place carolyn is new to the department we revamped one of our previous allocated positions to now include marketing and quality control so i'm sure you've seen the many new posts on social media and carolyn has been working a lot with miss maddox to get the word out about special events that are happening in our cafeterias so the first job she was tasked with was promoting national school

027on tweak from october 11th to the 15th cafeterias were transformed into jungles and one of the highlights was an art contest where students were to use any medium they chose to create a masterpiece highlighting why they willed about school lunch and middle and high school students were also required to submit an essay with their artwork so each school selected one piece of art to be judged to be the overall winner the school-based winners will have their art on display in the vero reach museum of art from december 1st through january 3rd and their art can also be seen in vero beachside newspaper and the vero beach magazine for the school-based winners we were then tasked with choosing a grand champion of the elementary and the secondary level extremely difficult all this all the entries were

028amazing each of the students that were selected as the grand prize winners won an art package and two tickets to disney world okay their artwork will be on display as well november 4th to january 3rd and we have the winners here with us tonight okay so from osceola magnet we have ella we didn't change it ella masaki okay ella's artwork all right and she gets a top banana award [Applause] and then if we can get your mom up here to get a picture please she's taking pictures she's taking pictures she's got to be in a picture okay and i'm almost done all right and then for our secondary level we have sarah murphy from storm grove middle school okay these ladies did an awesome job well done and thank you so much for participating all

029right let's get a picture i know [Applause] congratulations to these two ladies and their beautiful artwork i think that if they're offering art lessons i might have to take some from them and last but not least still highlighting national school lunch week we have a video presentation that we put together for the different cafes around our district and all the super cool things that they did [Music] every year during the second full week in october the school nutrition association sponsors national school lunch week this year's theme was wild about school lunch the school district of indian river county celebrated the occasion in a variety of ways here are some of the most nutritious highlights from the week at osceola magnet school fifth grade students created hedgehogs using one peeled pair toothpicks grapes one blueberry and

030two chocolate chips the young culinary artists were then able to snack upon their tasty creations on the other side of the county students at sebastian river high school had the opportunity to enjoy dishes from around the world all week on wednesday october 13th the sebastian river high school sharks had a feeding frenzy as they satisfied their appetites with fish and chips a delicacy from across the pond lunch lines at many of the schools had themes at dodgertown elementary students were transported to an aquatic paradise when walking through the under the sea themed lunch line watermelon carvings were displayed in many lunch lines throughout the district students were able to see the cafeteria staff's scrumptious mascot-themed artwork at sebastian river middle school vero beach high school sebastian river high school and treasure coast elementary school to

031close out the festivities the winners of the wild about school lunch art contest were announced congratulations to the winners and everyone who participated in the contest the school district of indian river county understands the importance of school lunch we will continue to serve nutritious and delicious meals and emphasize the importance of healthy eating practices [Music] school lunch has definitely changed since we were in school in a very very good way um and that is all that we have for presentations tonight so dr moore thank you that is it thank you very good exciting evening good job all right um when we change the orders of the day we're now going to discuss action item number 13a i'll turn it over to mrs barenborg thank you sir school transportation safety awareness is a concern i know

032everybody has and recently we've had some really tragic things happen in the county below us and i'm aware of five incidences that happened just last week in our county and i'm sure there were others that we don't know about um so do you want me to read this whole yes okay well i would call the speakers if you have a speaker yeah do you want me to read the the item i i would but i would do the speakers first okay so we have in um invited some speakers uh i believe all in uniform and i appreciate you coming out gentlemen um to tell us about awareness of what's happening what we need to do um what the laws are that are in place right now and um just so the board members know and

033and the public knows there are two laws that are actually proposed for legislation this year um and so anyways he's got the speakers why don't you invite the speakers who want to speak to this i'll invite them on deputy chief milo thornton you get to come up here because you're part of my presentation thank you [Music] good afternoon good afternoon evening on behalf of the men and women of indiana river county sheriff's office we thank you for having us uh sheriff flowers couldn't be here tonight he's away in tallahassee on business so um you stuck with me thank you you so um the river county sheriff's office supports the uh school districts initiative for school bus safety um we are aware of the incidents that have happened and down in st lucie county uh the

034tragic incidents that happened with a little girl and and i can tell you uh when we see those things it makes us uh you know really start focusing more and more in those areas um we are uh we have a dedicated traffic unit our traffic units um um it's not as large as your uh fleet of buses but we do our best to keep up with our students to make sure that they're safe uh to and from school um when we talk about these things that um that you saw here and with vehicles traveling around buses that are stopped you know rather it's picking up our students or or are dropping off our students after school and from uh sporting events you know uh their fines they're heavy fines that are associated with those type

035of incidents you know those individuals can receive up to a 500 dollar fine and mandatory court appearances to explain her actions to a judge i don't think that's stiff enough when you consider what could happen to our students who are just trying to cross the street um we are gearing up for some campaigns to address these very issues sort of like we do when school starts back when we put that information out there to motorists you know to stop if there's no median you know we have to remind our folks we had a conversation earlier about um individuals um not seeing buses for a large portion of the year and then all of a sudden there's buses everywhere and you know they're still in their rush to get to the bank you know you're already

036late for work so why are you rushing you're already late you know so these are things that um you know we are gearing up towards um i don't know if you had any other questions for me but i can tell you um i've had some conversations with you know our superintendent and deputy superintendent about other initiatives that i like to see um we have a real-time crime center of course obviously you guys know that and it's steadily getting better and better by the day you know and we know that you guys have some resources that we can use so we can keep an eye on our students and track our students so we know where those buses are you know when they're moving and we can um get our deputies to those locations as things

037are occurring through our live uh 911 system that we have in our dispatch center so we are doing everything we can to um shorten our response time but more important just know where our students are so that we can keep an eye on them throughout the day and um in the evening uh thank you hold on hold on one second um you mentioned the 500 find a mandatory court appearance and what if somebody witnesses it or what if we had cameras on the side of the bus um would that be able to be used then in those court appearances so we use that information just like we use any other type of surveillance if it was on a corner store or in a mobile trailer that was you know positioned on the side of the

038road you know we use that information to help us with intelligence but keep in mind um um vehicles are registered to multiple people and sometimes they're registered to corporations so we have to still identify who that driver is you know i certainly wouldn't want the police to show up to uh arrest the dad when it was his son that was driving the car with his buddies you know and committed a traffic violation so you know the information is useful it does have some use but there's still investigative actions that need to take place like making 100 certain that the driver uh the person that was driving that vehicle is the person that was responsible for that that you know that infraction and not just looking at a piece of paper to see who the vehicles

039are registered to you know um some of us loan our vehicles out to friends you know who uh may be experiencing some hardships you know and um so we we really want to make sure that we identify them it does give us some some information you know if a vehicle was a particular vehicle in its color you know impossible damage if you know we can see where it struck an individual or a bus so it does have its use but at what costs do you want to do that i mean you know we use the same uh information from our eyewitnesses if we have a bus driver or students you know our students are very observative these days um you know as they see you know fancy cars or particular cars driving around so you

040know we use that information yes ma'am thank you and you mentioned the real time crime center and that we have things that can help with that dr moore did you want to address that at all through the chair as was mentioned we are in conversations about being able to through agreement provide information to the deputies so they have that information so if something arise they would know exactly where to go so eliminating in some cases the middleman to make sure the information is being provided uh to them through this uh their one-time crime scene i have not seen it yet but i've seen uh or heard from a number of individuals how innovative it is and it is a opportunity for us to to partner as we always have uh to maximize the sharing of

041information to make to get uh support uh to where it needs to be as quickly as possible and that would actually speed up the amount of time that they would actually be able to if somebody was passing a bus they'd be able to find them very quickly because of that yes ma'am and we've also you know our sheriff and uh the members of the sheriff's office have deployed a lot of other sophisticated information equipment out there um i know the uh fells mayor police department their chief and i'm aware of sebastian and the other our law enforcement partners all you know are deploying sophisticated information uh that talks directly to our real-time crime center and shortens our response time as well with the uh our new and improved uh live 9-1-1 our deputies are allowed

042to hear the calls as they're coming in and start heading in those directions as our call takers are gathering that information so um you know they have the opportunities if it was a vehicle versus pedestrian or vehicle versus a bus they have an opportunity to be to be scanning you know those areas while in route to that incident but hope you know hoping they can identify it before waiting you know traditionally there was a 10-15 minute wait while the dispatcher retrieved that information from the caller you know uh that's no more you know our deputies are in route uh as soon as the call comes in because they can hear it um from the individual that's calling and speaking directly to our dispatchers thank you and i don't know if the public knew that and

043you know i just learned of it so i appreciate that very much yes ma'am thank you thank you um mark shaw excuse me hi tony conslo oh tony okay just want to make a little bit more comments on that so our agency has deployed approximately 48 lpr cameras in the last three weeks that's a license plate reader camera we're deploying another 48 of those in the next couple of weeks as well so the advantage of that is that if you did have an issue with a vehicle that passed the school bus or committed an infraction like that we could put that license plate number into our lprs and kind of figure out the pattern that that vehicle drives where if we didn't have something like that it could be one incident and then you'd have

044to follow that bus and see if that person takes the same route or whatever but if we had that information so if you did use cameras on your buses and i'm not sure that that is the best way to handle it i think it's a possibility it's certainly an option to do that if you do do that i would recommend that those cameras be lpr cameras so that it would capture the license plate of the vehicle that passed the school bus okay once that's done like i said that information would come into our real-time crime center they could tell us that the vehicle stolen it could tell us if the the owner of the vehicle has a suspended license that the person has warrants for there's a their arrest so there's a lot of criteria

045that we can enter in the real-time crime center and as that license plate comes by can give us that information so my recommendation is if you do put cameras on your buses that you require them to be lpr cameras and that that would give us access to that again that would give us a pattern because you know instead of a blue you know blue vehicle goes by we would have the license plate we would know that where that person lives we can put an unmarked vehicle uh on that vehicle earlier in the day before the bus routes start or in the afternoon whatever it might be and follow that vehicle to see if they commit those infractions again and again so i think that would be a big safety thing like deputy chief said i

046think our psas would be you know public safety announcements would be huge i think that's something we have to do um you know with school being back in full session you have a lot more school buses on the road than you did last year so i think it's a learning curve again uh with you know people that recently got their license people that moved down here knowing uh you know that you can't pass unless you you know if there's a median you don't have to but if there's no meeting you have to stop the amount of traffic um congestion because of the you know the building on 43rd avenue and 58th avenue 66 i think that plays a factor into so i think there's a lot of factors that are affecting the safety of the

047transportation of our students but um everything that we mentioned i think are positive steps and moving forward to providing an increase in the safety of that so thank you thank you yes yes ma'am go ahead um thank you for that information uh with regard to the lpr cameras that you were mentioning uh within your statement you said that you're not quite sure that that would be the best way for us to handle this situation i think that's okay i think you said it was very helpful um but i think my follow-up would be would there be a suggested better way i think my comment was that the cameras themselves might not be the best way i know that your buses are equipped with gps systems on there and i think that's what the deputy chief

048was referring to earlier when we talked about it our community coach buses in town are equipped with gps's so to provide us with access to the gps systems on the bus would give us real time live feed as to where that bus is located so that way if there was an issue on a bus not even regarding the transportation if there was you know a major issue on a bus we would know exactly where that bus is as opposed to having have somebody call in it would just be hey we have an issue on bus 27. we could automatically find out where that bus is and start deploying resources to that as opposed to having the bus driver call into transportation transportation reaching out to law enforcement law enforcement dispatch center you know gathering that

049information sending it to the law enforcement officer and having him respond so that's um what i mean when i said that both combinations of the gps and the cameras absolutely personally i think that's a great idea but to pick one over the other i can't tell you which one would be better thank you yes ma'am thank you so much for that i appreciate it um we want everybody to have the opportunity to speak and we invited them to kind of let us know what we can do to help with the issue that we have and also any suggestions that you have so mark shaw good evening mr chairman board members dr moore appreciate you guys having us out speak tonight like your motto says stronger together i think that holds volumes to all the law

050enforcement agencies that are represented here tonight uh any river shores obviously it's a very small community we have one main road so our two officers that are out in the 5.6 miles of a1a that we have is definitely going to cover most of our bus stops and school buses but our guys throughout the day they're part of their directed patrols to follow the buses in and out when i was preparing to come here tonight i was actually looking online at some statistics and one of the things that actually kind of shocked me was this was just the state of florida this was on orange county public school website was that in the state of florida in a normal 180 day calendar school year there's two million illegal passes of buses reported by drivers just in

051the state of florida so that's obviously a huge problem we also have the license plate reading cameras we are connected with the sheriff's office so they have access to our information we have access to theirs constantly use that to help make our streets safer but i have no other comments if you guys have any questions i'll be glad to answer them obviously mr barefoot our former town mayor appreciate everything you do thank you sir thank you i appreciate you coming out thank you for being part of thanks thank you thank you [Applause] mr keith touch perry good evening school board the keith touchbury police chief for the city of falzberg good evening everyone i am pleased to be here tonight because school safety is a chief priority with all of us in fellsmere you know

052we have the one elementary school on north cypress street it's literally two blocks from the police department our officers are actually just there today giving a vaping presentation in the spirit of vaping month and uh it was a good exercise for one of our newer officers who's never been in front of 100 fifth graders before so he was a little nervous i said one fifty hundred it doesn't matter you know you're giving the presentation so we stand ready to support anything the school board does in the way of school bus safety the awareness campaign if you're gonna launch any media we'll certainly share all that i know that uh principal etzeria is very good at sending out information to our parents and our parents are very dedicated as all parents are to their kids every

053year as you know we have to retrain them when it comes to entering and leaving our bus loop as we manage our traffic safety control process out in front of the school and we assist the school resource officer from the sheriff's office we have opportunities to educate kids we have the school bus safety loop that where the kids get picked up and drop off from the buses and while they're waiting for the buses we can spend time with them at that time educating them on safety you know getting in and off the bus and so forth as far as enforcement goes uh felsmere is unique in that it is small and rural and somewhat isolated from the rest of the county and if you've ever been to fellsman you know that our roads are a

054lot more narrow than they are in other cities and that's a traffic calming measure by design uh the science behind that is the the more narrow the road is the slower traffic will go and if you've ever had to make a turn from one street to another in fellsmere you know literally you have to wait for someone to turn or maybe back up for them so that they can turn before you go and this is just the way it is in fellsmere people understand that when they go back and forth to where they're going i will say that the the rush hour coming and going from falzmare tends to be off cycle from the rest of the county most of our residents are laborers or get to work early and so our exodus out of

055the city is about six to seven o'clock in the morning and so the vast majority of our traffic is already out of the city when the school buses are coming and making their stops having said that though our officers still are very proactive when it comes to patrolling the school bus stops to make sure that everything is safe and secure there and we have a very active presence at the school i heard you mentioned earlier about statutes that are pending and if you haven't looked at house bill 179 i would encourage you to do so uh we were somewhat talking about that with the the cameras being affixed to the to the school buses and in reading the bill you'll find that there is a rebuttable defense that the driver who ran past the school

056bus was the registered owner or the registered with the driver let me rephrase that a rebuttable defense so it's similar to red light cameras in florida where if you're the registered owner or you blow a toll in florida guess who's getting that notice they're registered on that vehicle and then it becomes a civil process that you have to go through whether you're guilty or innocent and how you choose to proceed at that point um this is one of those things that the florida police chief association has already reviewed extensively our legislative committee which i'm a member have already reviewed that bill and we've weighed in on the pros and cons of what we feel are the strengths and weaknesses of that bill i'm assuming the florida sheriff's association has also done the same uh it's

057legislative session hasn't begun yet so where that bill is right now we don't know but we would certainly encourage all school districts to look at that and it just empowers you to enact that that camera system as a school district if it's something that you want to do and uh and the devils in the details though how you work out the management of that and so forth is what you need to answer but again we stand ready and committed the city of fellsmere to protect our children in any way that you need assistance and uh take any questions i'm just going to tell you where that bill is right now okay it's been referred to the judiciary committee and now in criminal justice and public safety subcommittee actually what i've learned from going to tallahassee

058is uh the earlier you can get up there to speak to something when it's in committee the stronger um it makes a statement yes that's in our playbook too at the fbca yes yes um so i appreciate that the fact that you're following that and i'll probably follow up with you on possibly going up there to speak or something absolutely appreciate that thank you um anybody have a question thank you thank you chief okay thank you thanks chief todd finnegan sebastian evening everyone appreciate it thanks for having us um my name is todd finnegan i'm a sergeant with the sebastian police department i supervise the school resource unit in our city we have three schools three sros obviously on behalf of chief acosta and sebastian police department we just want to say that we're 100

059percent on board with this school bus safety initiative that's that's happening so i think our patrol guys do a great job with traffic enforcement for the for the students and the and the buses and the vehicles that come in um i think we can continue to put forth that effort and my school resource guys do a great job mentoring the children and always giving them tips on school bus safety and i think we can do more as far as public safety announcements on social media and on local television to put that out and educate the public on you know the laws and rules regarding school bus traffic control devices and whatnot but continued education to speak to the kids and the parents and to keep enforcing those laws that have to do with the school

060bus uh infractions on the road and whatnot so i think if we continue to make that effort we can you know keep the children safe obviously it was a tragedy what happened down in st lucie county and we don't want that to happen here so pretty much thank you thank you you're welcome thank you thank you matthew monaco and john peterson or is it petterson second one good evening cheer member barefoot board members dr moore mr teske thank you for inviting us here today to be involved in this very important discussion uh one of the good things about i guess going last is i get to echo everything my colleagues have already said um but from my perspective in the very beach police department we certainly support this initiative i think it's a two-prong it's

061education and enforcement and just like to share one little story with you i spoke with one of our traffic enforcement officers this morning and we were talking about this topic knowing that i would be coming here tonight asking him what he sees out in the roads and has he been out there enforcing these types of violations of motorists passing our school buses and he said just the other day that one of the school bus drivers called into dispatch and said that there was a black unmarked vehicle following him and that just happened to be one of our traffic enforcement officers so we are dedicated to be out there and continue enforcement and i think the education piece isn't very important whether that be with our students our parents and the motoring public so we're here

062to support this initiative and we're on board thank you thank you thank you very much um part of i had a conversation with sheriff flowers last week and part of the reason why i brought this up up is because you know obviously we have this problem what you said two million car passes a year that's really sad and it happened to me yesterday yesterday i saw there was 16 cars stopped we were waiting on a bus that was way down the street and someone passed me to the right almost going into the ditch so it's happening constantly it's scary yes i think psas are very important we need to put that out there has been a call before for cameras on buses my concern is whether or not that will really be worth the cost

063and you know what if it's a child's life it's worth the cost i also know um someone that i i i think it doesn't just affect the family of the child it affects the person that actually hit the child and people will say oh you know it ruined my life and but had they known that fact before and really done something about it to prevent it that's what we need to focus on is the prevention versus uh the punishment i mean the punishment is part of the prevention but um we need to look at both of those things so with that do you want me to read the okay statement so on september 23rd night uh 2021 in st lucie county florida a student was tragically struck and killed by a car while crossing the

064street to catch a school bus when this occurred the bus was stopped the bus signs sorry the bus stop sign was up and the bus lights were flashing on october 12 in 2021 a storm grove middle school student was clipped by a car after exiting a bus fortunately this incident was minor and the student did not need to be transported for medical care for injuries the vehicle that clipped the student drove into a grassy shoulder around the bus once again when this incident occurred the bus was stopped the lights were flashing and the stop sign was up over the last 18 months there have been a limited presence of school transportation on road on our roads as a result of the pandemic now that school bus transportation is in full operation it is clear that

065we need an increased awareness and re-education on the traffic rules that should be observed when drivers encounter school buses on the road additionally review of school transportation safety protocols and procedures in order to determine if any modifications need to be made we need to do this item requests that the superintendent take the following actions review all school transportation safety protocols and procedures with students to ensure that they have a full understanding of the established safety measures meet with school transportation professionals to conduct a needs assessment related to safety and school transportation and make any needed changes in safety measures or protocols conduct a cost-benefit analysis of added cameras placed on the outside of school buses develop a community-wide campaign in partnership with all of our local and law enforcement thank you all for being here

066and i appreciate it we got i think every agency correct here represented in our county so we appreciate that i'm working together with all of you developing a community-wide campaign in partnership with local law enforcement that incorporates signage and video marketing to increase awareness of school transportation safety and traffic rules related to school transportation provide an update to the board on each action step on or before the superintendent's workshop in january of 2022. now since this has been posted um someone did call me and and i think emailed the board too about um adding monitors or adding a person for each bus how many buses do we have every day on the road through today we're running 80 routes right now 80 routes and they run multiple times each route um each bus while on

067the morning we'll run three routes so 80 bus is running basically six routes a day and so there's a big cost for whatever we do if we put monitors on buses to help walk kids if we put cameras on buses whether or not that cost would really result in what we want to do which is deter people from going around buses but that is something i think the board needs to look at and consider and so therefore that's why i'm making this request okay approve questions comments yes um dr jones thank you miss berenborg and everyone for attending tonight uh about a month ago i think i emailed dr moore and jennifer idalet and mr teske just about our concerns and so forth with buses and the incidents that were happening and i know prevention

068is a key and the um i think dr moore you said you were talking about the social media we'll be doing or the psas or where are we with that now um once this item is approved miss maddox has already started the um the mapping out of that awareness will be working with the local law enforcement to really do a county-wide initiative both social media pushing it out throughout the county in a number of different forms thank you and just in collaboration with our sheriff department and our police department just making sure when we take any of these steps that we're just checking to see which cameras are better or what we're going to do or the cost and so forth but it's a really um very very important thing and miss berenborg thank you

069for bringing it up thank you hey mrs rosario yeah um i don't know if we're all receiving the same information on the incidents that have happened locally but um it's it is timely for us to be able to do this um it is important thank you all for being here for your support um i know that you all need to know that we support you and you in all that you do and we can't do what we do here without you so um it really is appreciated um but i i wanted to just mention about the bus safety campaign that we're going to go out for i think it would be prudent of us once we get that going that it's not just a social media or email thing even if we were to take

070out an ad in the paper um and and make sure that it is known county wide that this is an effort from from not just us but all of the agencies represented here um that might take it a little step further or in terms of yeah or even tv commercial that that is the intent that's good yeah um so if we do that then i i think that um we would we would definitely get the message out there so thank you for bringing this um forth um i think it is needed i'm excited already for what's to come in january so that we can hear the needs assessment so that we can move forward and keeping our kids safe okay this is great i'm 100 behind it thank you to law enforcement for being here

071everything you do in partnership with the district and uh i'll call the question all in favor aye aye aye motion passes do we have to have a we have to have a motion for we did have a motion to get in we didn't all right i'll make a motion second all right all in favor there you go thank you there it is thank you gentlemen for being here [Applause] all right now come to citizen input we have looks like we have about six seven eight speakers this evening guidelines each statement made by a member of the public shall be limited to three minutes duration persons will be recognized in the order in which the requests were received persons may speak for up to three minutes at the beginning of a business meeting during citizen input

072as indicated on the order of business and for up to three minutes to each action agenda 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 officer only the individual submitting a speaker's form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded to other speakers and our first return guest this evening is stanford erickson chairman barefoot members of the board superintendent moore thank you for reading me and other citizens to present their views tonight when i was attending my wife's niece graduation at harvard a few years back i jokingly told my wife i had 10 geopolitical questions that i could ask any of her fellow graduates and

073i could predict what they would say in each case not surprisingly all the graduates i asked the questions to give this gave the same answers which i had predicted why because to get into harvard and to survive harvard these brilliant students had to figure out what the elite education establishment wanted them to think as a journalist i covered education for three years for mcgraw-hill publications back then and now public education is politicized the wealthiest among us understood this and they did not send their children to public education less wealthy peoples homeschool them charter schools are now increasing throughout the country the bias in public education for the last 40 years or so has left is left of center unions have reinforced that it is not surprising that terry mc golovk a democrat who is campaigning

074for governor in virginia for the second time recently said i don't like parents i don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach all of us learn by being humble and listening to others in the past teachers were among our society's most educated people today many of the parents and citizens are better educated and more experienced in world affairs and commerce than most educators i personally have two master's degrees and managed media companies i also was drafted and i had a master's degree and for one year nine months eight days was a private our group education action alliance includes a phd in education who has served in the military educators on the college and local level elementary secondary and those have been successful in business famed poet john milton in his essay in

075aberdeen wrote that cloistered virtue is of little value cloistered virtue is of little value many educators have been cloistered from the real world most of their careers many of this board have been cloistered from the real world for many years chairman barefoot is an exception it is important to de-politicize public education it is also important for educators to begin paying more attention to those citizens and parents who understand what the real world is all about and why their children must be prepared to function successfully in the real world the classroom is to educate young people and not politicize them into way of thinking thank you thank you mr erickson next speaker is rosemary wilson on deck michael marsh oh good evening i'm rosemary wilson live at 1495th avenue vero beach florida usually a raise is

076a reward for a good job well done is the superintendent entitled to a two percent raise when we have no a rated schools and ratings continue to drop why was the school board meeting canceled this month and now we have a 40-page agenda as it was run off online this morning and the board members complained about the lengthy meetings how is it with that with such brilliance on the board after all we have not one but two phds that the curricula has wording and pictures of indoctrination and sexual indecency you got to do your homework why use strong armed bully tactics on parents that are concerned only about the quality education for their children the leadership of elitist demagogues of the school board district of indian river county will fail if you continue by the

077way mr barefoot the censure stands with an overwhelming vote by the republican executive committee of indian river county to 13. thank you thank you mrs wilson next next speaker is michael marsh on dec susan meal that's my sheriff how you guys doing this evening my name is uh mike for liberty and i wanted to come tonight tell you guys you know if you go under the superintendent and you look at that hierarchy you don't even have to come here and enjoy this giant echo chamber moms for liberty you have many other facets you can go through if you have an esc problem you can reach out to the great folks i just spoke to him did you know there's a parent engagement meeting coming up tomorrow you guys should all come you may learn something

078please invite jennifer pumpkin it's put on by dr cowie great i am very satisfied with my school district of india in camp any river county let's talk numbers for a second we had a success under dr moore 9 to 13 of the number of african-americans moms for liberty did you guys know that and we're on track to meet the 18 percent that is required under this lawsuit so i think we should give more raise mr chairman the board i think dr moore is doing mwah great job now also this parent engagement uh committee that we have we have so many committees here under the school district for everything you can think of they put a committee in place what we should talk about if you guys watch the workshop because that's the juicy part this

079is nothing the workshop is where it's at uh mr marsh make sure you just direct your comments to the school board oh i'm sorry these beautiful ladies here so 259 students identify as homeless we're past the mass critical race theory whatever the whatever is going on sexual there we i think we're past that here i don't think they're teaching that here in the school district of indian river county um but when we get to the real issues at hand i applaud dr jones i got an email from her that is the problem that we need to focus on over 50 percent are elementary students what are we going to do about that if we are stronger together and we're done with the political pandering are we going to move on to the real hot topics

080matter of fact it's a shame the naacp is not here tonight because i comb through thousands of equity documents hbcu emails this a new administration or dr moore if you need to know anything about equity dr shafty is brilliant we don't really care about that if we did care they would come to the workshops they would come to school board meetings matter of fact everyone thursday we can listen to the recommendation and as far as report cards go we the community we think this superintendent is doing great school board for the most part most of you are doing really good but it's time that we all get together and look at real issues 53 years it was screamed out to dr moore and the rest of the equity committee are we talking about that it's

081time that we the community we can do stuff why is everything the school district many river county's job why is that what do we do as the community so at the end of the day none of these people including naacp speak for these beautiful interracial queens on the back of my shirt you know why because i leave it to the superintendent and everyone that works hard in this school district of indian river county god bless educationally yours mike for liberty [Music] thank you mr marsh susan meal on deck is melissa's melissa burdick so i had a couple of conversations with mr meyer recently and we agree on a number of things i'm pleased to report that one is very very critical and it has to do with the selection of new curriculums so we know

082what we went through with eal and timing is a big factor and at the crux of the problem we have is the florida department of education and its timeline for recommending new curriculums to you all for our community to select and at the bottom line of that problem is that they believe you can wait till july first to order your new curriculums that's bad for teachers that's bad for staff and that's bad for children so i'm here tonight to ask you to become proactive in an effort to change the timeline of the doe i've sent out some emails to my contacts in tallahassee and at the doe and i would really like it if you would do the same i'm not i don't have time to give you the details but one of them is

083is the date at which we need to start reviewing curriculums which means we have to review a lot of curriculums and some of them may not even be approved by the state and we go through the same thing we did with hmh and amplify and all those problems it's probably too late to impact the math timeline because we're in it now and we have a number of representatives who are participating on the committee to select the new math curriculum and we're very pleased at the cooperation level that you've shown but social studies is coming up next year and believe me i've got parents and community members coming out of the woodwork that want to get involved in that selection process because as we know there's the devil in the details and they want to see

084what the details are on social studies so if you can use your state associations your school board associations your superintendents associations here in florida if you could join with other county school districts and try to pressure them to get that social studies curriculum selection process timeline changed it would be great for everyone including the parents and the community and i'd just like to finish by saying that if you pass the changes in the public comment rules i wouldn't have been able to bring that up today because it's not on your agenda thank you uh melissa burdick uh next speaker lamar neuter giacomo um i wish i had some good merchandise to wear you look super sharp michael over there so it's awesome um so i just wanted to address it i think it's a good

085segue after susan's addressing you is that i wanted to read from the national school board association most recent letter dated october 22nd as all of you know there has been extensive media and other attention recently around our letter to president biden regarding threats and acts of violence against school board members we wanted to write to you directly to address this matter on behalf of the nsba we regret and apologize for that letter to be clear the safety of school board members other public officials and educators and students is our top priority and there remains important work to be done on the issue however there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter and anybody is aware at this point that the language they're referring to is calling parents domestic terrorists i

086i continue we should have had a better process in place to allow for some consultation on a communication of this significance we apologize also for the strain and stress this has cost you and your organization as we've re we as we've reiterated since a letter was sent we deeply value not only the work of the local school boards that make important contributions with our communities but also the voice of parents who should and must continue to be heard when it comes to the decisions about their children's health education and safety so with that being said as i know i'm running out of time as i always do i would point to your letter here the new rules for public input which was dated 9 28 that in fact says this this here their notice from

087your national board says nothing about persons speaking to non-agenda items which are germane to the work of the school board which is what you propose in your work also this nsba recognizes this first amendment right for parents and should all members of this board you should recognize this as well the current proposed limits on set on free speech usurp our first amendment rights in essence if this school board goes through with this you are going rogue against your national organization at this point also i would point out that all the citizens that have spoken out in these meetings over the 18 months and i mean all everybody i disagree with all did not concede these first amendment rights to you in fact just the opposite has happened they took them back that canceled culture in

088indian river county does not have more freedom than the first amendment and you can see it in this room right now you can see it in what's happened out there you can see in the fact that my bag has to be searched when last may it didn't however if your new policy is enacted from this then you will not we will not have been allowed to have read this to people who do not scour the internet looking for information out and had mrs rosario not brought it to the agenda i would not have been allowed to say and speak tonight to share this public information with you because you may say for us thank you uh next speaker lamar no turkiacomo on deck tiffany justice thank you good evening um am i on doesn't doesn't

089feel like i'm on for years i've attended school board meetings as a parent grandparent and as a tax paying concerned citizen i consider it an honor and part of my civic duty to hold all of our elected and unelected officials accountable for their votes and their decisions i've heard much discussion about stakeholders in our school district but have yet to hear any of our school board members mention that parents and taxpayers are the primary stakeholders because our children and our tax dollars are at stake we've been mocked disrespected ignored and treated as second-class citizens while members of the board demand absolute decorum and threaten to have us removed from the building simply for expressing approval of speakers by applause something that is allowed during every other portion of the business meeting except during public comment

090you have used the media as a weapon against moms and concerned citizens who attend public business meetings because they say things you do not want to hear and then you play the victim squandering and misusing the resources of the sheriff's office to make yourselves feel safe even though there has not been a single credible threat made against any one of you how much does it cost to have six or eight sheriff's deputies standing guard over parents during school board meetings clearly it is meant for purposes of intimidation and by the way we back the blue i love you guys appreciate you i think it's a misuse of of the sheriff's office missouri ohio and pennsylvania have all ended their association with the national school board association memberships because of biden's justice department labeling of parents

091as domestic terrorists is the school board of indian river county a member of this nsba if so i hope you will immediately follow their example and terminate your association with this organization parents are not terrorists we are doing our jobs overseeing our children's education to the best of our ability we've heard that the board and dr moore in particular repeat the same mantra every child should feel safe respected comfortable etc but his words are empty when our children are being indoctrinated with political correctness at the expense of the highest quality education available and when they are being threatened by gang members from other counties who attend our schools under the banner of school choice what kind of a background check do teachers undergo apparently not astringent enough check the media seems complicit in downplaying the

092events of october 10th where two brand new indian river county teacher hires were arrested after firing four shots at a man who was running away hitting him once in the back is the goal of the superintendent to import miami-style promise program where assaults and thefts of under a thousand dollars at schools do not have to be reported to police and sexual assault committed by teachers being covered up putting our children in harm way bars and graphs and charts are good for eye candy but present a biased view of what's going on in the classroom we want to protect our kids for real not just make them feel safer by the way there is an organization of dads 40 of them went into louisiana schools and they are serving as hall monitors i hope we implement

093the same thing here wake up dads get involved thank you mrs justice good evening my name is tiffany justice i'm the co-founder of moms for liberty a national non-profit grassroots organization that helps parents to advocate effectively for parental rights i am also the mother of four children in the school district of indian river county today was a wonderful day for my family dr moore my son was awarded uh the student of the month for warm-heartedness and it was such a wonderful thing and as he came home today and he handed me the paper he said first words out of his mouth mom are you gonna come and i said uh no buddy i'm not allowed and he said what do you mean you're not allowed mom i want you to be there when i get

094character of the month and i said no i'm not allowed i called the the principal and she said parents are not allowed on school campuses i said well that's really weird because today on twitter i saw at treasure coast elementary school that the sebastian women's club came and judged a pumpkin decorating contest now this is nothing against the sebastian women's club thank you for participating in our schools this is about the fact that visitors are on our school campuses and parents are not allowed to come why you can have as many parent engagement meetings as you would like but until you open your classrooms and campuses to parents they are all just words allow parents back into classrooms our children are missing we are missing children's milestones i am not alone here i'd like to

095read some comments from the facebook page after i posted today that i was not going to be able to attend my children's my son's event my son's behavioral therapist cannot come to help him to stay on task and not be a distraction or disruption to others but strangers can walk freely through campus rosewood elementary school this mother pulled her child out three weeks ago this is my son's school about today i was denied to come to be a part of the halloween party in his class i'm really upset they allow random people in the school but me as the parent can't be a part of my child's school party my daughter won the contest for this so i asked if we can volunteer to help at the pizza party i was told the district says

096parents still can't volunteer i have requested the visitor logs for every elementary school in this district i am sure there will be a fifteen thousand dollar fee for my public records request as well as quite the run around in getting the information and probably some legal reason why i can't have it you don't have to provide it for me if you don't want to take a look at it yourself if you are allowing visitors into schools and you are not allowing parents into schools you are not putting parents first in their children's education allow parents back onto school campuses allow them immediately back on school campuses do not make us not be able to participate in our children's education children need their parents parents are a huge driver of student success you should be rolling

097out the red carpet for us and i will not stop until every parent and american can get back into their child's classroom thank you well that ends uh citizen input um comment from any board members or dr moore um yeah let me let me go uh just some some brief comments and i i would like to start by asking mr meyer to review the process we use uh are currently using for um the adoption of math material i mean once you review that process i'll have additional comments uh thank you through the chair uh as ms meal uh stated we did have a great conversation uh and as i presented to the board uh in august learning the lessons that we did together through our ela adoption and understanding the constraints that are put onto

098every florida school district by the florida statutes and the department of education rules what we're endeavoring to do this year is to bring to the board in january a rank ordered list of the math adoption potential materials and you will be able to see the the hard work of the committee which does include many more community members this year than it did last year and from there we'll have to sit and wait right we have to sit and wait until the department of education approves the final list which by statute is supposed to be done by april 1st that will most likely scratch a couple of you know products off of our list and we'll be left with a rank order list that the board will bring back the board for final approval at that

099first meeting in april which will put us uh at a position to procure the books months earlier than we did last year and hopefully keeping us out of the challenge that we were in with amplify arriving right at the beginning of school the ela materials that we did procure early because they didn't have an issue the secondary materials did make it on time but honestly some of the materials that we ordered generally like the reorders from florida school book depository that we ordered in june did not make it in time so it's going to be incumbent upon us to understand the situation that we're in and get things ordered as as quickly as possible but i don't disagree with miss meal it is very disappointing that districts are not given a list until april first

100quite honestly our teams are reviewing products that may not even make the state's list and i hate to say we're wasting time we're not wasting time because we're doing the work that's necessary for the benefit of our kids but it certainly would be a lot easier uh on us if there was just a list that was already finalized by the department of education and we had enough time to review it ourselves procure the materials and train i think that's what ms meal is speaking to but uh please rest assured that the process that we brought in august that we're currently doing is the most aggressive that i've seen and will put us in the best position to learn from what happened last year during the current situation right and the only other comment i have

101is i with uh as it relates to miss justice couldn't agree more and we are in the process of opening our campuses up i think we've been through a very very difficult time over the last 18 months and did proceed with caution regarding ensuring that our campuses are in fact taking every precaution associated with pandemic we are in a great place as a community uh associated with covic so we're the mask requirement for our teachers expires um actually this friday so that that regression comes back and then we'll be pushing out information very shortly regarding um the opportunities for parents to be engaged volunteers to be engaged the the truth of the matter is as we move forward there's a volume of work that needs to be done uh we need every individual possible to

102support and help in that work so um that work that work is coming forward um mrs rosario i'm confused dr moore what work has to be done to allow parents to visit their schools and celebrate during awards and celebrations so it's a celebration an award i don't know why that's an activity um in which we not currently going to so i'd have to see why that wasn't allowed i i can't give you a good answer for that because quite honestly um that that was never the intent so if you're getting an award i i've seen that on social media i have seen that while i'm in schools just being honest with what i have seen so that there's not a a good explanation for that that i can give you uh what we're rolling out

103is opening the schools back up in terms of the volunteering uh connecting with your students it's been a long time since since parents have been out as well as everyone else we do still proceed with caution because there's yet another anticipated spike but at the same time uh while we have it in a place that is good we want to maximize every opportunity to provide access to our public education system because we do know that the number one and i know that you agree the number one success for students is parent involvement i have two dollars who can agree with that yes if we don't open up our schools uh i don't i don't understand what the process would be to do that or how long this process would be but it would be incumbent

104upon us to make sure that our parents get involved agreed thank you all right so the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda pardon me so move dr jones a second oh second all in favor aye aye aye i'm sorry all right the um there were there was one item pulled from the consent agenda 13a which was discussed the next item are the is is what is on the agenda for action and there are the first item on the agenda is item 14b and that item is 13b it's 13b correct that items is is the request i would like to make a motion to request to approve a two percent salary adjustment for the superintendent for the 2021-22 school year this adjustment is

105equivalent to the two percent increase provided to administrators for the 2021-22 school year um i'd like to make that motion is there a second are you opening oh god second right discussion discussion me you want me to yes go ahead i'm sorry um i have a couple of a few questions actually um i think i want to start with mrs diagram please mrs diogresto what is the definition of a contract yes ma'am in general terms a contract is an agreement between two parties for something to be accomplished for a certain time period and for a certain price um is it legally binding generally yes i'm a lawyer i always had generally yes some contracts aren't binding generally yes when a contract is created between lawyers is it legally binding generally yes um what are the

106implications of violating a contract or going against what is written in a particular contract some contracts will contain a specific penalties for violation remedies for violation some contracts will not if there are specific provisions in the contract then those would apply if there are not specific penalties in a contract then typical contract law says you prove up your damages whatever your damages are is what you would be paid if a claim is filed okay um and what kind of union or other contractual any other contractual concerns might there be a precedent sent if a particular contract is ignored overlooked or violated you said union a union contract union contract a work contract a consulting contract any contract that is written okay um so it's gonna depend upon the contract we'll take the collective bargaining agreement

107since you mentioned that as a specific example um if a collective bargaining agreement uh provision is ignored let's say just ignored by the parties the the one or one of the other parties to that collective bargaining agreement could uh file a grievance with regard to that um violation or that ignoring of a requirement if if someone does not file a claim or or move to enforce the contract it's possible for that new behavior to be considered a past practice that hasn't been challenged and so just simply by acquiescence to that sometimes a collective bargain agreement can be changed um i'm sure there'd be litigation over that if there were a consulting agreement and um one or both parties violated the contract typically there are some provisions in a consulting agreement which say ignoring a provision

108or failing to enforce a particular provision isn't isn't necessarily a waiver and even if you ignore a provision for a year you can still move forward to enforce it once you figure out okay now i'm going to enforce my contract right so it really depends upon the language in the contract so i'm sorry i can't be more specific but it depends a little about the type of contract it is no that's okay you've provided okay you've provided some information thank you um dr moore i have a few questions for you sir um with this recommendation is this something that came from you through the chair no is this something that would uh what that you would be interested in opening up your contract for renegotiation through the chair not at this point um would you

109ever recommend to this board to ignore a written contract in order to increase salary or would you wait until the contract is up and then negotiate through the general i don't think that's the intent of the item that would probably be a better question for the the maker of the item no i'm asking you as the ceo would you ever recommend for the board not in relation to this and just in general would you ever recommend for the board to consider a a raisin salary when there is already a written contract in place for a particular person or entity or group or organization through the chair i think i have yes i think i would if it was warranted based on the work that was being done you would take the necessary steps to make

110it legal in binding but to make the recommendation based on the body the work that's been done absolutely but that legal and binding would necessitate a renegotiation of the contract there wouldn't be a violation of the current written code correct so let me let me just be blunt i i'm i'm not asking to renegotiate a a contract i think the conversation at the last uh workshop uh was to provide a two percent uh adjustment to my salary which would be appreciated absolutely college is expensive but not negotiate or modify any other parameters within my contract not to extend as i said during the workshop two weeks ago uh i'm not asking for an extension i'm not asking for additional time i'm not asking to modify any of the parameters uh in the contract i haven't

111spoken any board members about hey let's let's get me a raise or renegotiate that that hasn't been my intent uh it was discussed at a workshop i was asked to bring the item under mr barefoot's name so there lies the the intent and there is the item no no i appreciate that i just want to make it clear because i've heard um from many people in in the community who are assuming that this is coming from you so i want to make it clear that it was not coming from you and that you are not interested in renegotiating your contract or at least that was never the intent of the item so i appreciate the clarification on that i understand the the parameters of my contract and working within those particular parameters if there was

112an opportunity to say do you want to renegotiate the co do renegotiate the contract um that would take time and consideration for me that would be two different parties entering into negotiations to determine um that confines of the responsibilities of of work i don't see this two percent as that at all i'm not proffering any modifications or changes um to my contract so in your contract on page seven there is a letter d and it states that part of the requirements for your work is to receive a chief executive officer leadership development program certificate are you aware of what that certificate is have you received that certificate or is that in progress through the chair that was in progress that was not offered during my first year during the pandemic so as i went to

113begin that that initiative completely didn't happen so they had they're just now starting that back up okay so there is um i encourage board members to read this because this section actually states that the superintendent shall participate in and receive this particular certification pursuant to section 1001.47 florida statutes and when i went to that statute it's very specific that statute speaks to elected superintendents not hired superintendents so that's something that i found pretty contradictory to his contract it's really technically not supposed to be for you but it's written in your contract so assumingly you're going to get the program certificate as soon as that opens up so i don't understand how that would work but um then the contract also talks about two phases it says that upon completion of both phases that you're supposed

114to do in here i only see phase one which is the certificate program but it reads upon successful completion of both phases the superintendent shall be compensated in accordance with this section 1001.475b florida statutes where he shall be paid a salary incentive of not less than three thousand dollars nor more than seventy five hundred based upon his performance evaluation so what are these phases i know what one is what is facebook one is relatively straightforward uh the second phase is an extensive amount of work you actually submit a project project it is ultimately evaluated and then you receive compensation based on that evaluation so mr bass was a elected superintendent he might be able to give you a little bit more insight on that which i had no intention of of doing that is that

115phase part of that certificate program or is that phase something else that is not written in your contract that is this a additional phase that you you could choose to do for compensation within the certification program right through the chair yes dr moore is correct that is solely optional for the the superintendent to do um it is extensive it took me roughly 18 months to get it completed and you do get a monetary bonus each year based on what you score i believe the maximum is potentially seven thousand dollars um you know so so being an elected superintendent uh not having any you know being at the mercy of the state as to your salary increases it is something that i jumped in and did but it was solely optional okay thank you so that

116kind of clarifies a little bit as to this certification program though it was negotiated in your contract it really was intended for elected superintendents so that that kind of makes sense um the superintendent's base salary according to his contract says that he shall receive an annual salary of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars from december twentieth through june thirtieth twenty twenty one beginning with the fiscal year july 1st 2021 to june 30th 2022 so we are now entering or we are in this fiscal year and each subsequent fiscal year thereafter if the superintendent receives an overall performance rating of satisfactory or greater on the evaluation described in paragraph seven herein then he shall receive for that first fiscal year the same percentage wage increase if any on the same basis granted to the other 12

117administrators of the district so dr moore i've told him this a million times i wholeheartedly support the superintendent wholeheartedly believe that that he is the man for the job to change this district he knows that this is not personal but i cannot support this it is in violation of his contract his contract very clearly states that after this year in 2022 he is then with a satisfactory performance then shall he receive a fiscal year uh i'm sorry a percentage wage which would be that two percent equivalent to the other district administrators i just think that we are heading down the wrong path of thinking that it is okay to violate the law the legal letter of the law by ignoring executive orders by ignoring ignoring department of health regulations by ignoring i'm sorry emergency orders

118by ignoring uh department of education uh mandates um and now by ignoring a written contract um again nothing personal dr moore but i i i can't i don't know that why we keep doing this we have contracts we are setting a we would be setting a terrible precedence if we move forward with doing this what's to say that some other person that we have or group entity um that we have a contract with would just say so what i'll just ignore it i'll do what i want teachers in our classroom we're setting a precedence to say i could teach whatever i want so what if there's a written code or written rule or a written policy or in anything we are supposed to be above reproach we have a written contract that we should honor

119we are not talking about giving a performance bonus or you know a one-time bonus this is a what is put on the um agenda is a salary increase and that salary increase is not supposed to be now it is supposed to be in 2022. so i will end my comments there dr jones um dr moore your first year here i know you started in december of 19 but then you were on your own december i'm sorry january of 2020. um was there an evaluation done at the end of that year through the chair the end of last school year um there was not the previous school year it was just an update so they as the contract listed and that was something that i put into place just to begin to create the actual process

120the first evaluation was the end of this year which was a for my first full year okay i'm sorry and board members provided feedback okay but it wasn't considered the same kind of evaluation as now um as far as that certification um i'm not sure if mr bass was up there at the time but i know they'll be even though you're not elected it would be a good one we used to host that in gainesville fhsa all the superintendents would come and so forth so mr gresa just to get input from you on the timeline there as far as um obviously satisfactory 4.3 out of 5 not an issue so any ques um anything that you want to respond to here that ms rosario brought up for clarification um the i think the the overarching

121legal issue is whether the school board can increase the superintendent's compensation as set forth in in this agreement and a contract is an agreement between two parties and if the two parties agree then the compensation can be increased um i i think once in my career i and it had to do with a collective bargaining agreement a school board or superintendent offered an increase as part of a collective bargaining agreement it was not to all the members of the collective bargaining agreement and they rejected it so i think yes can a party reject something like this absolutely but if two parties can agree to an increase in compensation then it's not illegal to do it thank you mrs sure so let me just state the way she put it so it's not a contract violation

122and if we do something like this correct i think that's what mrs rosario was saying it would violate the contract that we have with him if we decide to give him a and let me say it correctly uh two percent salary adjustment correct the the contract does not prohibit you from ever changing it during the term of the agreement if the parties can agree you you can revise the terms and conditions in the agreement um so it would not be a violation it would be a revision to the agreement okay and also um i guess this is for dr moore dr moore uh this is a two percent um adjustment that's being asked for what percentage adjustment did we just give all the administrators in the district i would say in april or may of

123this year we gave a two percent raise for all of last school year and then an additional two percent for this school year so over the course of the last seven months uh those administrators received a overall four percent increase okay and then how about our teachers union and our cwa uh the we entered into a very lucrative contract with both cwa as well as our teachers union a sliding scale for for cwa mr bass do you have that specific information so it is some of them received up to nine percent depending on where they started in their compensation uh some receive four and then two percent and then they reduce a half hour of work in in year three uh cwa also significantly was four and two and a half over two years okay

124and then um was was the two percent for our administrators that we did back in may um any sort of change in their um contract do we have to enter into a different contract or did it was just a salary adjustment it was a salary adjustments which was reflected in the salary handbook okay and seeing that we just went through a pandemic and your first year was quite a challenge i understand the concern about whether or not you know i as long as our attorney is telling me this isn't a violation and we've done this for every other employee in our district i i don't see why we can't do this for you if we've done it for everybody else in the district and it's not a violation of the contract well there's not not

125much else to say as we discussed in length this afternoon a 4.3 percent average score where three is satisfactory is about as good as it gets in the environment that you found yourself in back in january of last year um i i um i've had employment contracts they're revised all the time um sometimes even people give money back if it's under this under circumstances that are warranted but in your case as i think you heard uh from everybody through the the evaluations that each of us gave you and then the consolidated evaluation that that across the board you've done a very good job and as i've said publicly i applaud your energy your uh diligence being hired as a quote unquote reformer and then being asked to reform a district that all of a sudden

126was hit with a pandemic um was a challenge to to any any ceo in any business any place in this country and so um i certainly am in favor of this um two percent increase so with no further comments i'd like to call the question all in favor of the two percent increase signify by saying yes do we need a motion i made the motion oh sorry i didn't hear it go ahead i'm getting tired yes yes and yes three yes yes no all right motion carries three one all right now the next item and i have to make sure i do this correctly bear with me for a minute we're going to elevate your discussion item mrs rosayo for action and there's also uh what's being added here is is policy number 0169.1 entitled

127public participation portion at board meeting or paul excuse me at board meetings as was discussed at length this afternoon i would like to make a motion to to removal of policy 0169.1 from november 16th public hearing to action and i would like a second to that i'll check on that but i will provide some context if that's all right i was just saying we needed to provide context um we had a lengthy and productive conversation this afternoon about uh that policy in particular there are three other policies that are up to be considered at the november 16th meeting one surrounding workshops one surrounding meetings and one surrounding minutes to which there are edits but no change this particular policy uh underwent a number of suggested changes in discussing this further uh i think we all

128felt for various reasons that it was not necessary that um the objective here is to provide enough time to do the business of the board i think many members in the community while they supported it there were other members who felt that uh this somehow or another this there was some nefarious reason for doing this there was not the reason for doing it is to provide enough time for the board the minutes of the to do the business of the board as we'll discuss under discussion we may want to consider starting the meetings earlier but it make it makes no sense to [Music] have a separate session for non-agenda items and then and then start a business meeting and then have a discus citizen input on agenda items you're not going to take any more

129time there's still all those items wherever they might fall and that's why i recommend it and we discussed but each can speak for themselves that we just withdraw remove that policy and leave things the way they are so i would uh invite my colleagues to speak to that if they so choose mrs barenborg yes i think the timing on this was not good um i think with the the the vibe in the nation the vibe in the community we are here to listen to citizens and good bad and ugly we need to listen and i think a lot of people voice their opinion here in the last since this has been up um and really brought some really good points up you know about cameras and why they should be on and about you know

130people being able to speak to items that are not on our couple items i wrote down tonight because i do want to follow up on those and the only other way we're going to know that is if somebody emails us or calls us so i think it's important that we keep things as they were i think we have some good rules in place and just enforce them as the chair and i think we'll have very civil and good meetings with lots of dialogue that we need to hear dr jones any comments well we said a lot at the workshop today and i brought this up september 28th and it was a 5-0 vote to bring it to policy that evening and so obviously there was concern about the business of the board and that took

131a lot of discussion being in this district or this community for over 40 years um i can tell you that you know putting our students first is our priority and we want to continue to do that uh as far as the citizen input no one ever said that we were you violating the first amendment right you could still say what you wanted to say with consent and action and we do listen to everybody and we do get emails from everybody and we do get phone calls from everybody and there are different sides why aren't you getting the business of the board done why is this happening why are the same people saying this and saying that and all the things that we're dealing with so you know listening to parents for me as an educator

132was crucial it was essential when the school improvement teams began and school advisory council began long time ago a lot of principals were saying oh parents i'm thinking come on in i'll take the help it's what we need to do if we do it together now dealing with parents as administrator for 25 years you always didn't agree but you can disagree respectfully and i think that's the one thing that was brought up at one time i think in the september meeting i'll have to look back but um there's there's no intent about saying well you couldn't say that or you couldn't say that the items of consent and action that's where i want to hear things as far as we are voting on those through consent or we are voting on those through action those

133are key we have all of our supporting material material out there but the emails you send or the calls you make or or whatever you do to communicate with us publix or whatever it is that's what we need to hear now these other things we all know they've been out there and these platforms are out there and they're going to keep coming back so i just ask and we talk about this today mr barefoot again it's essential that we keep a focus of what we need to do as board members said this afternoon we've got a lot of work to do we you know we held our own during this pandemic um certainly have some things to do especially in math we've always said that but um but when the parents and the principals and

134the t everybody works together i mean i lived it i've seen it that's what it needs to be and and those who aren't speaking out they do exist they do exist um they can't get here because of work or they can't get here because of child care and so forth so again we're listening to both sides i never wanted to stomp on anyone for anything i've been listening for 40 some years and i'll continue to do so but you know decorum is important um the thing with the nsba and fsba i'm i'm sorry that happened our florida school board association wrote back quickly you know that's that's not what we're about uh ms messina who's the president used to be on the fhsaa board and i know her personally she called me that's not what

135we are about so i say you know that's fine chairman barefoot and the board talked about this today but let's do it together instead of confrontation let's do it together so that we can really see what the input is and where we can go uh what what miss meal brought up i wanted to say alleluia i have dealt with that as an executive director of secondary and as a principal we get our recommendations in we don't know if they're approved and it takes forever and forever and forever so yes i will follow up on that it's important but just know that everyone out there is saying come on let's put the business of the board listen to our citizens and keep moving forward in non confrontational ways because i do respect people who are speaking

136don't always agree but i do respect people and what they are saying and i take that to heart um when moms and dads and guardians and foster parents everybody out there we talked about our homeless students today come together to say you know what we can do this together we will be the literacy capital of the world we will continue to look at this we will move forward so you know i'm i'm fine with that mr barefoot as long as we move forward thank you mrs rosario um yeah i'm i'm certainly in favor of canceling pulling this um wait that's what we're you're pulling it right so many changes um and then of course as we discussed in november during our organizational meeting we will discuss then um possibly changing the meeting and starting it

137a little bit earlier which wouldn't be too too much earlier i would prefer that than what was proposed um earlier or what's in there now i certainly would propose would want us to keep things as is i'm not in a proponent of moving input that is not or that that does not pertain to our consent or action agenda items to the end of a meeting which is one of the reasons why i proposed it being at this pre-agenda meeting in the first place because i thought it would be the better of the two evils but essentially i would not want that as well i prefer everything to be together as it was this evening so if if i have to compromise on that we'll go a little bit earlier that would be fine all right

138here having heard from anybody i will call the question all in favor of the removal of policy 0169.1 from the november 16th public hearing all in favor aye aye aye nobody's opposed that carries 4-0 and and just this may or may not be relevant but i've sat on the board of a public high school in in vermont for the last nine years it's the second or third largest high school in vermont it's a public high school kids vermont is school choice kids come come from all over to go to this high school in vermont money follows the students so you could come from burlington to manchester and the money comes with you there was a a commencement address given this year and i was at the commencement obviously and i just like to read it

139because i think it's you can change some of the words perhaps but it builds a little bit on what doc jones just said academics are important the experiential education of athletics arts and service and leadership opportunities are important but it's the community the constant act of caring for and valuing every member of our extended school family that imprints those lessons on the hearts and minds of indian river county students state senator kisha rahm told the class of 2021 at commencement as we know well in vermont in freedom there is unity and in unity there is freedom it's getting there together that's the hard part but the part we're striving for i think that's telling because we've had a tough last few months around here and um i think that you know we all want to

140do the right thing but when there's disagreement maybe not in the end result but in the tactics or the path to get there that's the hard part but that's the part that's worth striving for as this quote says so i thought it was uh certainly relevant to the environment that we've been so kudos to miss rahm who's a very interesting person by the way and as you know vermont is an interesting state given uh the politics so we now uh it's your turn mrs rosario you have requested uh your discussion i'd be moved to action so the the floor is yours thank you yeah i wanted to put this on um the agenda as a discussion item but then realize that if there is action to be taken we wouldn't be able to take it

141as a discussion item um i talked with dr moore about this um as well we're all aware of the letters that were put out there the initial letter from the nsba and then the follow-up letter from the fsba so not taking into consideration the most recent letter from the nsba apologizing for their errors but only to put this on the record or at least for us to discuss with regards to the membership that we hold with the ffba as members of the fsba i think it would be really really important for us to stand together with the leadership of the fsba and support andrea messina and her work and the leadership that they have provided in responding against the nsba when they did it was very quick it was very swift it was straight to

142the point it was supportive of local law enforcement it was supportive of first amendment rights it was supportive of parents concerned citizens speaking at board meetings um it was supportive of lively respectful and civil discourse it was supportive of open meetings laws and so on and so forth so i just would like to get your feedback on what you all think about us creating a letter maybe from from our board chair on behalf of the entire board i don't know if dr moore i think he he probably wants this to be a board thing um but for us to just send a letter of saying thank you for your leadership we support the fsba as members you need to hear from our voice because when she speaks she speaks on behalf of her members and

143we are her members and when i say she i mean andrea messina but i collectively i mean the entire the entirety of the organization um and i have spoken on many occasions i don't believe in every single tenant and belief of the fsba but on this particular item i think that they were they were spot on i spoke with andrea i gave her my personal um commendation for it but i think as a board it would be it would be the right thing to do for us you know the one thing just to add to what you said when the letter came out i didn't realize it maybe i should have that before this letter fsba was not supportive of the stand taken by the national by the nsba by withholding its dues that's right

144and a number of districts in the state of florida i don't remember which ones have also withheld their dues because they were not in agreement with the national school board association that is correct so this wasn't just triggered by you know this letter that was recently sent to the biden administration this this has been an issue for our association for a while yes and they've been withholding their dues i think since july um so you're you're absolutely right and why they have been doing this since july there might be other things going on but we pay dues to fsba so we have to show support for the decisions that they are making in this area other comments dr jones some of you probably saw the email she sent yesterday and it basically just stated some

145of the things miss rosario just stated but she said we know that we cannot disregard or fail to address shortcomings this is an opportunity for organization self-reflection because there's internal things going on and so forth but ensuring that equity goals strategies and tactics committed to the work and accountability for that work are clearly articulated in our strategic plan partnering partnering with experts who specialize in diversity equity inclusion very very important and executive committee training so i think they're kind of taking a look within and trying to even improve there but i do support a letter regarding um the standard they took yeah the letter that your the email that you're reading from is not in regard to this that's a totally different thing but i think she said some important things yeah that's that that's

146about their organization and their that has nothing to do with what i'm requesting for us to be on the same page with mrs barron yeah uh are you referring is anybody referring to the email about um 1022 where she talks about the follow-up letter from the nsba yes we mentioned that okay because um i agree with you i think that we need to stand for what's right and we need to send a letter to our organization thanking them for standing up for what was right i agree with that as well so the question is how do we i would ask dr dr moore and or mrs diagresta and maybe you could work with if we approve the letter assuming we can do this mr d agresto maybe work with mrs rosario to draft a letter

147that circulated and we can i could we can approve it you know respond back by email does that is that work from a legal standpoint or whether that's even the right choice of words um yes i'm i'm happy to work with mrs rosario in coming up with a letter and uh just to be clear you want it to be circulated to all school board members and within 48 hours it would be signed and sent off who would sign on behalf of the board i consider i can sign but it should be clear this is i'm only signing on behalf of the five of us not correct not this is right and we should probably if we could get that draft to dr schiff just so she knows perfect i know she's on vacation all right

148do i need to make a motion for that we've already got nobody doesn't but at least we've got consensus more than consensus okay um i make a motion for this board to write a letter of support to the florida school boards association with regard to their october 11th 2021 letter sent to the national school boards association all in favor aye aye motion carries four or nothing thank you all right now we gotta get back in the are we i don't want to miss anything do we go now to member matters discussion you added an item to this oh that's right excuse me you're right the item that was added for discussion is part of when we and just voted to withdraw the policy on public at board meetings was to discuss the possibility and it

149would come up for a vote at the organizational meeting on november 16th to begin that meeting at 5 30 and allow and it gives us an extra half an hour we would but allow the citizen input form not to have to be presented before the meeting started but allow it to be presented up to 545 times specific for those working families that maybe don't get off work till five o'clock it would give them time to get here fill out a form and get it to the board secretary before we actually begin after presentations the more formal part not that that's not informal but the more formal part of the meeting that was the discussion so if i framed that correctly or didn't feel free to your job yeah a thought occurred to me between this

150afternoon's discussion and tonight um i think there are other boards that do this i'm not quite sure i remember a discussion i think with andrea messina about this um that some people are allowed to submit the citizen input forms ahead of time and that way they don't have to rush to get here on time and that way if they're here when they're called then they can speak if they're not here when they're called they cannot would that caught i see your eyes over there would that cause an issue or would that mess this up with the order that people are speaking in mrs esplan well during so what if they did it up to the day before or they can come to the board meeting and submit it in person would that work if thank

151you oh thank you so um let me like let me answer an answer okay thank you um sorry it would be a policy changer it would require a policy change because which is absolutely fine um having the opportunity to submit the forms earlier is a very common practice there's no reason to do that and typically as you just mentioned that's what i'm familiar with leading up to the day in which the board meeting is taking place you can submit a form online you just simply fill it out and you print it it's time stamp from the time that it comes in we did something similar during the pandemic that takes care of that and then people who come on the day of have up until 5 45 to submit that form so it does require

152a policy change but procedurally it's nothing that we can't handle i just think that if we're looking at moving the time up to be fair to working parents i agree with all of that okay so i think that we need to put that then as a um as an action item an action item and we can't do that now but we can do that in the future we can add it as an action item for the next board meeting a november meeting right which is the november organizational meeting right would you repeat that yeah um i think to offer an option of uh submitting a citizen input form electronically ahead of time as well as come to the board meeting and be able to do it so how far ahead can you submit through the

153chair they could they could submit tomorrow if if we did just just prior to the board meeting so that the link would be active and be live it's relatively straightforward um you know we would have it staff would have it and make it available you know might i suggest that perhaps between uh now and then you you or one of one of your staff could draft what that policy looks like you can review it with each of us on our individual meetings to get feedback so that one it is put on the agenda on the 16th it's in a sort of a final form that's we can tweak it then but basically it's pretty much done we'll be briefing it uh with thursday and monday so all right i'm still hoping that you all will

154change your mind from 5 30 to 5 45. um we have time still until that organ reorganizational meeting because sometimes we don't have a lot of um presentations today we had two lengthy presentations some presentations are just one and then it goes quickly so something to consider between now and then okay we are in discussion now we're not in action so it's okay for us to just have that discussion that would be i i would fully support that um i would support the 530 as well uh better than to do what we were doing before um but my preference would be 5 45. so dr moore can you can you when you speak with dr schiff update her on this discussion and get her input as well so that she's not doesn't feel left out

155absolutely so if someone submits a week ahead of time and they're not here if we start at 5 30 if they're here before we finish citizen input they could speak correct that would be i think ultimately up to the chair my previous district they called the names in the order in which they were received if someone did show up during the at the end they would the chair would always go back and say has you know jackie rosario showed up as doc jones showed up to give him that opportunity uh at the end of the public hearing whenever that would would end we've done that in the past i mean once in a while people weren't here they were out in the other room and maybe didn't hear their name called so i think i

156think if people are going to make the effort to come we should make the effort to accommodate them it's absolutely it's pretty simple all right good discussion now i think we can go to board member matters doc jones how would you like to begin you get to kick off this section um thank you to mr fagan and the high tech committee for continuing their um research on best plans for not only our teachers administrators support staff and our retired educators i think there's a lot of collaboration there and i thank you as ms emerson said earlier that school choice fair first of all it was a lot of fun we had a lot of information given to us from the schools our after school programs were there our charters our bus transportation really really good

157information community partners i always update you on football games or don't go on well school cafeteria week um i was able to get to dodgertown and their theme was under the seat and some of the pictures we saw today from the video they were absolutely outstanding and just the kudos to our cafeteria staff for just doing the best they can each and every day for our students and healthy meals i appreciate that i was at the upward bound season opener with miss ida let she used to be a principal in our district and she was there dr moore was there eric seymour absolutely wonderful event where working with students on a regular basis academic achievement a lot of other things that were going on and i was really pleased to be there as i said

158earlier in the workshop i was at the united against poverty blessing for burgers burger blessings i'm sorry yes i was just i hadn't been there in a while and um that grocery store is absolutely wonderful the produce everything in there was just wonderful and learning more from miss mallett's in her department today on homeless again just brings us back to you know what our core beliefs are in helping every student in this district especially with our families who are struggling the textbook adoption i talked a little bit about and i think i've told you i'm on the wilson scholarship they are now a non-profit probably looking to partner with our school district to give the scholarships yearly for coach wilson and mr billy wilson who passed last year so that's all i have for now

159thank you uh mrs barenborg uh yeah i continue to listen to the planning and zoning meetings and we're still building um and next one is this thursday but um i think i'll be here yeah i had a meeting instead i also attended the treasure coast council of local governments meeting that meets once a month and um they have really great presentations that are coming forward and um i'm actually going to be the chair of that for the next year so um there were a couple of presentations that have not come forward that i think would be wonderful and any suggestions that you also have that i think our community members need to really look at together um one that comes to mind immediately is school bus issues and um that i'm sure is going to

160come up at the next meeting for sure then i also attended the central florida school board coalition meeting that virtual meeting i i couldn't tell who was on there for mars i think dr schiff was on there um but that was really good it was long it was like three hours long but um it was it was really interesting and informative the one thing though that they kept bringing up was that they are going to ask for the the lottery not it's not lottery money it is um sports gambling money uh they want that to go towards education and so that's going to be a platform that they're going to put forward uh this year in uh tallahassee crown jewel festival that was my first time attending that and i have listened to it from

161outside um when my kids were really little we would go and listen to band practice and then as soon as the band would stop playing we'd roll up the windows real quick for other reasons but um yeah the kids get kind of yelled at sometimes i don't want the kids to hear that but it was amazing they're great it was um some of the bands were just phenomenal of course vero beach high school was just so good um i was wondering why sebastian wasn't there but i know now i know now because they were at a wonderful um festival competition up in yeah where was that gainesville or somewhere i thought orlando orlando bands of america yeah and so crown jewel was phenomenal um big burger blessing thank you for the invite um it was

162really good to be back out at up and what they're doing there what's impressive now are all the different agencies that are involved and what's happening instead of everybody stepping on each other's toes i think our community is starting to work together more on helping people without everybody trying to help the same people but trying to get the dollars to help everybody so i think that's wonderful and then the united way virtual breakfast meeting was very entertaining congratulations dr moore on getting the richardson award it was very cool it was very entertaining with all the jeffs on there but what was interesting the presentation that they did at the beginning made me call you up i think i texted you during it because you were on there and i was texting you and said oh

163my goodness this goes right with what we were trying to promote and okay for me to talk about yeah okay so um they brought up intergenerational parks and how different communities are taking parks and they're making them so that there are things there for adults things are for kids they're taking more trying to make more green space for a community to come together which lord knows we could use and um i thought oh the property right across from vero beach high school of course is something that we've been kind of talking about and you've been showing us plans on at what point is that going to start rolling out for people to kind of look at what's happening and and proposed to the chair you're talking about the the property across from vero beach so

164right now we're we're vetting uh concept right now a number of community interviews uh to ensure that the level of giving would support what we have in store for the community as well as those particular ideas uh are they the right ideas so right now we're in a process of getting information back from the community regarding those particular initiatives we're doing that over the course of the next three weeks that presentation will come to the board in probably december and that would be our soft launch if we were able to get the validation this is a concept the initiatives that we're planning are in fact something that could be supported through giving and that would be the opportunity for us to sell or soft launch these are the this is the programming these are the

165ideas um and begin a a campaign of the course of the next year or two or even hopefully quicker uh to bring to life everything that we're dreaming up so um with that being said then the united way along with you know different agencies and county um commission and city council and things like that would they be included then on your next step of how to promote this and talk about it so through the chair we've already met with a number of those organizations in which you just met in terms of opportunities to align our support so one of the the things that we're beginning to get grain a great deal of traction is what you just referenced partnership when you see each of the the local law enforcement uh enforcement organizations being here tonight

166uh the acknowledgement the united way last week we are gaining traction uh and a high level of respect for the work that we do and the partnership that we provide uh so you're going to see a number of initiatives uh interwoven across a number of the organizations across our community but united way isn't one that you've already discussed with yes i have oh you have okay i thought you texted me said you hadn't yet okay all right and i was just excited to see what they were promoting with all these other communities and i thought oh wait till you see what we hope to do oh yeah thank you you know i just add one more thing to that sorry i was told i had to mention another thing which is the um golf tournament

167this this saturday we need players anybody knows any golfers that want to sign up for a wonderful tournament tons of prizes they're sitting in my office right now and um the hole-in-one prizes are amazing ten thousand dollars a car or something and that's 110 at sandridge this saturday includes a barbecue lunch we upgraded everything so please get the word out we need golfers badly thank you sorry you know i just add one more point to this discussion around the gray's fields i was talking i was getting updated by miss emerson earlier she's got 42 interviews scheduled i was talking to ray oglethorpe earlier and he's on deck for tomorrow and she had a couple today and i've talked to some of the same people that are going to be formally interviewed by this group and

168i think that i've not heard anybody that doesn't think this is a great idea and of course ideas are a dime a dozen it's when you start paying for the ideas that the rubber meets the road so but i'm very encouraged uh more importantly uh miss emerson who's put in a lot of time and effort on this initiative was really excited tonight because no one had said no everyone was delighted to give their two cents an input so we'll see where that goes i'd also like to thank mr marsh over there who's who's humble michael marsh um i thoroughly enjoyed being over at your shindig the other afternoon i think that's got to be an annual happening because if you're there long enough you see everybody but it was well done and you know what

169you might do is start a raffle and over and under raffles how many turkeys you actually can give away thanksgiving with the winner getting a turkey so you know so i'll be happy to help um and the only other thing i would add is the mpo meet the metropolitan planning organizations has a big meeting tomorrow the last couple have gotten cancelled or they're they were over there was a big one a strategy session over at the inter intergenerational a couple of weeks ago ig center which i did not attend but i was talking to joe flescher about it but tomorrow will be an interesting meeting again they're still talking about the roundabout at 66 and 5 10 and some things never go away so that that's really my report on any of the committees um

170sure i think you skipped right over me um we skipped a meeting so i didn't get to share with you all that on tuesday october 5th i was invited to read to children at the douglas head start school in wabaso and it was so sweet i love opportunities to do that i also attended the district's community day which was presented earlier and at the ig center and i was so thoroughly impressed i really was i was also impressed that charter schools were invited to attend as well as part of this district's choice so that was lovely to see um then the night after i attended the national night out with the sheriff's office also at the ig center i just want to say that you know the work that they're doing there is really really

171phenomenal and the outreach is really the awareness is really one that i have to commend so i'm glad that i went to that they had a lot of activities there was one in particular which is fairly new it's a new initiative to have a truck that you walk through as a parent without your child and you have a piece of paper and what i thought was interesting and probably really fitting for tonight being the vaping awareness proclamation that was read against youth vaping the youth vaping epidemic that you walk through as a parent and you kind of identify the different areas where it's actually set up like a bedroom and you walk through and you identify areas where paraphernalia would be hidden and then at the end you kind of talk with one of the

172deputies to kind of locate those areas so you got it right you didn't get it right and i actually missed a few which i thought that i got them all but it was really really interesting i thought it was a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness for parents with regard to substance abuse so for that at least that night i'm glad that i went um i'd like to i also had the um executive roundtable golf tournament on so i'm glad that mrs berenberg mentioned that prism tickets are now on sale i know those are going to go out super quick so if you are interested in this year's christmas winter celebration performance at sebastian river high school please buy your tickets right away if you have never you you all have your tickets have you ever

173been yeah oh oh this would be your first no no i was one of the first events i did when i first got here okay so i i highly suggest that um anyone uh who is interested get your tickets right away i had on here the national school lunch week because i just thought that it was such a wonderful opportunity to see the children's artwork that was posted i would love to just there were so many pictures i would love to suggest that maybe when we do something like this in the future um that these pictures um somehow get duplicated so that we can put them on our walls you know put them around the hall i know that our vestibule outside is kind of packed but we have a huge wall behind us it

174would be wonderful or even in the back on the sides to put up children's artwork in here these walls are so bare and our kids have such incredible um projects that they're doing in the school so maybe we can talk about things like that or you know utilize this room to celebrate our children in a different way but other than that i think that's it oh with the with the field across from vero beach high school when these plans come to us my only request is that we absolutely talk about inclusive playgrounds or inclusive springs ensure that that is a part of whatever happens on that field because that's just it's just critical it's needed ms emerson and miss clement laura moss and i met a couple months ago just to begin that what it

175will look like and they gave us some very good examples of some in other counties that were just doing a great job you know in that regard one of the local one of the johns island there's the foundation and the service league one of those two organizations is very interested in taking responsibility for funding that particular either through a grant or helping solicit specific donations from people not through the normal channels but individually so that's fantastic all right that that concludes members matters uh dr moore uh no no real presentation but i want to thank the board proper for your uh additional compensation this truly is appreciated on behalf of my wife and myself uh truly truly valued um coming to indian river county has been a a challenge a challenging opportunity um knew it

176would be challenging coming in but because of the pandemic significantly more challenging but as i sit back and i reflect on today um i think it was a great day of problem solving uh one of the things that we're working on uh for my senior staff and cabinet level is really to empower our senior leaders so to see the number of senior leaders that were presented today uh to the board what was so encouraging to me whether it was caster foley um miss mallets uh tracy ms emerson being acknowledged mr carver uh i think that's the full-time pastor foley christofoli we just call her sorry beth really is is by design and the more that we can empower um those leaders more as a system uh we will be effective so did you see that

177distributive leadership across the organization the level of ownership uh that's the that's the real success that's the real um reason the district is finding its success through these challenging times and i look at the leaders that we have in this building and leaders that we have and our school sites just continuing to grow and expect nothing but great things as we continue to move forward thank you all right that concludes the meeting meeting adjourned at 8 39. thank you everybody you