School Board Business Meeting 6 p.m. 11-16-21

0016 p.m and this is our business meeting for the school district of indian river county i'd like to call this meeting to order at six o'clock all right the first item that we have board members before i call that first order item which is the adoption of the orders of the day i'm going to make an announcement about two changes i'd like to do one is that we do not have the pledge of allegiance on this agenda because we already did it earlier however i'd like to add a pledge of allegiance especially in honor of veterans day this past week the other item that i'd like to um add as part of our business meeting is after all of the presentations if we take a short break to allow people that would like to leave

002to leave so that the board is not speaking over the top of all the movement of the motion if board members are okay with that all right thank you i appreciate that no no opportunity to vote on that okay so i'm gonna ask for the adopt the orders of the day are there any board items board members wish to move from consent to action all right seeing none then i'm going to call for a motion could i get a motion to make a motion thank you mr rosario second dr jones for the second all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed a cat passes 5-0 all right i would like to uh recognize dr moore for a series of presentations um before we do that though we're going to do the pledge of allegiance

003thank you we all stand i'd like to ask um because it is uh one of our proclamations tonight is for suzanne degresta who is our attorney who has served us faithfully and is going to be retiring to lead us in the pledge thank you for that thank you all right board members are there any items board members wish to move from consent agenda we did that thank you all right number one we're going to do uh our presentations dr moore would you like to uh announce their presentation absolutely we will start uh with high impact grants through the ed foundation and our public information officer miss maddox will present that item hi good evening everyone thank you for being here tonight we have a full house our first presentation is our schools who receive the

004high impact grants from the education foundation and i know we have mr herron here along with some other members of the board but i'm going to call miss cindy emerson up to go ahead and introduce them and tell you a little bit more about these grants mrs emerson she's writing a grant it's miss emerson in the room we had her ear she was just she was here earlier she was just here she was carrying a sign there she is we are incredibly fortunate to have such strong partnerships throughout school district of indian river county including the education foundation at this time i would like to bring up doug herron executive director along with their board to present the high impact grant presentations for this year wait for the delay [Laughter] stream [Laughter] [Applause] it's a

005bag of goodies good evening we are so excited to be here this evening to present our ch the checks for our 2021 2022 high impact grant recipients and i would really quickly like to recognize my board we couldn't do any of this or i couldn't do any of what i do for the school district without their support so our president bill douglas they're kind of lined up against the back wall there uh lee moore miss lee moore miss helen millman and mr ben kiel are with us this evening so thank you very much this is my second year with the high impact grants program and i purposely when i begin as the executive director at the education foundation i purposely involved the school district more in the process invited ms emerson to participate in the

006in the selection process with us because my goal was to ensure that we were awarding grants for projects that were going to fit into the school district strategic plan that was going to help the school district move forward in the direction that they needed to go and i think cindy we've done that i think we even got a little bit better at that this year so i'm really excited we are awarding 11 grants this year slightly less money if you're keeping track of that but more schools and i'm also excited because for the first year that i'm aware of one of our charter schools participated and received a grant so i'm going to start with the schools and i will let you know the schools and the recipient the author of the grant and the

007in the title of their project and the amount of the award that's the most important part we start with gifford middle school daniel greenwood the band director wrote a grant application for a project entitled fundamental transfers connecting academic dots with drum lines and if you want to see how music and the arts can be connected to academics i suggest you have a conversation with daniel i will i'm going to pause for for just a second because this is i think interesting uh we we start our grant process by the teacher submitting applications to us and sometimes when you read a written application i've been guilty of myself you don't include everything you need to include in there so and that's why we purposely have a second stage which is an interview and a presentation a

008face-to-face presentation well a zoom presentation in our time but the same thing so after we heard daniel's presentation we were like oh my gosh daniel if we hadn't heard you speak to us i'm not sure we would have approved the grant so one thing we did was could you please re-title it because it really is touching on academics and he he went back and he he went back and retitled his project name to something that was much more fitting it wasn't was accomplishing what he uh wanted to accomplish so congratulations daniel next we have indian river academy with amy it's amy de albora and her project title was limitless ingenuity building capacity and her grant award was for 9 219.39 congratulations amy and i got so excited with daniel i forgot to to let you

009know his grand award was eight thousand thirty nine dollars and ten cents next we have indian river charter high school leif mieras who wrote a grant project titled indian river charter high school garden project and kind of in a similar grain to daniels he he tied a gardening project to academics in a deep and meaningful way his award is for two thousand five hundred forty four dollars and fifty three cents next we have liberty magnet school with sherry st petrie grant project titled ivy drummond and her award was for 2 81.54 [Applause] from osceola magnet school we have janine jones her project title was think this through building thinking classrooms her award was for 8097 from rosewood magnet school we had miss julie carroll she couldn't be with us this evening but her principal adam

010faust is representing her her project was titled rosewood steam echo rangers innovative community advocates her award was for 5436.85 next we have a regular to the high impact grants process garrett rue from sebastian river high school his project was titled automotive electrical trainers 3.0 uh garrett's a three-peat uh performer with the high impact grants his award was for 6576 dollars from storm grove middle school miss melissa sleeper her project was entitled dive deep and soar high a steam enrichment project her award was for 4526.38 from vero beach elementary school miss caitlin o'neil wrote a proposal titled vero beach elementary student scientist helped save the indian river lagoon yes all [Music] and her right was for two thousand one hundred dollars so she's very efficient she's saving the lagoon and is not spending much money doing

011it we're looking forward to maybe seeing us add on to that next year from vero beach high school miss amber sentence wrote a proposal titled vbhs access transition program enterprise spirit shop yeah her grant award was for one thousand dollars [Applause] and last but not least from mobasso school mr christopher colstead wrote a grant proposal out of learning to live his award was for six thousand six hundred eight dollars now if you're a savant and we're adding those numbers up in your head you'll know that it was 57 29 and 17 cents now to the board i would recommend you schedule a time to visit the schools i did that last year and you'll see the grants in action the teachers really do put their heart the money is one thing that they put their

012heart and their soul into it so that's really what makes it effective so really when you think of it that way we're doing the easy part so congratulations to each of our grant recipients uh i really can't wait until next year and see some of the things you uh submit to us uh in the process next year so congratulations thank you okay before we before miss maddox organizes us to take a picture i think it would be great if we can get the the board for the ed foundation to come in and be a part of of this picture um as they come up i just want to thank doug and uh the board for fully aligning your support to our district strategic plan and that is powerful and this is an organization that understands

013the importance of public education and is working hard to support our district strategic plan and what you see here is a very specific initiative to fund the creative innovative things teachers are doing in our classrooms and it helps them bring to life wonderful things that are happening in our school so so thank you doug thank you board for all of your commitment and support for our school our school and our children thank [Applause] get together you possible [Laughter] [Music] i'll make sure you get it [Music] okay all right everyone one two and three one more somebody's dead good good thank you congratulations [Applause] and as they clear the room we will set up our next presentation and i think i've completely lost miss maddox but this is an opportunity for us yes now hold on

014one second okay all right so our next presentation it is a absolute honor and privilege for us to take pause and honor this year's principal and assistant principal of the year so to set this up miss maddox we'll we'll take it from here this year we asked our principals and our assistant principals to nominate and vote for the person that they thought deserved the title of principal and assistant principal of the year i'm very happy to say that our principal of the year is mr sean o'keefe and he's here with us tonight and our assistant principal of the year from oslo middle school is mr craig kinsley and he is also [Applause] so now we have a short video created of the day that we went out and we surprised them and we hope that

015you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it [Music] [Applause] so long overdue selected by your peers we couldn't be any prouder that shawn o'keefe is the school district of indian river county's principal of the year for [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this year your assistant principal mr kinsley has been identified as the school district of indian river county's assistant principal of the year for the entire school district uh give it up for him [Music] and i can tell you by the nominations that we receive that they are both very loved and appreciated by their peers so congratulations again so if we could have mr o'keefe come on up mckenzie come on up um i do want to acknowledge our outgoing principal of the year ms garcia who is in the room i don't

016want to put any pressure on either of you two gentlemen but when she came to the same ceremony last year she literally ran around the room cheering so i'd like i i guess not um i want to throw it out there see what would happen um but two absolutely outstanding gentlemen who are really advocates for children and so excited for them we're going to have the number of times throughout the year to celebrate the impact that you have on children but we'll just get one quick picture congratulations as i said the video long overdue congratulations i have to watch that video i want to stand behind this chair congratulations guys congratulations thank you so much tonight we have a very special charity in the house with us little birthday angels and angel peach are you

017here tonight come on up please and lynn kiefer so our district decided this year that we needed to revamp the casual for a cause calendar and go local so we took different recommendations from different schools and principles and leadership and selected organizations that were all near and dear to our hearts and little birthday angels was one of them and for casual for a cause uh last month we raised three thousand seven hundred and forty one dollars for little birthday angels we do give them a real check this is just for show and um would you ladies like to share a little bit about your organization lin's our board chairs okay thank you very much and i want to thank the board for everything that y'all do for us i want to first acknowledge miss steen

018virgin and miss mickett who we work with very closely you have two jewels in the crown in your district with those two ladies they love and care for these children so much and they you can just see their heart in everything that they do so i wanted to acknowledge them first and foremost keep those jewels but little birthday angels we give we celebrate homeless children's birthdays children that have been registered with the school district under the mckinney-vento act we get their names and we try to love on them on their birthdays they get a large duffel bag full of essential items as well as wish list items to make their birthday special and we have had children we serve indian river county schools we also serve several shelters here in the county and we have

019had 16 year old children tell their counselors that they've never had a birthday celebration until they got our bag we have had children break down in tears because they lost a family a mother or a family member and ended up being homeless and this gift they said now i know i'm loved and so that's what we are trying to do that's what little birthday angels does and our essential items include blankets and water bottles and socks and stuffed animals because they all love those little stuffed animals it includes a bible and a devotional it includes um what sneakers sneakers and an outfit and then a whole bunch of wish list items so we go out and we get their wish list and we try to fulfill those wishes so thank you again this is so

020helpful for our mission [Applause] hi baby thank you and thank you to our students teachers and staff members who donated for a casual day i'm sure everyone enjoyed that who was able to attend the superintendent's art gallery anyone in the room raise your hand if you were there it was probably my favorite art gallery of all years we had it at the center for the arts this year we are partners with them and they've supported us just immensely for the kids to have their arts on display at the center for the arts like they were real artists right alongside you know professional artists it was just amazing to see them light up so we have a short video that kind of covers the superintendent's art gallery and the 117 pieces of student artwork that were

021displayed and go ahead [Music] today we are at the superintendent's art gallery it's a prestigious show of all of the artwork from our students across indian river county this collaboration is with different schools within indian river county we have charter schools our traditional public schools virtual school students participating in this event we have approximately 120 pieces of art to showcase for our families and students today we'll be picking first place winners from each school and those pieces of artwork will be hung up in the district office we'll also have best in show for pre-k through fifth grade middle school best in show and then high school best in show in addition to those prestigious awards the superintendent will pick his top choice from those 120 pieces of artwork we also have the vero beach museum

022of art award that's new for us this year we are so excited to have this event at the vero beach museum of art we had so many students and families that have participated in this event in the past that we asked the museum if they would host this event and we are just beyond elated that they have invited us here we're really delighted to host this superintendent's art gallery what's important to realize when you're looking at a picasso or a matisse is that every artist was young at some point and someone gave them encouragement and and stimulated this idea that they could be an artist they could be a great artist so that's why this is so important what the school district is doing and we're happy to be a part of it tonight was

023a wonderful evening here at the vero beach museum of art an opportunity to come together and just enjoy the talents of the school district of indian river county it was a joy to have this come back having the opportunity to look at so much great talent and it really just highlights the quality of our teachers the quality of our students here in our school district absolutely wonderful evening art is intertwined in everything we do so it's really about 3d art 2d art drawing sculpture and bringing the students creativity out with every piece of art you can see a student's personality we want to thank all of our families and students for coming out all of the art teachers at our schools that help the students develop all these pieces of art and we look forward

024to hosting this event at the vera beach museum of art in partnership next year [Music] mrs perez are you here tonight mrs perez anywhere um i just want to acknowledge mrs perez and the work that she did for the superintendent's art gallery it is not easy to collect pictures and have all of them framed and to organize an event like this and i know that she had some help as well but if we can just give her a round of applause and the winning piece of artwork from each school will be displayed in our district office and we've already started hanging some up in the walls again we had some bare walls for a few months and it was it was pretty pretty sad but now we have color back in our hallways so it's

025nice uh dr moore i will turn the next presentation over to you all right this is one second mrs medics before you go i just want to say one thing i just want to make sure to give a shout out to the executive roundtable who provided sponsorship for this event that helped us give monetary awards helped frame the art help hang the art um helped support it being at the museum and i want to make sure we recognize them for that let's give them a round of applause too thank you dr chef all right the next is a very exciting item i will set it up for mr fagan board members upon my arrival we one of the first items that we had were principals that had perfect audits so on an annual basis each

026school is audited looking at their finances and unfortunately at that time there was only one school that had a perfect audit uh last year we once again had the opportunity you're throwing me off um to recognize the schools and we doubled it there were two schools that had perfect audits uh and this year we more than double that again we're up to five schools that had perfect audits from a principal's perspective and i know we have a number of principles sitting on this diocese that is no easy task to do an auditor's job is to find something so to produce perfect audits it is a direct reflection of your leadership your commitment being thorough in what you're doing being an absolute outstanding steward of the people's money to maximize performance for students so we wanted

027to take the time to acknowledge our five principles uh with perfect audits first uh miss finnegan from beachland elementary wait i don't have that information but you're going to come up and tell her name because she's the one who did all the work [Laughter] rachel tell us today bethany rice all right [Applause] and citrus elementary miss garcia perfect [Applause] you see what i'm talking about mr o'keefe see sebastian elementary ms hart come on up here uh repeating second year in a row vero beach elementary [Applause] yvette bracely yeah and from alternative education mr darielle brown come on up here ms judy clark so to the principals and the bookkeepers absolutely congratulations outstanding work and we look forward to having 22 principals up here next year yeah [Applause] thank you congratulations [Applause] and fun fact about

028miss yvette braceley she worked at vbe when i was a student at vbe she's aging backwards obviously so i just had to give her a little shout out our next uh oh it's your turn we have a very special proclamation tonight and this is for mr gresta and i'm not going to say much because i'll probably tear up but um our board members have put together a proclamation each whereas statement are their own words and um we would like to just dedicate this month to you and we appreciate you and we love you so dr moore i have the last statement but as as we set this up mr gresta who's been serving this school board and the community and children for we said 12 years now is made the bold and courageous and i'm

029quite jealous decision to retire um and we are so proud of the service and support that she's provided us so we are going to dedicate and approve this proclamation in honor of everything mr grasses has done and the board will read it as we move through so i'm not sure where we're starting okay um proclamation in honor of suzanne digresta november 2021 an appreciation for her service in our district i want you to note the date of start whereas since april 1st 2009 when she became school board attorney for the school district of indian river county suzanne degresta has served with humility grace exceptional knowledge and dedication and whereas at each school board meeting mrs degresta has remained professional kind and courteous while giving her legal opinion to board members and the superintendent and whereas

030suzanne diagresta has provided sound legal advice to the school district of indian river county for the past 12 years doing so in a professional and objective manner and whereas always being available willing to exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice on not only the law but on other considerations as well with a consistent spirit of tranquility and whereas upon her retirement from practicing law the school board of indian river county acknowledges mrs d gresta's lifetime of dedicated legal service and wishes her ongoing health happiness and joy in the years to come now therefore the school board of indian river county hereby proclaims november 2021 as suzanne degrester recognition month [Applause] all right board members it's not official yet and that is because i need to call for a motion so moved second third on

031that okay we have a third any discussion no i'll call for the vote all those in favor say aye aye i believe it's a 5-0 vote yes ma'am and adopted the 16th day of november 2021 on school board of indian river county thank you i would just like to take a picture because if you notice every time we do take a picture she kind of runs off and hides behind the screen so we're going to make her get in the picture thank you [Applause] and i'm sure mr gresa was very surprised about everything that has occurred tonight because in true christian maddox fashion i included her on the surprise um invitation about the proclamation and the reception that we had for her so yes you know i'm always just trying to keep you with the

032warm night that we we well mr because we didn't know who the chair and the vice chair was going to be so we're going to have to rewrite this proclamation have it signed and framed and when on the 29th we'll have it ready to hang in your living room for when you retire but thank you so much for what you've done this is a woman who picks up the phone no matter when you call will answer any question regardless of how thoughtful or ignorant it may be she will answer in the most professional way and you may not know this but she has been in direct service and fully committed to standing behind our teachers and our students since april 1st 2009 and she's been a true asset to our community so thank you very

033very very much [Applause] you're still up we have the video for them correct yes so our we've been very busy over the past couple of weeks we've gathered several people from the community to make a very important bus safety psa and i just want to say thank you to everyone who participated we have the sheriff's office sheriff flowers chief curry chief touchberry chief acosta debbie and keith from the sheriff's office who helps us with the recording we have our bus driver miss biggs are you here i saw you oh there you are right there and miss idlette is here as well our students who were also in the video a crossing guard the motorcycle unit with sergeant mckenzie as the leader and of course all the other officers who who helped out with this if

034you could please stand if you were in this video so you could get a little round of applause [Applause] so we hope that you enjoy this psa there's not that there's a few videos that we've made that give me goosebumps and i hope this one gives you goosebumps too it's pretty good school bus transportation plays a critical role in the education of our nation's students there's a direct link between the neighborhood and the classroom more than 25 million children nationwide ride the bus to school in indian river county we serve over seven thousand of those children each and every day working together in indian river county we will do everything possible to ensure our students arrive safely to the classroom and back home each day motorists should be alert and drive with caution around school

035zones and school buses they should also be alert when driving in places where kids are including schools bus stops school parking lots pay extra attention to lower speed limits in school zones and watch for and obey signals from the school crossing guards cars are required to stop when approaching a school bus with flashing red lights and their stop arms are extended motorists who passed a school bus that has stopped and has the stop sign activated commit a moving infraction that will result in a fine against the motorist possibly court costs and three points will be assessed against their license if you're stopped for passing a school bus on the right or left it's a 288 dollar fine plus court cost it could be up to one year or two years suspension on your driver's license

036if the highway is divided by a raised barrier or paved median at least five feet wide you do not have to stop if you're traveling in the opposite direction of the school bus but you should proceed with caution the wireless communications while driving law prohibits the use of wireless communications device in a handheld manner while driving in a designated school crossing a school zone or an active work area the penalty for failure to stop for a school bus is a minimum of one hundred dollars if a second offense is committed within five years that person's driver's license will be suspended for up to six months [Music] be sure that your children leave for the bus stop on time or a little bit early please have them arrive at least five minutes early for their bus

037because running after or in front of a bus is extremely dangerous walk young children to the bus stop or encourage children to walk in groups there is safety in numbers and groups are easier for drivers to see teach children good pedestrian behavior walk on the sidewalk and if there's no sidewalk available please stay out of the street once you're at the bus stop continue to take the necessary precautions children should wait in a safe place away from the road never sit on the roadway or occur while waiting for the bus please do not let your children play in the streets playing with balls or other toys that could roll into the street is very dangerous families should also go over safety tips with their children to make sure that they're safe going on and around

038school buses and school zones make sure your child knows their driver's name and their route number remind your child to keep their head hand and arms inside the bus to not cause a distraction for other drivers don't forget to wear your student id and use it on the bus the school and your family will always know where you are at a railroad crossing children must stop talking and remain silent so the bus driver can hear if a train is approaching the safety of our students and community members is our top priority [Music] indian river county everyone everyone everyone everyone everyone everyone must do our part to protect our children and their future [Music] so again that was a community effort and i knew i would forget a few people of sorry board members thank you

039so much for being in that video they didn't stand up they didn't stand up you were all you were all troopers i know um in our our sheriff's office and vero beach pd in particular uh chief curry where are you you are standing in the rain while we are videoing you yes he did a wonderful job and i know we had um sergeant mckenzie and his motorcycle unit like ride through the bus transportation area probably three times to get just the perfect shot and they all did a wonderful job and it was very hot very hot that day so if you were a part of this video if you would please come to the front so we could recognize you and take a picture with the board [Applause] and we also had miss mary from

040transportation she was driving our bus she wasn't in the video but she was a big help driving a bus for us [Applause] thank you all thank you and one more thing thank you to um miss ann bieber at stormgrove for allowing your campus to be used once again for one of our ideas and for the students that you gathered for us students where are you raise your hand you guys are wonderful wonderful actors and actresses thank you everyone for helping and dr moore that's the end of our all right but let's uh acknowledge uh our public information office and our team for putting that video together absolutely and just for the board's information that is just the creation of the video which we just finished we still have work to do in pushing that out

041to local media outlets putting together a true campaign to inform our entire community of the importance of maintaining bus safety and all areas of our community so this is just the beginning of the work we're still been charged to do thank you for making that happen so quickly i will say um i did mention this to fsba executive director andrea messina and she would like a copy of our psa to show possibly at the conference and also to demonstrate to the other school boards that this is a priority for us and that it should be a priority across the state to make people aware that what the law is and that the safety for children because we learned last meeting that i believe it was 2 million passes a year of stopped school buses are

042taking place in florida which is amazing to me that that's that's a sad figure um is there a blooper tape that's going to come out because i'm sure all right in our final i i know i know thank you and our final presentation this evening is our our quarter one update i will be very succinct board but typically during presentations we take the opportunity to acknowledge our community our partnerships and acknowledge the contributions we as a community have surrounding the school district of indian river county but i wanted to do something a little bit different tonight and will continue to bring these presentations to the board i want to talk about teaching and learning i want to talk about the core work of the school district the core work of this board and what we

043have been collectively charged as a system to do which is to transform the education in order to ensure we're allowing all students every single opportunity possible to them to transform and empower them uh to find a life of success so as you go through this presentation i will call you uh to the opening of schools and in years this is my 28th opening of schools this has been the most complex opening of schools that any district has experienced more so for the school district of indian river county during the pandemic we were aggressive in the work that we knew we had to do in order to ensure when we were opened we were ready to meet the needs of kids we understood the impact of what that pandemic was going to do now when you

044look at the outcomes from last school year you see the school district of indian river county excelled drastically in comparison to the other 66 districts most districts are surrounding districts improved in two four or three areas of the nine accountability areas produced by the state the school district of indian river county improved in eight of those nine areas but as we celebrate that success we understood that is in comparison to others we have a high bar set for ourselves uh and we want to be in the top 10 of all accountability areas within the school district within the state of florida we didn't push back our goals we didn't say well because of the pandemic we're going to reset our goals in the creation and development of our strategic plan we were pushing hard and

045we continued to push hard and as a result we implemented two new contracts with our bargaining units they were aggressive compensating them as the highest paid beginning teacher salary on the treasure coast one of the top five median salaries across the entire state of florida we understand the impact that teachers have and we are willing to compensate them for that impact that they have on the lives of children we implemented a new curriculum we implemented a new way of planning there was so much new that we did board members will uh recall we pushed out over 30 new initiatives so we knew that rate of change was going to be complex and we planned for it but we what we didn't plan for was a delta variant to come in and hit us in a

046way in which all other districts weren't hit there were two counties in the state of florida one of which is okeechobee the other is indian river county that was hit harder than most districts so when you put all of the things that were new and you put the impact of the delta variant we had schools that had 18 percent of their faculty and staff out at one particular time we had to close two different schools we exceeded the total number of cases in students and teachers all of last year within the first five weeks of the school year it was a complex hard challenging opening and i know board members reference it and acknowledge the efforts of those who stand in front of our children each and every single day and we need to continue

047to do so because when you fast forward and you look seven weeks past the spike of that delta variant you see quality instruction you see teachers who are fully committed you see classrooms where students are engaged you see hallways that are empty is it still stressful yes is there still work to be done absolutely uh but i can tell you as i said in the workshop earlier today in the seven to ten years that i've been doing transformational work uh never in my professional career have i seen the rate of change move so fast and that's a pretty big statement to say because typically you want you want to undersell and over deliver uh but i'm over i'm not underselling or overselling anything i'm seeing teachers fully committed and how they're planning lessons how they

048are aligning the lessons we are moving in a very very impressive way so what i would like to do today we've concluded the first quarter we're in the midst of the second quarter give a quick update not only to our board but ultimately our community and some of the things that we're doing as a school system and we're focusing in on four key areas enhanced continuous improvement systems so the school improvement plan that will be approved tonight or will be approved on the consent agenda that is a new way of doing work that is not just a plan that is a process we are one district in the county and the state of florida that created our own improvement model aligned to our needs our teachers and our students it's updated four times a year

049not the one time that the state of florida requires it to be open but each and every single nine weeks pushing our teachers and our administrators back to what's taking place in classrooms to reflect to evaluate to learn and change and improve the quality of instruction looking at the high impact grant grants that that's continuation and partnership that additional 60 000 that was approved tonight is a direct relationship that we have created to enhance the dollars we have to put in the hands of teachers uh mr under the leadership of mr fagan continuing to implement a um a what we call sam school allocation model which looks at ensuring that we are equitably providing resources to children across the district based on where students are not maintaining allocations the way they've always been but ensuring

050that that allocation model follows students and those resources are provided that way we spoke through the the audits and looking at equitable hiring practices we were able to improve our african-american hires from nine to 13 percent it was stuck at nine for about uh seven eight years we're now moving that number expand knowledge uh knowledge and skill looking at professional development we continue to look at keeping kids in classroom problem solving with our teachers to look at meaningful core instruction that is engaging that keeps students in classrooms looking at professional development systems that ensure teachers have the ability to create behavior management systems in their schools to continue to modify that instruction we looked at collaborative planning collaborative planning is a new process for us we continue to work with our teachers to create that

051process with the ultimate end goal of creating collaboration sites where teachers have the opportunities to work together provide instructional lessons come back together as educational professionals debrief what took place make those changes and modifications in real time not to wait to the end of the nine weeks to make a change in instruction not to wait until the assessment is taking place but to reflect with their colleagues to make changes on a daily basis to improve the quality of instruction provide data-driven support to students under the leadership of dr mcmahon we have created over 60 dashboards these are 60 dashboards that allow administrators and instructional coaches to drill down and make direct connections to what they're doing in classrooms on a daily basis to quickly identify the impact that they're having it allows us to triangulate

052data it allows us to look at a student who is in the lowest 25 or 35 percent and drill down to say is it an instructional problem or is it an attendance problem or is it a behavior problem or is the student missing school because he is homeless we're putting all of that data together and just not having it there to look at but to empower the conversation to get to the root cause as quickly as possible those are the things that you're seeing in our schools i'll jump to the focused outreach efforts continuing to build a sense of community and i think if you look at the last couple board meetings we are continuing to build that relationship i really can't go anywhere in our community without somebody saying i saw wilford hart last

053night i saw wilford hart yesterday uh really ensuring that we're building that right behind him dr cowie uh is everywhere building partnerships with parents engaging parents at school sites where we need that support uh really continuing to say now that we're open now that our schools are fully doors wide open how do we engage parents uh and keep them as close to their children to maximize that performance dr shafty is in the back she's leading our climate task force which is looking at how we are pulling our entire community together to fully understand what good instruction looks like for all students in our school system so board we have been busy over the last nine weeks it's been a very very tough start of start of school but i'm very very excited with what we

054see in schools and i'm very very excited about the commitment that our instructional staff and our administrators have in schools let's kind of take a snapshot a snapshot back to where we were at the opening of schools because in january i'm going to be bringing you our mid-year data and that is going to be an exciting time it's going to be a pivotal time in every school district we'll be halfway through the school year and we'll be able to make shifts and modifications to ensure every single child uh has the opportunity to be successful this is our opening of school data that we we took that snapshot i'm comparing our baseline to 1920 because it was the uninterrupted year because of the pandemic and we're comparing it to where we started the school year we're

055looking at i ready i ready that 32 in 1920 what that number means is is if the student took that test for the brand new grade level they just walked into that particular day they're taking these assessments from the first couple weeks of school they would have been proficient on that day it's not predicted to where they would be at the end of the school year but where they would be at the beginning of the school year and you compare that to quarter one you see there's a one point variance now at the end of last school year what you saw was a three percentage point decrease which was among the best in the state in terms of decreases for a school district we don't celebrate a decrease but you do acknowledge how the district

056navigated the pandemic so you're only seeing a one point decrease as you're starting this school that is a very very good sign achieve 3000 is what we use for our upper grade levels our secondary schools and you can see only a two point variance so in reading we're seeing less of an impact as a result of the pandemic where we are concerned still is math and it makes a lot of sense if you think about it you can't jump the rings of a ladder the rungs of a ladder you have to go each step math requires you to do that those students lost a great deal of time so we're still having to plug in the concepts that they've missed in previous because of the result of the pandemic so you're seeing a four percent

057reduction from where we were pre-pandemic our goal is to make that up by december uh and when you look back to where we were at the end of the pandemic last school year it was a six six or seven percentage point decrease so we're already seeing uh slight improvements then when you look at i ready uh in our the comparison of what we call the gap the gap is the uh our african-american students in comparison to our white students at night in 1920 it was a 22 percent gap in reading those are points versus a 20-point gap now not celebrating a 20-point gap by any means but we are acknowledging we're starting at a two percent or two percentage point decrease in comparison when you're looking at i-ready math you see um a once again

058a decrease of one percentage point in in that gap uh out of school suspensions you saw in 1920 in the first quarter 449 students were denied the opportunity to provide be provided instruction you basically got suspended or put out of school for doing pretty much anything i i don't know how it was but now you see uh only 48 students being suspended and we're continuing to problem solve this just this week and last mr bass is going with union leadership to each and every single secondary school to look at behavior to evaluate the improvement models that we have in place to identify best practices and ensure that we are working together and that we're pushing out those best practices across the entire system so all students have the opportunity to benefit from that parent workshops

059once again we didn't even track that in 1920 and we're up to 42 this year and we'll continue to inform our parents uh where we are in the school system uh more more data we have been very strategic in accessing our porthole our report our portal that is where parents have the opportunity to see how their children are doing on a daily basis a grades are being entered into our focus on a daily basis you don't have to wait for progress reports to be issued you don't have to wait to the end of the nine weeks you have access to how your children are doing each and every single day if you access the focus app and you can see the significant improvement that we've done in there uh representation of african-american certified teachers we

060reference that 9-13 we're excited about that opportunities for growth continuous emphasis on addressing the disruption of of coven now the instructional implications there's still work to be done we haven't had a covet case in our schools whether it be student or adult uh for going on two weeks all of our schools are in the green metrics that we used in our tiered mitigation plan that's a great sign and we're looking forward to continuing to monitor that and we'll be consider asking the board to consider pausing that mitigation plan pending uh the continued success of where we are as a community around the um the pandemic we've done a lot of work around ese looking at our african-american students uh ell learners we have a presentation at the request of a board member coming to the

061board soon to look at that quickly growing population and how we're addressing the needs for them and increased monitoring and problem solving at school sites around our discipline referrals and you're looking at our desegregation that we've been under as referenced this morning 53 years still a lot of work to do in that specific area continue expansion of communication uh the availability of extracurricular activities mr seymour has done outstanding work in looking at athletics and activities and access uh we're in the midst of a working project right now no miss beaver is not here anymore but we're looking at middle school programming and fees and how we ensure that a fee does not impede the ability of a student to participate matter of fact some of the policies that you're approving tonight it's now policy that

062a fee can't stand in the way of a child to have access or participation in those events this board is approving that as well continued professional development for african-american parents uh we need to problem solve and we're charging dr cowie along with our principals to continue um that work in a drastic drastic way then when you look at our our continued effort most of this i've spoke about but one of the things we do i'll walk six to seven schools a week so this isn't me just looking at data although i do do that too uh this is me walking with principals really looking at the quality of instruction and i have a a very clear point of reference from where instruction was pre-pandemic to where it was when school opened to where it is

063now continuing to maximize choice i think choice is an opportunity that we continue to leverage as a community one of the things we as a school system are working on is continuing to provide very clear and explicit direction and support and communication to our schools really working as a we are a district of schools and we're connected the district connects them together and we're sharing best practices that no one principal feels in isolation all by themselves in one particular school we are the network the district is the network that's pulling schools together to facilitate the conversation and share best practices in order to enhance some of my understanding of what's happening in the district i pull senior staff uh on a weekly basis in groups of three or four and we just sit and have

064open honest conversations what's going on at your level in the organization what's frustrating you where do we need to improve mr bass is the deputy superintendent replicates that same practice with principles element to elementary groups a middle school group in a high school group really we're really trying to understand where are our opportunities to improve so we don't have to wait six seven months to improve but we can improve in real time and then we as a cabin have the opportunity to come together and debrief and kind of cross-reference what we're hearing in order to ensure that we're being best by kids and you saw the transportation awareness video video that we put together so that's some of the things that we're working on now a very quick update as to the school district of

065indian river county you'll notice most of this presentation focused in around the efforts of continuous improvement the efforts of improving the quality of instruction uh and we are very much looking forward to bringing to this board in the community the impacts of that improvement of instruction and i can tell you once again this is a hard school year it is a hard school year because teachers are so used to receiving children at a certain academic level and because of the pandemic that's not where they're receiving those children they're very used to having students at a wide array of academic levels but because of the pandemic that separation is more than it's ever been it is hard complex complex work but i fully commend our principals our district staff uh in the work that we're doing

066uh we have really been intentional of pulling everything off of our principles and off our teachers to keep the main thing the main thing and i think at the end of the year you're going to see significant improvements in terms of what the school district is doing we are we are moving thank you madam chair that's your presentation uh thank you dr moore at this time we're going to move to citizen input board members we have eight speakers i'm going to remind the speakers of our guidelines regarding the amount of time and how to address the board we're going to give them a break to yeah um anyone that would like to leave at this time just so we don't have people leaving in the middle of people speaking no not you back all right

067thank you okay so our guidelines for regarding the amount of time an individual has to address the board first of all each statement made by a member of the public shall be limited to three minutes duration persons are 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 as indicated on the order of business and for up to three minutes to each action item during the action agenda and each board member discussion item as indicated on the order of business persons may only speak once about any given item the time period may be extended by the presiding officer and only the individual submitting a speaker's form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded

068to other speakers okay i will be calling each person individually we only have eight speakers so i'll just call one person at a time and i just wanted to remind the citizens that we welcome your input we appreciate you being here and we appreciate your comments please address all comments to the board chair not to individual board members thank you and with that we're going to call up our first speaker christy bell hi it's hard to go first after all the great presentations brings tears to your eyes sometimes watching um but i wanted to come tonight and speak to you all in person i normally email but sometimes it's i think important that you see that there is support here i wanted to come tonight to speak about my hope that all the children in

069our community will be able to find themselves represented both in real life in the district and also in the literature that they read family dynamics and relationships come in so many different forms we love our church family our community our work homes we also love one another in our classrooms and none of that takes away from families we make friends who may think differently than we do and this is all stuff that you know we all have different opinions that doesn't take away from our values to share opinions of others we see people of different cultures different belief systems different kinds of marriage or even many marriages and we can honor each individual family while still living our own values and lifestyle the same thing happens when learning about life through reading books whether seeing

070ourselves represented or seeing different lifestyles in books our values don't become those books our values are taught first at home sometimes books show representation of our own lives other times we learn about situations maybe we had never been previously aware of sometimes a book may show a child that they are not alone and maybe for the first time a book may give a child the words that they need to share with a parent or another trusted adult we can cultivate compassion and awareness when we learn new things through storytelling as a district you and others have worked very hard to meet the requirements of this desegregation order and continue to do so that part is to see children for children to see themselves represented that is such good work important work kids need to see

071themselves represented and while that is all court ordered we have to go a little bit further to continue to ensure people's rights liberties and representation you're one of those first lines defending the liberties for all of us it's a fine line for sure learning true history being exposed to the ideas and experience of others isn't something to fear as you're making decisions regarding instruction and curriculum i would implore you to remember that stories literature music and the arts is one of the greatest ways for children to learn and that shouldn't be censored or hidden just for comfort we can trust that our children are learning our values at home and also allow them the chance to broaden their knowledge thank you so much for your time and really all of the hard work that you

072do this is so hard thank you so much thank you miss bill we appreciate that mr ryan blade you are next hello everyone my name is ryan blade i'm the founder and owner of indian river news i'm just going to keep this brief and short so okay somewhere i was wondering why i am staying over there that is because i am live streaming the public input tonight i noticed a couple last thing which i understand the concerns you know making sure nobody does anything foolish and inappropriate per se on camera however i do find that it is important that the citizens of indiana county can see who is speaking during public input so given that even though my my website isn't even up yet i still have gone and done a few things while building

073my website and i felt it was important enough tonight for for me to be here so i would ask that the school board consider going and allowing the cameras to be back on these citizens again and if somebody does something inappropriate i have previously ran some equipment that has changed cameras i imagine you probably have something like that in that room i would suggest maybe talking your guy who runs that and having him or her go and you know have something in place that way i think it's probably i'm guessing probably hitting one or two buttons you can just change camera angles if somebody does do start doing something appropriate so that's that's just a suggestion i'd like to offer thank you thank you mr blade uh michael seymour marsh sorry michael c marsh is

074our next speaker dr moore is on my mind sorry good evening let's make things very clear it's one book that has been banned who gets to decide what books we're going after what's next mine comf to kill a mockingbird those that make the list i wonder why let's be very clear this is not the place to have these conversations we heard about all the implementations by our superintendent less than two years he inherited a mess if we care so much about all the kids tomorrow we can go to the esc parental council great meeting we can go thursday and see dr calley and go to our parent engagement council it's all about all of the kids right not one political party and through the chair it is a shame that any board member would have

075any political pandering and be part of any disgusting organization that doesn't speak for all the kids it's not about dems versus republicans even libertarians if we know what that is but it's about all the kids right next topic equity let's talk about that unfortunately naacp couldn't come tonight well at least not the president but we spent so much money for these equity commitment committee meetings and we turned in a report card of no bueno dr moore but sadly you know dr shafty does such great work and they turned in on page 22. check that report card out and make reference to the equity to the equity chair over there i'm not sure the exact title coordinator there we go and it just says her last name and then the last page has a facebook thumbs

076up my sixth grader could have did a better report card of no compliance to the school district and lastly because i like to leave on a positive note if we really care about all the children first off let's go back thank you to the school district vending river county we had a great event called the big burger blessing and i've seen many faces that are in here tonight on thanksgiving day we're going to feed over 800 people so let's forget the partisan nonsense okay i'm not giving any free shirts out tonight but if you want one i'll get you one beautiful children on the back interracial queens my two beautiful daughters so 800 meals two shelters we're gonna take care of we're gonna take care of the foster care kids all the sober living the

077homeless remember the homeless how many do we have here again guys 51 of them are in elementary schools come on it's about all the kids right isn't it oh silence of the lambs so anyways i believe that any of the board members as well as the superintendent will take your call any time of the day he even returns mine so i know he'll return yours so this is not the place to talk about books are we going to go after dr seuss remember what zeus did back in the day guys uncomfortable conversation huh i asked laura zork but unfortunately she's no longer here darn you know who else isn't here tonight tiffany justice darn maybe next time guys so in closing thank you very much for everyone who came out tonight and reading rainbow levar

078burton once said take a look it's in a book reading rainbow thank you mr marsh patricia a foley my name is patricia foley this is a resolution of indian river county republican executive committee calling on the school district of indian river county to uphold the right of taxpayers parents and citizens to speak before the school board during citizen input as specified on the meeting agenda without hindering public discussion as it relates to time and topic whereas the declaration of independence adopted on july 4 1776 by second continental congress affirms quote that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute

079new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness whereas the first amendment of the constitution of the united states of america ratified defect effective december 15 1791 decrees that quote congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or bridging or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people to peacefully assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances whereas the florida constitution states article 1 section 4 freedom of speech and press every person may speak write and publish sentiments on all subjects but shall be responsible for the abuse of that right no law shall be passed to restrain or

080abridge the liberty of speech or of the press in all criminal prosecutions and civil civil actions for defamation the truth may be given in evidence if the matter charged as deformed as deformatory is true and was published with good motives that party must be acquitted or exonerated whereas under florida statutes title 49 chapter 1014 parents bill of rights the school board is directly and indirectly infringing on the rights of parents by diminishing their opportunity to publicly address issues that are relevant and germane to the education of their children whereas school board members are elected by the citizens of indian river county and therefore are obligated to listen to their input on topics that are relevant and pertinent to them their children families and community whereas proposed changes to policy one zero one six nine dot

081public part dot one public participation at board meetings have the intent to minimize limit reduce and or stifle citizen input by reducing time and topic whereas taxpayers in the community are opposed to their elected officials using tactics that will minimize limit reduce and or stifle their right to be heard therefore be it resolved that the indian river county republican executive committee calls the school district of indian river county to make no changes that will reduce minimize stifle or limit citizen input based on time and topic thank you very much thank you miss foley jennifer pippen is next good evening my name is jennifer pippen and first and foremost i'm a mom my son will be 13 years old tomorrow and my daughter's 15. i'm the chairman for moms for liberty indian river florida and one

082of the co-founders for we the people indian river county i would first like to thank the entire board for not changing the public input for the school board meetings and listening to your constituents on this thank you mrs rosario for all your help with giving us the resources to find all of the pornographic and inappropriate books in the libraries thank you mrs barenborg for your email in response to this issue thank you mr barefoot for your call in response to this issue and expressing publicly on the radio the partnership in resolving this issue i believe from the responses to the just discovery of the pornographic and inappropriate books everybody seems concerned and we all agree that pornographic material has no business in children's hands there is no educational value to children reading about rape incest

083bestiality pedophilia sexually explicit content or sexual acts in direct violation of the statutes that protect children from pornography in schools those statutes are in place to protect children from the authors publishers and the people who want to sexualize children what adults do behind closed doors is their own business parents have the final say in what's best for their children i hope wish and pray that policies are made or followed and if moms for liberty indian river florida or we the people indian river county could assist with this further we will continue the partnership and be happy to do so with the school district on the list of books and cited information we provided to the school district doesn't include the classic titles like the bible catcher in the rye dr seuss or shakespeare they are

084books that violate laws and statutes that these reading materials being in the hands of children k to 12 schools is in violation mrs schiff and mrs jones we haven't heard a word from either of you since these mysteries please please direct all comments to the chair okay thank you i would like to know if everybody on the board is approving of these materials and the pornography on the shelves in our libraries this should be a non-partisan issue non-political issue as i think most people would agree sexualizing children or normalizing sexual explicit information against state statute would be wrong to do this is a third degree felony to distribute pornography to a minor in the state of florida again i want to thank you for putting this on the agenda and taking care of this today

085our children deserve better thank you miss pippin please do not clap please refrain from clapping um let me remind the audience that is um also against uh a state statute to disrupt a school board meeting so please do not clap we appreciate that it's fair to both all the people in the room all right miss d lavendera that's fine jazz hands do not interrupt anybody good evening we're moving forward i heard the superintendent say um gosh i don't like where we're going honest to say in this county from what i've read in the last month in the papers heard on the radio i'll leave it at that providing sexual explicit materials to minors is not only disturbing and problematic possibly criminal now admittedly i'm not an expert but i can read what the experts say

086many experts warn of the harms of pornography upon children and adults causing people to objectify other people it's it's very disturbing what i read but just speaking at a practical level children engaging in sexual activity can often if not always lead to heartache you fall in love as a child where can it go where can it go i have through various ministry organizations witnessed this first hand with children and adults abortions the devastating results of that afterwards adults that have told me of traumatized sexual relationships among children sexual abuse from adults upon minors and among children leave victims scarred often for years and years this book i i won't read you the um the details of it but i will read you the summary of some of the stuff naomi the main character is sexually

087abused by her stepfather henry as a child and continues after her mother's death the church pastor encourages her stepfather to marry naomi before she has even finished school evil church pastors a gas explosion happens at the local school and her little sister is killed graphic descriptions of her body parts all over the dead sister's twin brother lies with her body until they can bury her many of the teen and adult characters masturbate multiple comprehensive enough instructions on giving hand jobs adults males training teen girls female masturbation of the protagonist justified for pain relief and mental escape by a girl living through the trauma of being sexually abused by a stepfather male masturbation by both the step-dad villain and the love interest hero the main character has graphic sexual activity with her boyfriend wash thank you

088miss lavender lamar no to giacomo uh good evening i just want to point out fs106.342b clearly prohibits sexually explicit material any instructional material containing pornography or otherwise prohibited by s 847.012 may not be used or made available within any public school and fs 847. states a person may not knowingly sell rent or loan for monetary consideration to a minor any book pamphlet magazine printed material however reproduced or sound recording that contains any matter defined in s847.001 explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement or sexual conduct and that is harmful to minors and for all those who want to scream book burning book burning let me just point out that pornography is not protected speech i don't want it for myself i don't want it for my husband i don't want it

089for my kids i don't want it for my grandkids and i don't understand why um anyone would justify that i don't understand why tc palm would attack jennifer pippen for standing up for for the protection of minors from this smut that's being promoted to our kids and made available on the school shelves for any any age from k to 12. and i just want to point out that clapping is is okay throughout the whole meeting except during public comment which i think is a little bit hypocritical so i would encourage everyone who agrees with what i'm seeing to stand up since we might get escorted out of the room or arrested if we um clap during public comment so uh yeah that's my that's my i've noticed you know that all of the rah-rah the

090parade happens at the beginning of the meeting the media is all over it and then when it comes time to public comment and they even interview some of us and it never makes the cut why is that it seems like the board is more concerned with their public image than they are about the crap that's being fed to our children so you had your parade and and now we're cleaning up the elephant poop and it's not fun and then when you don't allow people to clap or express any emotion it's very hypocritical because you did that all throughout the meeting so i just want to point that out um to see if i can squeeze something else in before my time runs out the supreme court has ruled that transmitting obscenity in child pornography whether

091via internet or other means is illegal under federal law for both adults and juveniles by the way that was under janet reno and she's not a republican obscenity is not protected under first amendment rights to free speech and violations of federal obscenity laws or criminal offenses the u.s courts use a three-prong test commonly referred to as the miller test to determine if given material is obscene obscenity is defined as anything okay there you go thank you thank you miss no to jack moe mr thomas kenny hi how y'all doing um i just want to take a little different tact here because i heard the interviews on bob seuss by the school board superint by the school board chair and the superintendent mr moore you know um one of the things that really got me out

092here was when mr moore while in my car said well a lot of these books are in the top 100 that kids read and i thought to myself me being someone who's been in media for 20 years as a professional i asked jennifer i said how many of these co how many copies per book do we get around here in this little rural county of indian river she says well five six what do we got about 35 3 700 counties in the united states so essentially a publisher selling one author about 37 000 when you get right down to it automatically covering their rights costs the publisher is running this through the fault system faults out of illinois the publisher is making a lot of money on my my taxes and yours the publisher is

093paying our authors and if you got a hundred thousand books sold to school systems then what do you have you have a top 100 book thank god that a lot of these kids haven't checked this stuff out tells me that these books really aren't being read by kids and they're not that popular yet they shouldn't be here at all that's number one number two i was reading some history james monroe entered william and mary at age 16 in 1774 and then he did a little stint in a war 1780 he went back there and he wanted to study and there was a governor in virginia that took him under his wing and got him his library reading and spent personal time with him and a few other students his name was thomas jefferson and from

094there at one point he gave him 40 volumes of parliamentary law when he went into law school so he knew what was going on we are so disengaged from what our kids are reading here at this level that they have no idea how to really navigate life instead one of the authors is a 15-year progressive lgbtq activist turned sexual fantasy writer and now her book is being distributed in this school so i find it a little disheartening i don't have kids here but i do pay my taxes thank you mr kenny um before we move further i do want to make one statement that is that when i ask for no clapping is because i'm enforcing as the board chair the rule that the board has voted on for citizen input citizen input is a

095different process than when we celebrate children and accomplishments for the school district so that's the distinguish between those two i know dr moore would like to speak to some of the items thank you madam chair just a a a some points of clarity first and foremost as the board knows and actually miss pippin highlighted the board took no action to modify public comment so the the only policy that that was it was pulled that policy was not proffered a a slight change based on the desire to collect information at 5 45 so there's been no action taken by the sport to modify public comment that remains the same in relation to the top 100 what i was referencing was a company that's marketing books as top 100 i'm not saying they're within the top 100

096but that is how the company is actually marketing those particular texts i know we're going to talk about that in a minute but i would like to say we are taking very specific action as it relates to the inappropriate pornographic content that is in a book that is very very specific to what we're looking at that is the process that we need to follow when you're looking at that specific statute taking the time to look at what process wasn't followed and then what do we do as a system to ensure that that specific statute is being aligned to within our school system and that's the work that we're currently doing we will do it swift we will do it quickly um but we that is the process that we're currently looking at the process wasn't

097followed i will be honest as i said before during the workshop when you're in the midst of transformation and reform and there's not solid leadership or structures in place things like this go to the wayside and in this school system this will not be the last time we find a process or procedure that isn't in place or is in place but not being followed but this district has led from the front this district has made that information available and this district will take the corrective action in order to ensure that pornographic information in libraries uh that violates the statute is not there and that is the work that we're currently charged with doing and i know that we'll talk about that a little bit later but those are some points of clarity okay thank you

098dr moore we appreciate citizen input um without it we wouldn't know what the feeling is of our community so we appreciate that um moving on we have consent item agendas that everybody already yeah we didn't call for anybody to move anything so we're going to call for a motion to approve the consent and agenda items can i ask for a motion second okay mr barefoot and the second by dr jones any discussion on consent all those in favor say aye aye aye anybody opposed all right passes 5-0 on consent um along with consent i just want to make a comment that we just approved several donations to the district and like to say thank you to the garden club of indian river county education foundation and of course we had 57 and 29.7 donated in

099grants so we appreciate that uh georgie warren corporation the almeida leak toomey literary group felix popple post number 39 and ucf for all donations that we received during our consent items so thank you for those okay we are on to 5a approval of the amended business meeting minutes and i guess i don't have to write that in got it all the way to 13 yes because those are all consent got it it's hard when you're dealing with a book instead of the online appreciate that i'm going to take it so you would be doing this today thank you for that out we'll wait for the room to clear okay moving on to action agenda 13a public hearing and adoption of revised policies 9 28-21 on september 28 2021 the school board moved approval to set

100a public hearing date to adopt district school board policies the purpose of the revisions is to be consistent with present practice and litigation legislation sorry the policy change was followed in accordance with florida statutes under florida administrative procedures act chapter 120 rulemaking and school board bylaw zero one three one i'd like to call for a motion so move dr jones a second second thank you mr barefoot i believe we have a board member out of the room so i'm going to call for the vote oh thank you that's right it says discussion and vote do and i have to discuss and vote i'll be carrying an adoption hearing first and then you okay discuss and vote afterwards okay okay is there anyone that would like to speak to this item is public hearing and adoption

101of revised policies 9 28 21. seeing none then i'm going to call for the vote are we going to have discussion i'm going to call for discussion thank you all right so i'd like to call for discussion uh mr rosario would you like to speak yes thank you go ahead um i wanted to uh bring to your attention in july july 20th of this past year i brought forth an item for several policies to change and have the written language of the rule a 6 a 1.094124 which is essentially the critical race theory ban to be added to several of our policies it was presented to the board at that time it was written out mr meyer actually added all of that into several of the policies including professional development the board actually gave feedback

102and said let's wait for neola uh and see what neola presents uh to us niola included um in policy two two one five is this the right one no 165 166. no why why am i getting am i in the wrong place rosario the agenda item in front of the board are proposed revisions to a different policies you were talking about some policies that were reviewed at the workshop so yeah so why can't we discuss those because this is 165 166.1 and what we're in the wrong place yes ma'am oh goodness gracious that's why it's kind of surprising sorry at the wrong place anyone else like to have a discussion about these no we're all wish we could press rewind that's okay all right very good yeah okay all right so i'm going to call

103i'm going to call for the motion and i got a motion i got a second i'm going to call for the vote should have said something sooner i see her like inching up so i was going to know where i wasn't looking at i wasn't looking at you okay all right thank you those in favor say aye aye aye those anyone opposed okay it's a 5-0 vote all right moving to action agenda item b approval of redistricting okay do i have to read in this entire thing no no ma'am okay whether there's any public comment signed up for this particular item um this is another uh action item uh no no okay i had 13 c i did not have 13 b we're in 13 b would you like me to get a i have

104all of these are on 13c yes ma'am go ahead thank you mrs berenborg board members we've talked about this issue a few times during workshop this really has to do with your voting districts as we have discussed each every 10 years the census data is presented locally and to the extent it revises where citizens are living within indian river county then both the county commission and the school board need to go through a process to be sure that their voting districts are as equal in population as possible as practicable and in indian river county the school board typically adopts the same map as adopted by the county commission and this year the county commission once it got the disaggregated census data it was able to prepare a few maps and they went through a couple

105of public hearings with a few different maps at the last county commission meeting the county commission did approve proposed map 1b which is one of the items attached to this agenda item that is the map the county commission intends to bring forward at a public hearing in december to approve as its new districts for voting for county commission and the school board members at a workshop at least had indicated a desire to express your intent to adopt the same map once the county commission finalized the map and so this item is just summarizing that in the agenda description it provides a copy of the map that the county commission would be adopting in december and you had expressed a desire to express your intent to adopt the same map at your meeting in december once

106the county commission finalized the map so this agenda item is really just for the board to discuss as needed or to express your intent to adopt the same map in december and i i have already prepared a draft resolution for the board in december so that the paperwork is ready that's not for your approval tonight that will be done in december but this was just an opportunity at a board meeting for you to have any discussion you wished and then to express your intent thank you thank you so this is literally just to put it on the schedule for december 14th okay all righty so i'd like to call for a motion i'll make a motion second sorry who was the second all right any discussion on this item all those in favor say aye

107aye aye anyone opposed okay it passes 5-0 thank you all right now we are to 13 c approval of review of library books and media center i believe i need to ask for citizen input first before you present the item yeah correct that's the order okay so we have um let me go back we have five people that have asked to speak to this item call them up in order the first one is mara mcdaniel hi stutter hi my name is mar mcdaniel and i'm a student here in indian river county a group of citizens are here to ban a list of books and i want to make sure that the books about alternative families and alternative love remain in our libraries it's important for all people to have book that books that represent their

108point of view lgbt lgbt youth are struggling to understand their thoughts and emotions books are often their biggest support if you take away this support it could be devastating lgbt youth has a 40 percent suicide rate nationwide and they need respect and representation more than ever you are our first line of defense for our liberties please leave them in place thank you miss mcdaniel it's brave to get up there and speak as a student we appreciate that cindy gibbs good evening i got a little confused about how this all works so i'm going to paraphrase um i just because it's thanksgiving time i just want to say how grateful i am that we have the sea palms website available to us as parents and educators um so that when we're a little confused about things

109that we're learning about in school we have extra resources we can go look at as parents to make sure we fully understand and i did want to point out one that i learned a lot about when my daughter was in seventh grade two years ago it's standard ss7 c2 which is evaluate the roles rights and responsibilities of united states citizens and to determine methods of active participation in society government and the political system including bias symbolism and political propaganda so i'm really excited that our children in this school district have the ability to read about those things in social studies class so that when they are reading the library books they can understand implicit bias and things like that following up more to the point thanks for your time thank goodness we have well-stocked libraries

110at our schools and computers for all of our kids so that they can all access information they need to feel included and safe i'm glad that a kid who is angry about his parents losing their house or getting a divorce can read a book about other kids who've had this issue so they can explore some options and just not feel alone i'm glad that a kid who is questioning their sexuality and feels confused and who knows they can't turn to an adult at school because their parents might be contacted and they're not ready to have that conversation they have a safe space in the library to find comfort and information in a book one of our greatest assets in this country is to access is access to our information and we can't take it lightly

111by eliminating things that make us uncomfortable my truth may not be the same as someone else's but it's not up to me to decide that for anyone else let's make sure that we're looking at all of the data and reading through everything before we decide to eliminate anything and i also want to just say thank you dr moore you kind of already hinted that this is the process and i appreciate that it's going to be done thoroughly thank you miss gibbs jennifer pippen um did miss pippin speak to this item when she spoke at the beginning no she spoke to something else not about she did bring up books and and this issue that's why i'm asking do we have people speaking at both times they can speak to they can speak at both times

112they just can't speak to the same item that's why i'm asking that i don't recall her speaking about i think she just said thank you to those who support it but not to the books or media center i don't know doctor she don't recall her mentioning that i recall her speaking about books and the content of books and its relevance to statute yes we can always check the tape but i will call them she here miss pippen okay hi miss pippin just just for no um you can speak to two different items you can speak at citizen input you can speak again when an item comes up on action you just can't speak to the same topic or same item twice okay okay when you spoke earlier did you mentioned um because there is some

113discussion on the board about um speaking about the books yes this is uh specifically about the books okay but when you spoke earlier right i was just thanking the board for their due diligence and the process that's what i remember okay are we comfortable moving forward okay all right thank you miss pippen go ahead thank you so many parents have reached out grandparents community members wanted me to read um a couple of the cited information from the books because they don't feel that some of the board members are taking this as serious as they should they were listening to it in certain news outlets radio stations and such triangles by ellen hopkins book number 22 submitted to the school district of indian river county now that you're wet i'm going to do something i've always

114wanted to he slips one finger inside me two three at four the pressure becomes terrific he works his entire hand into that narrow place and over the flashing silver pain i shuddered an orgasm i come again and again and again and now does he the bluest eye by toni morrison book number 32 submitted to the school district of indian river county they don't know that she will give him her body sparingly and partially he must not enter her lifting the hem of her nightgown only to her navel he must rest his weight on his elbows when they make love to avoid hurting her and her breast but actually to keep her from having touch or feel too much of him when he moves inside her she will remain dry between her legs she hates the

115clucking sound they make when she is moist when she senses spasms she will make rapid movements to get to her fingernails in his back suck in her breast and pretend she's having an orgasm the truth about alice book number 41 submitted to the school district of indian river county page number 27 mark my words brandon he said that dude's never going to get any the p word ever the jump page 26 paul d went from a calf to a girl and it wasn't that almighty not the leap that was believed and in the corn stalks in the quarters a yard away from the cabins others who had lost out was a gen gesture of tenderness and hailed wanted privacy for her and got public display book number 13 submitted to the school district of indian

116river county his attentions there for gradually settled onto those humans who whose bodies were least offensive children he further limited his interest to little girls why do i have to die i'll miss the little girls most i always played with them it was like a party i would give them mints money and they'd eat ice cream with their legs while wide open why i played with them these books have no educational value and sexuality the sexuality for these children is unacceptable and that's just a few of the 58 we submitted for review because of the pornography thank you chris allen hi my name is chris allen um i guess i just i wanted to re-mention one of the people already mentioned florida point statute four two b four um any instructional materials containing pornography or

117otherwise prohibited by s eight forty seven point o twelve may not be used or made available in any public schools and this does include school libraries so why would sdirc have books containing child molestation and sex and bestiality just to name a few these are horrible topics that make adults cringe many of them are of illegal acts they should not be available in our schools or bought with our tax money how can we protect our children from monsters if they're reading about them at school how does this help our children excel academically books open our minds to new worlds is this really what you want to open their mind to i do honestly i do want to thank the board and i do want to thank dr moore because you have been receptive and you've

118been trying to do something and it looks like you're going to look into the process because unfortunately many school boards aren't doing that some of them are allowing it but i do want to see transparency and accountability in this matter some of these books have been here since 2012. this isn't just one oversight this didn't start last year it's a gross oversight and it's systemic because it's in the folate system in the ar books we don't know how it slipped through the cracks but hopefully you guys do a root cause analysis why was there a breakdown in policy and what is sdirc doing to find these books themselves this that's something that i haven't heard myself but how you're going to find it yourself like we thank you for working with us but there also

119has to be a process on how it's going to be found um we do ask that you look into the policy and strengthen it and have it follow state statute because that's pretty it's clear it's night and day they should not be allowed you know some people are calling this a book ban it's intentionally labeled that way as that's you know that's what bad actors do they haven't even looked at our materials jennifer just read some of them it's disgusting children are impressionable and their innocence should be protected students should not be exposed to the ugliness of the world nor should they read about topics that are not age appropriate please fix this issue thank you miss allen last speaker crystal mcintyre definitely way off what i had written down here about these thoughts up

120here but um we keep finding ourselves here arguing over inflated issues issues that some of us see fueled by inappropriately placed politics um social media employees even now some radio hosts i just feel like if we spent all of this energy and all these late nights and all of these hours exploring ways that we can make things better for everybody it would just be the best thing to do with our time how we can pick the best curriculum for all of our kids and not one that just fits the public agendas how we can find the best coveted plan and not one that just fits that agenda and now we're here trying to find the best set of books in our opinion would be for all kids and not just our own kids for everybody's

121liberties and not just the ones that we value for ourselves my liberties are different my values are different your morals are different i know a lot of people are here to discuss the book thing and the sex thing it's just a handful of so so many what seems like at this point i'm exaggerating 2 000 books here but it's up to like over 100 books now at this point and there's maybe just a handful of inappropriate stuff hard stuff everybody lives hard stuff some of these kids don't have families at all the art class as a family or whatever that title was you can't put boundaries on what's a family when you're not exposed to kids who either a don't have a good family b don't have any family at all maybe have some families

122that are doing those terrible things in those books and it's uncomfortable for us but it's needed for them i'm confident that you guys can see through this smoke show the handful of books being read over and over again to pique the interest to gain a following i'm confident that you guys have the best interest of all kids and not just the kids with the loudest parents some that even don't have parents as hard as that may be for some of us to face i look forward to the days that you guys can focus your workshops on actual work your business meetings on real business and when i can stop public speaking thank you miss mcintyre all right that is all the public input that we have for this item it is item action item 13

123c and i'm going to turn it over to ms rosario it is her item thank you thank you very much thank you board members thank you citizens i want to start with a little bit of a i guess a timeline here on october 28th i saw a video on youtube it just showed up i clicked on it it had a parent reading a book at a board meeting in another state wasn't here in florida and i read the book i mean i i listened to an excerpt being read from this book and it was disgusting um i immediately emailed um the video and that link to the video to our superintendent and the assistant superintendent of instruction of curriculum and instruction mr meyer who is not here this evening and i received immediate feedback from

124both dr moore agreed that it was vulgar and mr meyer actually agreed that this book has no place in our k-12 schools and at which point he said i cannot i can confirm that it is not in any of our school libraries my original email went out at 7 00 i think it's 7 28 a.m and my email from missed a response from mr meyer came to me at 10 05 a.m and then mr dr moore actually responded somewhere around nine o'clock ish by that time already by 10 o'clock i already emailed our attorney to ask some questions about um where we are where our district has our any policies regarding library and media center uh processes how we select our books what our ar points how are accelerated readers selected for our schools and

125of course she sent me a link shortly thereafter of all of the backup that board members you all have attached to this item i would also like to say that um following um these looking at this video i went into our library uh follett system here in indian river schools which was an email that you all received from mr meyer i think in september i'll pull that up right here in case anybody wants to do a public records request it was sent to all of us september 27th letting us all know that if there are any parents that have any concerns they can actually go to a website or rather the link which is the fallette.indianriverschools.org forward slash and then 24 7 they can search do a public search on any of the books that

126are in our libraries that by the way is supported by statue specifically this was in regard to two books at that time that he did research on and said they were not in our schools however in response to this in particular one i by this time already notified um mr meyer that we had indeed even though he said we did not have any of those these books in our libraries um we actually did we had two books that were found two copies in the vero beach library system i sent that to mr meyer i sent that to dr moore just about immediately they responded very very quickly and had those books removed the book was titled all boys aren't blue a memoir manifesto so they were quite literally almost immediately removed from our shelves and

127from our system so i have to say thank you to dr moore and to mr mr meyer for that for quickly responding at that point though it started a me asking questions about our entire system the next question was how did this book actually end up on our shelves what was the process what does statute say um and where are we i come to find out that we do have a policy which of course you all have this in your backup um number 2520 let me keep my pace here so that i know what i'm doing a it is titled selection of instructional materials and equipment in this policy it actually states on the second page letter d1 that there is a procedure for selection of library or media center materials that the curriculum and

128instruction department in cooperation with the committee and then shortly above that it explains what the committee ought to be doing but there should be a committee with the committee shall be responsible for the selection of all materials housed in a library or media center upon notification of the availability of funds for the purchase of such resource materials the administrative assistant bookkeeper will prepare a request form which includes the amount of money available to a grade level or subject area for new or additional materials and i and i i'm jumping ahead and i'm assuming this is what uh dr moore was mentioning earlier in terms of what we found out we did not do appropriately and i'll let dr moore follow up on that in just a little bit but on november 3rd keeping up with

129the timeline on november 3rd there was a a response from mr meyer on some of the questions that i had and board members it's important it's important for you to hear these because i with ke in keeping with that one particular book that was removed it turns out that book was an ar book being an accelerated reader book it means that a student has to read that book and if the student takes the quiz they get ar points they could accelerate accelerated reader points for that book i can't even imagine how somebody would read that book and think that it would be appropriate to actually create a quiz for a student to take to receive points for it so one of the questions that i inquired about was how are books selected vetted and chosen

130for ar points and his response was ar accelerated reader is a software program owned by renaissance learning which is simply which is simply creates online book quizzes for nearly every title ever printed to my knowledge they do not limit the titles which tests are produced for as they do not sell or advocate the books themselves effectively our students can bring most all books from home and take an ar test on it the next question i had was are school libraries meant to be like public library system or should they be unique and specific to address our standards and curriculum his response is was florida school boards have authority of what is in their libraries there is no statute to my knowledge which requires bor which requires board to maintain any specific content in our libraries

131there is however a list of administrative procedure developed in 2014 which is certainly within the district's prerogative to change i might add that i've asked for this administrative procedure and i did not receive it otherwise you would have received it it would be attached in your backup i'd like to go before i continue down to my next question here his response said there is no statute to my knowledge which requires the board to maintain any specific content in our libraries this is not correct let me reach let me read from you why that answer was not correct one was that policy that we had have in place that i just read policy 2520a the second item that i'd like to share with you is florida statute 1006.28 this statute requires the board to maintain specific

132content in our libraries and i'll read i'm not going to read the entire statute but i'll read just some highlighted points to it number one each school district is is responsible for the content of all all instructional material and any other materials used in a classroom made available in a school library or included on a reading list whether adopted and purchased from a state adopted instructional materials list adopted and purchased through a district instructional materials program under 1006.283 or otherwise purchased or made available so essentially that means all instructional material including the school libraries each school district board shall maintain on its website a current list of instructional materials by grade level purchased by the district though i'm not i don't know if we do this that's another question for another day i'm going to

133go down to 2b any any material used in a classroom made available in a school library or included on a reading list contains or included on a reading list that the content is that is pornographic or prohibited under 847 is not suited to student needs or their ability to comprehend the material presented or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used this is talking about what is obviously not accepted if the school district or if the school board finds that an instructional material such as these library books does not meet the criteria under sub sub paragraph a or that any material contains prohibited content under sub sub paragraph b which we obviously have the school district shall discontinue the use of the material for any grade level or

134age group for which such is inappropriate or unsuitable moving down on this policy on this statute d reads the school library media services the establishment and the maintenance of it establish and maintain a program of school library media services for all public schools in the district including school library media centers and the school library media centers should be open to the public and in addition such traveling or circulating libraries as may be needed for the proper operation of this the district school system each school district shall provide training to the school librarians and media specialists regarding the pro prohibition against distributing harmful materials to minors under 847.01 which is the statute speaking on obscenity an applicable case law and best practices for providing students access to age-appropriate materials and library resources and it continues on

135with who is responsible for all of this but ultimately it falls on the school's superintendent the obscenity um statue is one that is very clear so there is a concern about um a particular organization or this board member here asking for a ban on our libraries and board members i'm not asking for a ban on our library books what i'm asking for is essentially a ban on all the books that are not statutorily appropriate for our kids and that are obscene and pornographic in nature statute 847.0 harmful materials sale or distribution to minors and production prohibited this statute actually very clearly states exactly what is the definition of knowingly it begins and i think that's important because once we know and once we have knowledge of or reason to know or the belief or the

136ground that warrants further inspection then we are obligated to act on it so once these books became a knowledgeable to us we are obligated by statute to respond so this isn't about me pandering to a particular group because lo and behold the group that is in question moms for liberty and i'll say it moms for liberty is not even a year old i'm 51 years old and for long before moms for liberty became an organization i had my own views my own thoughts my own faith i've had my own opinions and i've had my own way of living so i'm not pandering to any organization i just want that to be clear board members i want you all to know that that is not the case what is the case here is the fact that

137there are books that are on our shelves that violate our statute again statute 847.012 reads any person a person may not knowingly sell rent or loan for monetary consideration to a minor underneath that a it says any picture photograph drawing sculpture motion picture film video cassette or similar visual representation or image of a person or portion of a human body which depicts nudity or sexual contact conduct sexual excitement sexual battery bestiality or sadomasochistic abuse and which is harmful to minors or b any book pamphlet magazine printed matter however reproduced or sound recording that contains any matter defined in statute 847.001 explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement or sexual conduct and that is harmful to minors five any adult an adult may not knowingly distribute to a minor on school property

138or post on school property any material described in subsection three which is the one that i just mentioned on depicting nudity sexual content and so on as used in that subsection three the term school property means the grounds or facility of any kindergarten elementary school middle school junior high school or secondary school whether public or non-public this subsection does not apply to the distribution or posting of some other information that's actually talking about our regular curriculum and so with that it i'm going to just end it here on this statute with six that says any person violating any provisions of this section commits a felony of the third degree so i just want to be sure that we are not committing a felony we are now aware so we now have the obligation to act

139so the next question that i asked on my email is what is the legal and moral standard to identify books that are x-rated vulgar and absolutely inappropriate his response was ultimately the legal standard is to ensure that we do not have pornographic materials in our schools there isn't anything which requires us to set a schedule to identify or review and most districts make every attempt to stem this from the start not to expect to find things once they are in the system which i understand but now that we understand that we have these books on our shelves some are saying well how come they haven't already been taken off i actually asked that question just the other day a citizen requested an update as to the status of some of the books that were you

140know emailed in i kind of lost track of all of the titles um i don't know if some of you have but i've been reading them but i kind of lost track of the number so i don't know where we are but on that somewhere in there we received notice that the district under uh the direction of mr meyer was going to review the books that are on the shelves as they came in because obviously and dr moore and i agreed that was a good place to start where do we start because that's a giant gigantic undertaking of actually reviewing every single book on our shelves um and so that was a good place to start when this item was added to the agenda as an action item mr meyer stopped reviewing those books his

141email said that he wanted to wait until after tonight's discussion which actually nothing on our agenda none of the items on our agenda have anything to do with a full review of the books that are in question according to the statute there is nothing that we can agree to or not agree to we have a legal obligation to follow the statute that work should continue that work should not stop under no circumstances until all of those pornographic vulgar sexually content um books with nudity sexual context sexual excitement sexual battery bestiality and so on and so forth are removed from our shelves i also wanted to add that this has nothing to do with our opinions how we believe what we believe books should be what we believe or have an opinion on what books students

142should be reading or shouldn't be reading this has nothing to do with that this has nothing to do with whether someone is lgbtq or whether there are different families or equity this has nothing to do with children with disabilities or ese this has nothing to do with that this is statute and we have an obligation to follow statute i'm going to come to a close here and i hope that you all um um as we open it up to uh board member um comments i mention all of this so that there is a little bit of content i really wanted to actually talk about some of the books real quick so that i can let you know as i come to a close that this isn't some list or some books that are just out

143there in the ether and somebody decided to look for them i actually went i didn't completely rely on the information that was sent i went into our folet indian riverschools.org system and i searched and we have several of these books currently sitting on our shelves the glass castle and i can read the vulgar disgusting items that are in there but honestly it would be against my my faith to do so especially in a public setting out of the darkness that mrs lavendera mentioned earlier in red excerpts from that's on our shelves right now the brave face is probably one of just as disgusting as the other one the first one that was removed already one book called perfect one book called looking for alaska another one called graceling these are all books that are currently

144sitting on our shelves so the work of our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction should not have stopped reviewing these books and removing them i know we are all we all have children um i certainly would not allow my child to read any of these there are some parents who would and that's okay that's your prerogative but it is not appropriate for a public school system if you want your children to read these books that's fine that's why we have a public library system not a public school system or public library obviously neither do our legislatures believe that so i'll end it with the item that i actually have as a result of all of this to respond to what has been going on the library and media center item that i have here and

145you can read the introduction but ultimately because of all of this what end after talking with dr moore and realizing that we did have a policy that wasn't followed it was a good time to actually see or rather charge him and hopefully you all understand that this is this is important charge him with the following items conduct a full review of district policies administrative policies and statutes appropriate to the selection of instructional materials including library media center books investigate the follett learning system process for recommending books to our schools are there any other library or media center library systems that offer the same or similar services as fallet and renaissance but with stricter practices on their recommendations investigate the processes for accelerated reader selections from renaissance and how we can ensure that books selected for

146use with ar are in alignment with relevant board policies and state statutes establish a process by which books in our library and media centers will be free and clear of harmful prohibited and obscene material congruent to florida statute 847.012 a full evaluation of the current use of the library media centers to increase student engagement and interaction provide an update on the assessment process during the full board meeting in january 2022 and then report back to the board with the findings of the assessment and related recommendations at a second board meeting in february 2022. i didn't put dates here board members because you know it was already in discussion that we might be considering um changing meetings and all that other kind of stuff and i and my last point is all of this was not

147done on my own it was in constant communication with our superintendent and making sure that the superintendent was was not only okay but was in agreement helped actually you know put it together with me we work together collaboratively on this so there isn't anyone stepping over toes it is a very very important um touchy uh subject and it needs to be addressed with that madam chair if we can turn it over to for discussion it's up to you um first thing i have a question to mr agresta so i know that the superintendent would probably like to make a statement about this would it be more appropriate for him to make a statement now or after we go ahead and um have our discussion i'm following procedure i want to follow procedure correctly right it's

148whatever your preference is what would your preference be dr moore here hearing the board okay thank you all right so board members we have an item that has been proposed by mrs rosario in short i'm going to read the school board directs the superintendent to conduct a full assessment of our school libraries and media centers as outlined in the attached document she read the document all right could i get a motion please i'll make a motion okay miss rosario can i have a second oh second dr jones okay and now we have time for discussion um mr rosario read her statement who would like to make a comment or have a discussion about this dr jones yeah go ahead um second you go first and then i'll go in our discussion today um and it's

149when you were not here i don't know if you're watching this or anything but um i brought up 2520a looking at the procedure uh for selection of library or media center materials with cni department in cooperation with the selection of all materials housed in the media center and we have several media specialists here so i want to recognize you one thing also when i looked at all the emails um again being a high school principal we used to have ar at the high school and the middle school i emailed all the my middle school and high school principals um we're not supporting that as far as money for it and no teacher is aligning it to the department in the high schools middle schools a couple of them use it but it's not aligned to

150a department as far as you must read this book in this book i know some schools used to do just within the media center some prizes and awards for ar books but um i know it's not used as it used to be and that came from the principles when i look at this obviously it was state statute and we discussed this this afternoon we must follow state statute dealing with pornography and making sure the material is age appropriate there's no question there i don't know i was just thinking about this you know with what we do in the district and um if you have time look up our health education standards and they're very very good you know we have abstinence in this district and that's what we teach and if you look at a

151lot of the standards in specific areas there it talks about you know teenagers making the right choice you know we want to be here for you to make the right choice so obviously we do not support any pornography whatsoever one thing i do want to point out under 1006 344 and this means a lot to me because we have a diverse district diverse in many ways the consideration 10634 number four the consideration of the broad racial ethnic socioeconomic and cultural diversity of the students of this state so that's something we need to be aware of you know if we have like ms rosario said she's not talking about lgbtq or any issues like that we're talking about pornography we want to make sure that we have a diverse selection for our students our students here

152in the state i think when we had this discussion today we all talked about you know we we don't want these books here dealing with pornography um not sure of the process how they got here i know uh sometimes when we used to order books they came in a group and i know dr moore said the beginning of this and i know he will clear it up is that um there needs to be a process there needs to be a policy and i'm sure our media specialists would have some good ideas there where we want to go in our next generation of media you know if you've been around to our our libraries our media centers um a lot different than they were even five ten years ago with the technology so we want to

153continue to build that for our students in uh the instructional materials that we have our core standards and our subject areas for support of those standards in our subject areas but i don't think there's any question about pornography or age appropriate hey thank you dr jones dr schiff yeah i have a lot of notes about this um and my notes are no longer in any kind of order um i have no problem with following state statute obviously that's what we should do that doesn't even warrant more discussion than we've had it's obvious it's it's what we do the superintendent has told us innumerable times the process that he has initiated and that he will be taking in our schools to ensure appropriate content of our books i'm clear about that that's what we hired him

154to do that's his job he's told us innumerable times both in private conversations and publicly that that's his intention and i trust that he's going to do that there are many books on this list that are about people and about experiences that may not replicate our own for example um our classroom is a family is on this list which is a book about how we create empathetic relationships in school terrific i'll keep going it's my turn hold on one second please nothing from the floor it's her turn to speak thank you water for elephants is on the list which was made into a major motion picture it's about a coming-of-age story about a young man who joins the circus on the list is beloved by tony morrison which won a pulitzer prize in 1988 is

155some of the content challenging to read it sure is but is it appropriate in some circumstances to talk about the lives of exp and experiences of people who don't look like us or sound like us or have the history of us to understand what that's like to understand that background the glass castle is a really hard look at life and poverty i've read these books the kite runner offers there is some rough content in that book i won't deny it but it's a story this is my time not yours there is content in that that presents a multicultural lens on a world that looks very very different than the experience that any of us have had i've read that book it was a hard read and i read it as an adult and i'll acknowledge

156that that was a hard read there are books on this list and i'll say some of them this has nothing to do with with pornographic content black software the internet and racial justice what is the black lives matter movement brave leaders and activists these are some of the lists on this book uh books on this list there's a book called um it here's a description of the book and this is the exact description that was sent to us pro piano prodigy isabella 11 whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody never feels whole especially as racial tensions affect her school her parents both become engaged and she and her this is my time you sent this doctor hold on one second don't engage yeah because we asked the public you're right got it

157i hear you not too thank you and she and her step brother are stopped by police that's the description of the book so when i think about some of these books when i think about my experience when i think about what i would encourage my son to read first off if my son would read if he would read books this deep and this intense i'd be delighted frankly is some of the content inappropriate is some of the content something that we would talk about as a family as a parent and that if he were reading this content in school that i would hope is inside of a class discussion about how to understand this content about how to understand lives that don't look like ours it is also true that some citizens i am aware

158of have gone through these books and have noticed about give or take 50 percent of this is lgbtqia plus much of it is about african-american lives much of this is about content that don't replicate the life i've had but here is something about the life i've had i am a jewish american i read books about the holocaust and it deeply pains me i can barely get through some of it but does that mean i shouldn't read it does that mean i shouldn't be exposed to it we just came off holocaust awareness week frankly last week we had presentations in schools about this do i want our children when i sit here as an as someone who was not raised christian in a christian community every time we have a conversation about christian values that excludes

159me because that presumes i don't share those values in some way and i get it i'm getting emotional here but there is a presumption here that we are somehow intentionally doing something harmful in our community and to our students and there is no intent to harm we are here as educators we are here as people who sat up on this dais because we took a stand and we took a stand in favor of education and in favor of students and we did it because we care not because there's an intention to harm so should we follow state statute of course we should of course we should but is there a conversation about what is appropriate content and how that content is presented these this is not content that's inside our curriculum we heard that today

160from our superintendent in our workshop i know that each of you has had conversations numerous conversations with our superintendent as often as i have probably i don't know that i presume that because if i'm talking to him i presume that the other four of you are talking to him as often as i do i am confident that he is aware of the issue i am confident that his intention is for the best interests of our students and for our community i have no doubt about that so do i feel like i need to say here's what you need to do and how you need to do it when i'm quite confident that he's already doing it when i'm quite confident that this material is not in our curriculum and if it is assigned in some

161way in a classroom it will be a sign inside the context of a conversation about how we understand how we have difficult conversations what we mean to each other and how we develop empathy for experiences that that are not our own so yeah i'm a little emotional about this conversation because i don't like the direction it's going i don't like the direction when we start to define who can read what and who gets to say what that is who gets to say do we follow statute of course we do but do you get to say what my child is allowed to read no do you get to say in the content of a classroom conversation a school board member from another district told me a story about a parent who came to her with a

162book that her daughter had been assigned to read in school and had been assigned to read which depicted african-american women in a negative way and the problem wasn't about the content in the book the problem was that it was assigned over a vacation so there was no context in which to discuss it and have a conversation about critical thought and critical reading and how do we interpret this material and how do we support each other in understanding that our lives look different from each other and what does that mean so are we creating a context for that i sure hope so because if our schools aren't doing that then we're not doing the job of educating students if we're not doing that then that's what we look at then that's where we go but we

163don't take away things because we pull a line or a paragraph or a page out of a book that has a completely different context and that context is important and significant thank you okay thank you dr schiff um mr barefoot would you like to comment um just just briefly first of all i would like to thank mrs rosario obviously she's put in a lot of time and effort referencing statutes and and the like so that took a lot of work and i think we're all the beneficiaries of it um there's not there's not a whole lot to say um i think that the bottom line is as you've all said we don't want anything in there that is inconsistent with statute as you've all said dr moore is committed and this the process has i'm

164i'm not sure that it's stopped but perhaps it's been delayed but he's committed to doing a proper review within the context of the statute and i trust that when that review is complete we'll know what the results of it are and that's what we ought to be doing and there's i really have nothing else to add okay thank you yeah yeah you don't have anything you want to say before i say because i'd like to follow up but please do go ahead um okay regarding the books on the list i didn't create that list i didn't send that list to the board i didn't say you did well you were responding to this item so i wanted i wanted to follow up with that and make it clear so with regard to all of the

165books on that list i'm not the maker of them so i just wanted to make that clear there it's not our job to get into the weeds as we've talked about often once we charge the superintendent once this is approved and once we charge the superintendent with this work which he has agreed that he is is more than willing to do then it's up to him and his team to vet all of the books that are on all of our shelves somehow or another create a system to ensure that everybody is trained appropriately and that none of the books that violate statute that are obscene and so on and so forth are available for our kids that i think is clear so one of the questions that you mentioned is who gets to do that

166it's up to the superintendent you also ask the question um dr schiff what you read you know you not a question you stated that you read some of these books but what you read as an adult is different than what we should allow and what we can allow children to read in schools those are two totally different things and even though you might recommend the the glass castle for example and say that it is an appropriate book or that it has appropriate content is pretty interesting to me and it's actually pretty concerning it's not taken out of context so i'll read a little excerpt just to be clear from the glass castle also available right now at vero beach high school library it might be a great book for you but it's not appropriate for

167our kids here's an excerpt one of the mattresses billy's father was snoring unevenly his mouth hung open and flies were gathered in the stumble of his beard a wet stain had darkened his pants nearly to his knees his zipper was undone and his gross p dangled to one side i stared quietly then asked what's the funny thing don't you see said billy pointing to his dad he went to the bathroom on himself in a bad way i'm not reading it billy started laughing that's chapter 21 page 262. let me read another mom uncle stanley is behaving inappropriately i said oh you're probably imagining it she said he groped me he's wanking off mom cocked her head and looked corned concerned poor stanley she said he's so lonely but it was gross mom asked me if

168i was okay i shrugged and nodded well there you go she said she said the sexual assaults was a crime of perception if you don't think you're hurt then you aren't she said chapter 41. i i really don't think i should continue but grabbing at the crotch of his pants squeezing and kneading while mumbling to herself and telling brian he told he to hold still and you all can do a public records request if you want to read it i don't think that this is appropriate for kids and i can't believe that you would actually say that this might be appropriate and taken out of context this is disgusting for children if you prefer to read it as an adult that's up to you but it's not appropriate for kids and that's what we have

169to follow and i understand your concern i understand that you are emotional i get it so are we all we're on the same page here but what determines who determines who gets to say what the kids here in this district and in all of public schools read is the department of education the standards put forth the rules put forth your legislatures and board members as we set policy so here we are and what we need to do right now is just charge the superintendent with this work and let it get done you are you finished yes thank you all right um i'm going to make a couple of comments so first of all the statue is very clear i'm not going to read the whole thing again i just want to talk about one little

170piece in here and i think that's the difference with what i just heard it says that descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement or sexual conduct that is harmful to others is written under this statute of pornography it's very clear so now the question is what to do about it we have two issues here we have the issue of removing the books that are already in our media centers that may violate this statute and the second issue we have is a procedure for selecting appropriate materials and the training of those procedures and those are all in the the training i didn't see in there um but i think that that is um probably in the blanket for the superintendent to provide and do so i'm fine with that the question i asked today mr rosario

171because i wanted a very clear understanding of this because i did my homework too thank you for doing your homework it allowed me to do a lot more homework this weekend and that's fine that's our job but um the definition of instructional materials matters here and the reason why it matters is because we have a policy in place for if someone questions uh uh instructional material we've already had that this year or someone questioned hmh and so therefore there was a very clear policy on what to do about that to bring it to us and then it goes to a hearing and a hearing officer listens to it that is what any citizen in this county can do they can go and ask for that it is not a parent only that can do that

172it is any taxpayer in this county now the question i had was whether or not media center books fall under instructional materials it is under the blanket of that particular statue but it is noted as a separate item on that statue so the question i had this afternoon was do does that include is that included on our policy that every time somebody has a concern about a book it has to go to a hearing and i heard very very clearly today no what i heard was any person that has a question about a book can do anything else that they usually do when they have a question about a procedure or problem in their school and that is they don't have to go to a hearing officer they can go to their principal bring up

173the issue if they're not happy they just keep going until they get to the superintendent or call one of us okay which is what's happening it's appropriate it's what's happening so i don't think what i heard today is we don't have to go to the whole hearing officer thing at this point so your item that you brought forward i think is the way to proceed i think that's what we need to do there are procedures that we're supposed to have in place for selecting appropriate media materials and now that we have seen that some of these books have appeared and i'm not saying all the books that are in question i'm saying some of the books that have come up and alerted my ears i think that obviously that procedure wasn't really being followed in

174the past so um i know i have talked to dr moore about that and i also want to proceed very carefully on this because it is a fine line that we're following here it is a fine line when we're asking for every single time a person objects to something that we're using how is that going to be determined what is the procedure that needs to be followed let's say i don't want a book and i'm totally making this up let's say i don't want a book that teaches kids how to say the pledge of allegiance that i have a problem with that personally and i have gone to the superintendent said i don't want that book in place what is it my right to do that yes it's my right to question it but the

175question is what's the procedure then for the superintendent to follow and that is our job our job is to say we would like a procedure for something to happen when somebody questions materials and we have a procedure for instructional materials so now what i think we're trying to do is determine what should the procedure be for library materials okay uh after you hear from the superintendent yes um he needs to weigh in at this point yeah part of the um item though on one of those is to come back with recommendations with regard to policies and what needs to be put in place but we need to give him the chance the time to actually do it i agree without waiting on some of these books that need to come off immediately i agree but

176i think that there does need to be some sort of procedure for that and we talked about that today um because we do have a very definite and clear procedure for instructional materials and it has been used this year so um that's the question about media so dr moore would you like to weigh in thank you madam chair and thank board members for your passion around this item and obviously this is a very heated and that's probably the best way of saying it this is this is a overhaul and the lack of process that was on paper but not being followed for a number of years um doesn't make it right but what we as we begin to do this work and as books came in they came off the shelves principles were notified we've

177already met with principals we already created the process for school site reviews as well as district reviews the work hasn't stopped now will it shift or modify uh as we charge ourselves or create this process moving forward yeah and i will tell you there will be recommendations for changes in policy probably there will be procedures that have to be created from a school site perspective there isn't a quick fix this is a long hard look at how do you create the process at the day one to include or ensure there are not pornographic books in our school that we are aligned to the statute as i read the item as it's been created i believe this is the a good starting point to ensure that i can give the assurances to the board as it

178relates to the statute and the information within the statute that those books are not on the shelves and that is going backwards and looking at books that were there um and and sometimes you you trust some companies and look what happens uh i don't think there was any intent by a media specialist or a principal to intentionally put things that violate statute on shelves but the process that if followed and should have been followed was implemented we wouldn't have to worry about one specific person it would be a committee that would look at to ensure that the plethora of books in the media center do in fact represent all students and are aligned to the statute so this is a process that we will have to take a long hard pause to create in order

179to ensure we are aligned to the statute and we have a level of confidence when there are things in question and let's be real there are going to be questions there are books that are on the list that will more than likely be put back on the shelves and there are books um from a father's perspective and i think the board is in consensus here that are in fact supersede the expectation of surrounding that statute and we could be swift in quick in in some of those uh and take a longer harder look move moving forward there is a process that we have to have in place moving forward and i think that's what ms berenborg is referring to and quite honestly this is every school district in the nation needs to have this because

180these books uh are in an overwhelming number of school libraries so it is creating a process that works for the school district of indian river county that aligns to the statute and that is the item that ms rosario has created uh it's a good item and it will be it will serve as a catalyst for the work that lies ahead madam chair yes um dr jones go ahead you're recognized thank you um dr moore when this process begins about whether you are removing a book or not what who makes up that committee what what are we looking at here as far as who will be part of that decision so through the through the chair we have a school site committees which will be a diverse group of educators teacher leaders media assigned administrator who

181will do that that review once that review has been concluded we will come together from a district perspective which is kind of bringing the committees together in order to have a a second look in order to ensure that school a and school b are aligned in terms of that specific process ultimately the end of the road will be through me and a recommendation to you in terms of information that's being removed so i'm not putting this on any one specific individual it is a multi-layer layer approach that allows us to get to the point on the process that should have been followed so we will have to create policy and procedures moving forward in order to ensure everyone is trained up understands the expectations uh so we continue to go forward and navigate in a

182very complex difficult time that the system is safeguarded through process so what you said a diverse committee in our media specialists will be involved or how how will that uh absolutely and we need this process to protect them because i in some ways i feel bad that there may be thoughts that these individuals are intentionally selecting this material i don't believe that to be true i think they're ordering from groups of books and that information is going on there and then you will give that information to the board about why a book was removed or what books were removed in the committee decision i to be be frank i think i should be able to cite the language that this in fact is in my opinion slash the committee's opinion a graphic in the sense

183that it it violates the statute and if i can't produce that then it doesn't meet the expectation of the item that's before you right and violating the statute i think is one we all agreed on because i i i think the board is in consensus regarding the the application or the creation of process to support um books that are only aligned to the statute and books that are pornographic in nature um as defined by the statute shouldn't be there it's just we're having to go backwards which is unfortunate but that's just the work that we're charged to do and this is going back 12 13 14 years it's it's not a banning of books it's not a wide sweeping um research and re review it's specifically tailored to that statute which is the item the

184last comment i want to reiterate that 1006 34 is they always want us to consider the broad racial ethnic and socio-economic and cultural diversity of the students not only in the state but in our our district every day of the week and twice on sunday thank you okay any other board members uh yeah dr schiffer i want to clarify so to clarify what i hear you saying is there is already a policy in place and that policy wasn't followed is that correct there was a procedure yes there was a procedure was in place so the procedure was the selection of materials we could say with confidence in all cases that procedure wasn't being followed okay so we already have that right so so so what you are committing to do now is ensure that the

185procedure is properly followed yes but that doesn't help me that helps me moving forward but that doesn't help me for the last four or five years no i understand that i understand that the other thing i hear you saying um which we all agree on that the thing that i hear the board agrees on is that books should align with statute correct simple so i think there's a simpler way to say this you're going to review the procedure and you're going to ensure that the books in our libraries align with statute and you're going to bring and you're going to tell us how you're doing that that's that's essentially the bottom line that's not the only work that needs to be done so and quite transparent i have great concerns i don't think we get

186as much out of our media centers that as we should i i think they should become the process itself needs to be feeding the experience of children in classrooms we need to be intentional around providing content that helps the pull kids to the standards i don't think we're intentionally doing that i think having the conversation at a school site level say we don't have enough money to begin with in creating a innovation space or a library a media center what is it that we is the best investment to put in that space for children in our particular school which looks at the school sites improvement plan it looks at the district's strategic plan um it's having a three or four year plan on how we're going to redefine that space so um it's a timely

187item and it's in the midst of a great deal of controversy but that's fine that's what we're charged to do but at the end of the day i would hope to bring an item back in february that says not only here's what we did to fix this uncomfortable space in which we find ourselves now but here's what we're doing two three and four and five years out to redefine that particular space so this has although we're in an uncomfortable place right now i think at the end of this journey we can find ourselves with redefined spaces in our schools that are serving as the heartbeat of our schools in which all kids really really really want to go to and at the heart of it that's not what we're currently seeing in our schools okay

188mr rosario dr moore i just want to be clear the committee that you were talking about is in regard to the charge once this is approved if it's approved by the board when you go forward the committee that's written in this uh procedural manual that was not followed that's the committee you were referring to correct correct but that has nothing to do with the books that are currently sitting on the shelves that have content in it that is absolutely inappropriate what is the process for these books those those that is the immediate process for those particular books so we have to you're going to have these books go through a committee some some of them will be very very easy to do and some of them will not be easy to do but putting one

189person on the hook for doing that isn't the best way of doing this work so you have these books on our shelves right now and you're going to wait for a commitment to be selected no no no i'm not okay the books as they have come in have been pulled in order to conduct the particular review so i haven't only one book has been pulled no and doctor mister yes i'm so i'm responsible for for the school system and regardless of what mr meyer communicated in an email i'm telling you and everyone in the sound of my voice as books came in they were pulled so we can conduct the review and i've already verified that okay now some will be very very easy based on how uncomfortable it is to read that yeah that

190violates the statute others will be conversations to say all right let's look at age appropriate some of the comments that dr schiff was making those are going to be hard conversations at the end of the day they're going to be concerns on both sides of it but i will give a validation to the board there is a process that was followed multiple eyes have been on it the recommendation to the school board is yes for these and no for these uh and the yeses we have a giving you a level of assurances that that does align to statute okay board members any other discussion yes another thing um i would request that in the future if a board member makes a request about an item an issue that is likely to come to the board

191and has communication with district staff that all board members be made aware of that when i am unaware of some of that communication that's happened and it's happened only individually with one board member that puts me at a disadvantage because i don't know that communication mrs rosario cited communication she had with mr meyer that if it didn't come to all of us leaves the rest of us unaware and at a disadvantage so i i like there to be a process that we can all have equal information generally we do in this case we did not so on let me respond so as soon as the item was co-crafted i emailed that to the board i provide my staff to this board to facilitate answers to your questions that is the right thing to do from

192from my perspective as a superintendent if you have questions or concerns and no one ever excludes me um the the opposite side of that is to filter all the information through me which takes additional time it's not the way that we want to do so i don't want to tell school board members you don't have access to my staff i want to continue to have access to my staff mr meyer has bent over backwards in order to do this uh he is leading from a a solid point uh and has a a father's perspective and is acting in an ethical way um and not trying to excuse away anything and leading this specific work and there's still work to be done but i i don't want to remove access from my staff not at all

193what i'm suggesting to the contrary actually let me make one point okay if i could so just for clarification when you're talking about this current list of concerns it's not just mr meyer that's going to be making this decision okay please state that because that has been out there so i want to make sure people understand no i i think we've communicated that it's a multi-layer committee approach for even for the emergency items okay miss rosario um i just i'm just gonna piggyback off of what dr schiff just mentioned right now i've had these concerns myself i pulled up the policy on board communication board communication we should be receiving all of the communication if staff is uh communicating especially with regard to an item that is coming before us um all board members are

194supposed to be copied on that on those communications one-on-one communication not so much because it's you know your individual question or something like that but we have policy to support that and that's not being followed that has not been the case for quite a while and i have had conversations with dr moore on this same thing maybe at our next meeting we should bring forth that policy and take a look at it and have a discussion at our next discussion session or something but i i do agree with you on that i agree too okay no other discussion this has been a very long discussion but i think an important discussion um for us to take place in a public setting with all people that are concerned about this issue having the opportunity to see

195how we feel about this and how concerned we are as well that the statute needs to be followed so at this point then i'm going to call for the vote we have a motion on the on the diocese about the school board directs the superintendent to conduct a full assessment of our school libraries and media centers as outlined in the attached document that ms rosario read earlier mrs rosario made the motion dr jones second it could i get a um a vote if if you're in favor of this please say aye aye aye any opposed okay this passes 5-0 thank you mr rosario thank you thank you board members okay so i'd like to recognize dr moore for superintendent's report uh through the chair gave my report during the um initial information as next week

196the children and our teachers will be off for thanksgiving uh just a level of sharing my thanks to my to my immediate team cabinet for all of your hard work and commitment uh and continuing to push uh just thankful for the opportunity to be here and serve in the school district and i hope everyone enjoys a very relaxing week off next week [Music] thank you all right we didn't have any discussion items we had a long discussion item but it was not a separate discussion discussion item a school board member matters would anyone like to go first dr jones hold on one second okay go ahead dr jones dr moore thank you for that first quarter update very informational just double checking shouldn't we get our graduation rate pretty soon through the chair we anticipate

197celebrating our graduation month uh right next month i thought it was usually december and just um to follow up on what you said about i was here at the office one day and you had day to com and i came in and just listened a little bit to elementary and secondary principles and you know you were grilling them pretty hard and they responded well and the one thing i i really did notice at the end is what can we do for you and i want you to keep that message out there because i think you ask any principal or teacher as you said very tough year just a very tough year and not only what can you do to help our schools help our principals our teachers our support staff everyone you know what can

198we do to make sure that you are keeping focused on teaching and learning because that is a key to our success we have to talk about our students and their achievement i had a really wonderful night i think miss rosario there is at sebastian river high school for senior night for football they had skydivers band cheerleaders senior night and it was really cool coach perry's sister was a surprise visitor she is in the army in dc in a very high ranking position i was standing next to him when she was announced to sing the star-spangled banner and it was absolutely a wonderful event vero plays friday at palm beach central in wellington second round of the playoffs so good luck i had the pleasure of meeting with moonshot the puppet with my tea for thankful

199with the interaction with moonshot and it was a great experience um you know we are celebrating mcan december 9th here with our leaders in the community to continue our journey with early learning and resources and getting our students ready for kindergarten we're starting at birth getting them ready for kindergarten and making sure that they are ready to go as they all enter the school year and again another thank you for the that psa for the bus safety was excellent and i think we really got some strong messages across so thank you okay thank you dr jones who would like to go next we'll go next rosario i just want to wish everybody a happy thanksgiving i know that it's been pretty tough you know the year it's been a pretty tough year but as we

200move into this first week off i really do wish everyone has a very restful week a great week with family and friends and eat well yeah but not too much eat as much as you want doctor schiff most of the things we've already cited the the art gallery uh congratulations to our principal of the year and assistant principal of the year um the bus psa you know many of those things have already been mentioned so happy thanksgiving enjoy the time okay hold on uh mr barefoot well i just want to uh i want to recognize you mrs barrimore for all the work you did with the executive roundtable the golf tournament oh yeah that's right it was very successful i'd also like to point out that the team of moore barefoot finished the head of

201the team of berenberg berenberg yeah but we got a place and you didn't so just saying what did you get yeah i got i got a dozen golf balls oh yeah because you were on the tournament committee that's why no [Music] [Laughter] let's let's just remember so that the gauntlets down for next year there you go there you go okay you guys did pretty good i heard you i was watching the board you kept moving up we stayed ahead of us we stayed ahead of that team for the whole way well we did have a handicap my husband played i'm sure he'll appreciate hearing that after he's been he's probably under siege up in tallahassee um yeah he hasn't picked up a golf club in a long time so i i did have that out

202for him are you done with all the things that you do would you like me [Laughter] okay mr rosario i had something i just wanted to say thank you suzanne one last time this okay so just so you know that i think the number that um we were able to take in from the executive roundtable um golf tournament i don't think it's a final number because of expenses but it was about twelve thousand dollars which is really nice to be able to do to help um support a group that supports us in many ways so we appreciate that um the art gallery was wonderful um the psa was more than i had envisioned bringing that item up so i really appreciate that and thank you board members for doing that i don't know if you

203had as many bloopers as i did um i think we took my first take though correct yeah and you made me keep going even though that one was fine and i got worse all right and so um i just want to say that um you know i serve one of the items that we didn't bring up for a vote because uh it wasn't one that comes up for a vote but it's the treasure coast council of local governments and i'm now chair of that for this next coming year one of the things that i get to do as chair is to choose someone to come and speak to the group and it's interesting because it's a group that is made up of a and a representative from different municipalities and school boards from four different

204counties so you've got okeechobee people come driving over and they have a wonderful barbecue i understand in june that i didn't get to attend but um and they have a wonderful december christmas luncheon that i won't get to attend because we'll be at fsba however um when you have those four groups together they there's some power there and the power is in getting together for initiatives or problems that face us all so one of the first things i thought of to bring forward to that group was the issue of vaping and how important it is to perhaps push our legislatures and legislators into understanding the dangers for our kids in the flavors and things like that so i do have that group coming to speak so you all are more than welcome obviously at those

205meetings or to attend by teams they do both and also i'm looking for other suggestions for people that can come help us be powerful for that group i don't want it to be just about indian river initiatives because with four counties i wanted to be about something that goes across the counties i did reach out to a couple of groups here that also have organizational support in those other counties and one being united against poverty another one being healthy start treasure coast community health and the the license plate thing that we do so if you think of something else if you would get that information maybe to dr moore um and uh i'd appreciate that so if there's another group that you think could help with their awareness of what they do for us i'd

206appreciate you send us those um dates and meetings time yes they are the first wednesday of every month at 10 o'clock in st lucie county's chambers okay i'm sorry a little announcement when you're done okay and um i just like to say um we miss nancy esplin and we appreciate miss poisell and your team that helped you today we appreciate that very much and uh dr moore there is something that came up tonight that i want to address and that is um putting the camera on speakers and the reason why i think it's important to do so is because as you notice tonight anybody now has a cell phone that can take a um a video can edit it any way they want i think it's important for us to have the actual footage and

207also for people to um maybe perhaps give their address so that we know whether or not they live in our county we used to do that all the time yeah i know all the all the other organizations do that in town and and the only reason why they do it i think is so people are aware if that's a group that's coming in from out of county or in the county i i just read literally when i was reading the open meetings manual um the open meetings act i just read somewhere in there that said that there was a time where people would give their address but that is no longer really uh required if you could get that i gotta find this yes you can give it to dr moore suzanne um but i

208i really think it's important i sent it to you i sent you the entire manual but i don't think i sent you the part that says you can't give the address i think some of the things that are uh one of the reasons why of course i see suzanne brought the microphone closer is because some people might have exemptions and i think that has a lot to do with why that may have changed but go ahead suzanne there are several public hearings that must be held by a municipality or a county commission when they're doing a land use change and in order to have appropriate evidence during those public hearings the individuals who are testifying must give their address so that the commission can make a determination that their testimony is relevant let that they

209live in the area they live in the county that they're being impacted by whatever the change is being proposed so for those types of hearings it is necessary for someone to provide their residential address or their business address that that makes them relevant to the testimony they're they're providing but with regard to someone who wishes to come forward and talk to you about a school bus stop or wishes to talk to you about something else relevant to the school board many times their their physical address isn't necessary because it doesn't have anything to do with with the issue they're coming to talk to you about i think it just in my experience the only time that it may be relevant and it's a may i'm not saying it would be is if the school board

210were going through a redistricting of your school attendance boundaries and someone was coming to give testimony regarding how it impacts them or not then you would need to have some evidence from them that they actually live in that area so that may be relevant i'm not saying it's the only way to figure it out but that would be some relevant testimony to provide a public hearing but in many circumstances someone's address is not relevant to coming forward with public comment it became very commonplace for everyone school boards municipalities counties for everyone just to say you know provide your name and your address it was just to have a record of where these folks were coming from just to kind of connect it to the relevance of the topic that they were discussing okay however food

211for thought i would actually support the cameras i supported it before i didn't think it was a good idea that we removed the cameras from citizens for the same exact reason but now they can do it so you're right we need to have those cameras on there before we have an issue okay and with that we'll have superintendents closing um just remember friday we will be celebrating the district support staff uh here 12 to 2. we need all of our board members here you're going to be judges for a number of different competitions that we have going on from best cabinet theme we have theme we had food cook cook-offs so we need you we need i need your vote [Laughter] dr moore i apologize but i will be out of town i have a

212family emergency um with that having here just that need for your vote um i'm going to join the meeting at 9 14. thank you board members you