School Board Business Meeting 6 p.m. 4-27-2021

001everybody this is our tradition uh we don't have an invocation this evening but if we could just take a minute bow our heads and thank you so we'll officially call the meeting door at six o'clock on january 27 2021 and the pledge of allegiance this evening will be led by vero beach high school's air force junior rotc detachment under the direction of wade e dews chief master sergeant aerospace u.s air force and dean rasdal major u.s air force ladies gentlemen please join me in saying the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty hosts right face forward march [Applause] good evening everyone the first order of business today is an adoption is the adoption of the orders of the day

002are there any items board members wish to move from consent to action are there any additions to the orders of the day dr moore the chair i do have too as discussed earlier today during workshop i would like to request on under presentations it would be item d and it would be the 2021 ela instructional materials adoption that would be a presentation i would also like to withdraw item 12b review and take action as the matter academy charter school application all right we have a motion to approve the orders of the day some of those orders dr moore i'll turn it over to you i understand we have some video and perhaps some presentations absolutely mr chair we have two presentations or a number of presentations two of which are videos i will set up

003the first video to play and this captures an event that we really have been working on all year one of the things that we've done is to ensure that we're incorporating student voice throughout the school year so we there was a standing superintendent student advisory council we modified how that information or how that how that process was taking place this is the opportunity over the course of the year for myself uh senior staff and cabinet to engage in conversation and hear firsthand from the students what we are doing well things they want to change so it was a deep conversation regarding the reality of our school district it was pivotal in the creation of our strategic plan as we closed last year and will continue to be pivotal as we roll out new initiatives and

004modify our strategic plan going into the upcoming school year and one of the things we we did is is felt obligated just not to listen but to report back and have a level of accountability to our students so we closed out that account that student advisory council by having an opportunity to sit with them and give direct feedback to their voice in the shifts and modifications that we will be implementing as a result of their input so this is a video that captures that progress and the student voice that we encourage here in the school district of indian river county [Music] we wanted to do this as we mentioned during our last convening as an opportunity for me to say thank you for your upfront honest feedback over the course of the year and as

005i told you then this is an opportunity for us to give you feedback on the input that you have provided to us a lot of the staff you have already met and you have engaged with them over the course of the year and they're going to share how they have put to work the information that you have shared in order to continuously improve the school system my experience being on the student advisory council this year it's been one that's been exhilarating and educational i got to listen to other students from other schools talk about the same issues and problems that i had they listened to us they took in our feedback they fixed the changes that they said they were going to fix and i just can't wait till next year to see what the

006uh the changes in the success i really like that i get to be a part of finding solutions to kind of make them better for future kids who are going to come to the schools so they can have a better experience my experience in the superintendent student advisory council has been very educational inspirational and informative i've learned so much about the process that our school takes to make policies and how our educational system works i also got to input what i feel and how what i want to see happen in my school which really made me feel welcomed and made me feel loved from the district even though i'm graduating this year i saw what's going to happen next year and i saw the impact that i made with the advisors that i gave this

007year it's a different level of experience that a student can have just knowing that you're being heard and knowing that your voice means something to those that can make a change within your community it's just totally different feeling and i mean everyone should have a voice and a say into their school it's like you're the second home for a very long time so just having that say in things just makes you feel more comfortable makes you feel at home and makes you feel loved and in a place that you should feel those feelings and i don't think i could sum it up much better than that the final remarks by that student so we're very proud to put that together and continue to use their voice to guide the work that we're doing here in

008the school district and for our next presentation i'll turn it over to miss maddox hi everyone thank you for being here tonight we have another video to show you because we just had a really exciting event steam fest uh went on a couple weekends ago and we haven't had a chance to share that video with you yet steam fest was held at the ig center on april 17th and students and their families they got the chance to come and explore science technology engineering art and math it's one of those events that's not quite back to how it's been in the years past but we're so happy that they were still able to gather and have a hands-on learning experience at the ig center [Music] we are very excited today to be here at steam fest

009partnering with our local community home school vero beach academy steam fest is an amazing opportunity for our school district and our local community partners to work together to create a special event focused on steam for the students of indian river county the school district of indian river county today has gifford middle school here with some sphero robotics we also have our new lego spike prime robotics that the students in every middle school have the opportunity to use in our new computer science class we also have some students from vero beach high school using their green screen to take pictures of students with a really cool and unique background steam fest 21 was amazing we hope that you take your steam fest bag and then pull out that sdirc bag within the bag there are different

010steam challenges for the students to complete the one that we are most excited about is our superintendent engineering challenge we hope that you use the information in this bag to develop something that will help indian river county whenever you finish don't forget to upload the video on flipgrid and show us what you've created [Music] so if you have a rising seventh eighth or ninth grader we have a really cool camp this summer camp steam and you should be getting a message about it in about 20 minutes from a very familiar voice so um please check into that applications for that camp are available at your student school and they can turn it right back into the school to their principal or their teacher and there are still spots open and it should be a really

011really cool experience our next presentation is our casual for a cause presentation if you're not familiar with casual for a cause it's a selected organization for each month that students and teachers have the ability to dress down for a day in return for a donation towards this organization and during the month of march i know we're a little bit behind but we're catching up students across the district had a chance to dress down to raise money to support the march of dimes so tonight we have stacy myron here she's the executive director from the march of dimes uh the miami southern florida market and she's here with us tonight would you like to speak a little bit about the march of dimes all right thank you but wasn't prepared for that but i can wing

012it really well so so thank you so much of dimes i'm sure if i asked everyone in this room have you heard of the march of dimes everyone will raise their hand and say yes if i say do you know what we do maybe half of the room might raise their hand and say and advise so we obviously started as curing polio and we now focus on all health uh all everything involved around maternal care so before you're pregnant why you're thinking of getting pregnant if you're pregnant and god forbid should you wind up in the nicu with an early delivery we're there for you through that whole process so thank you very much and we are proud to announce that as a school district we we raised 3 207 dollars and 16 cents for

013the march of dimes with storm grove middle school raising the most money at 544 we have a giant check one second this is for you and for a cool photo prop so thank you very much we'll make sure that yes if you want to go to the front we'll get a picture with our board members okay i'll help [Applause] let me take pictures that's why i'm in sneakers three [Applause] we had a very special group of students that was gathered this year they're the young journalists of the school district of indian river county and we're honored to have some of the members here tonight of the young journalists organization and i would like to ask serena skye who is the executive director of the young journalist organization to come up and share a few things

014about all of our young journalists all right how's everybody doing tonight i'm serena i'm the executive director of the young journalist my dream has always been to make a positive impact on somebody's life i had no idea whose life it was going to be but i just knew it was somebody so our team works very hard on keeping children actively learning and enjoying every part of education and specifically our program we won't have a program so unique and moving without obviously our founder thomas hardy so i just first want to say thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to have a program such as the young journalist is it okay if i take this off to speak okay sorry um our mission is to nurture intellectual curiosity and instill a lifelong love of

015writing and reading while also getting a chance to publish their very own byline we work on accomplishing this mission by going into the extended day programs and teaching the tools of journalism now i can list all of those tools for you but i think you get the gist the young journalists program places all of its energy towards enhancing their education in order for them to develop successful life skills the children's accomplishments through this year have been out of this world amazing we had 13 students enroll at fellsmere elementary and with very very limited time they got out all of their articles as well as made their very own uh broadcast indian river academy had four students whose articles were completed in just two weeks and these articles are anywhere between two to six pages long

016so i don't know about you when i was in school writing a two to six page paper was not done in two weeks and then the last thing i'd like to really share with you about our program are two quotes that we really stand by as you know mentors and educators building the next generation through reading and writing and we believe children need someone to put their education first building reading and writing readers and writers is a part of our mission and children's education should always come first in everyone's mind but we can't do all of this alone we need your help as well we are a non-profit always seeking support in our in our endeavors if you wish to join our team support our students or any of the above we do have a

017website that explains much deeper into what our program does for each of our students and our schools it's the youngjournalist.com and you can also find my contact information and i'm very quick with email so i i will get back to you as soon as possible we appreciate the school board and everything i'm sorry everyone else for allowing us to come here and speak on behalf of the young journalists and all they accomplished this is huge for our students we can't really show how much we appreciate them in many ways so this is really great for our kids and thank you parents for bringing them with you [Applause] thank you very much and i was honored to be interviewed by a group of the young journalists and they were very professional um they had their questions

018all lined up i i was really blown away so i'm looking forward to moving forward with that program and what it's going to look like next year we have a few they're not here for the students who could attend tonight and the rest of them we have for the students who couldn't attend tonight but they will definitely get their certificate annabella irwin [Applause] congratulations and if you would stay here because we're going to take another picture just like we did okay all right thank you and nali gonzalez and ollie's not here tonight santiago goleos [Applause] all right and we have several other students that are in this group that were not able to make it tonight but the two of you are so you get to go up there and take a picture now oh

019robert poppler robert we are so happy that you're here and i'm sorry that we didn't we also have certificates for our leaders mr thomas hardy [Applause] thank you for being here tonight mr hardy and robert got his certificate so robert mr nick samuel [Applause] thank you nick angela himes [Applause] thank you and of course serena skye all right can i ask everyone to go to the front for a picture please congratulations maybe we should go up here all [Applause] dr moore back to you thank you our final presentation will be presented by mr meyer who's the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction this is a presentation that highlights the process used to adopt instructional materials uh and how it has been modified within the last year to align to the new best standards with that mr

020meyer thank you dr moore um and through the chair this has been uh for me a wonderful experience as i've shared with some people with my background you know being in the military there's a quote that gets misattributed to different people but it goes something to the effect of i may not agree with what you say but i'll defend to my death your right to say it i as five years served in the army two years overseas i love to see the public comment i loved it i had an opportunity to speak with a number of people prior to this but i think it's important to do this presentation to really inform the public more about what's going on i think that you know while i respect all the opinions of the people i've had

021the opportunity to speak with and we'll continue to go outside and speak with everybody there's been some misinformation about the process and what goes on so we're going to try to clear that up of course listen to any public comment and i'll continue to speak with any constituent that wants my time because i do believe in that process and do believe it's important furthermore this was the work that i did before joining your board this was the work that i did at the florida department of education as a director of reading so very exciting to me for us to work through this and don't mind doing this presentation at all so a little bit of historical context what we're going to do here is go over the timeline of significant events in florida a review

022of some relevant florida statutes and then i'll outline how the the school of indian river county went through their process in january 2019 right as governor ron desantis was being inaugurated he issued i mean within 30 days i remember being there in the building in the turlington building seeing drafts of this executive order issued executive order 1932 which required the commissioner of education to articulate how florida will eliminate common core and ensure that we return to the basics of reading writing arithmetic reflect the commissioner's consultation with relevant stakeholders including parents and teachers and then deem how to increase the quality of the instructional curriculum because we know that what teachers do in the classroom is really going to be what makes a difference for our students so that was an exciting day as i said

023i was the executive director of just read florida and we got to work my staff got to work on this um and i will not take credit for their work i had some great people that helped design those standards with input from the state um and then you know i joined this this team uh in february of 2020 and just two months after that the state board of education adopted those best standards under the direction of uh governor desantis and commissioner richard corcoran and at that time they directed the florida department of education to complete an instructional materials adoption process that that you know got us newer materials it got the best standards eliminated the common core and with a very aggressive timeline to ensure the district school boards were able to implement those in

024k2 this upcoming year of course you know the materials really are k5 we could discuss that later if anyone has any questions because you know the basals come for the entire elementary school but but really they want to make sure the k2 was able to begin this 21-22 school year so from there the department of education uh released the 2021 ela instructional material specifications happy to provide that uh link to anybody that would be curious to have that um at the doe which outlined the criteria that the publishers must go through and one of the things that was in that that all publishers had to include was multicultural advocacy and not just the understanding you know as far beyond that representation as you all can read here but it involves embracing a multicultural context not

025just through pictures but through the information about ways to honor differences and deal with conflicts promoting positive self-image for members of all groups and provide for the development of healthy attitudes and values so that was included in those specifications that all vendors had to do if they wanted to be on the list of approved materials subsequently then um in march of 2021 the the florida department of education completed their review and adoption process and gave us a list of their adopted materials of which there were only four for for elementary and of course as obligated by that they they all included that multicultural advocacy uh within them and so that lists um we got i'll go through some timelines of how that that implemented us but you know these statutes this is florida law this

026is this is not something that you know i as an assistant superintendent of curricular instruction who's sworn to uphold florida statutes who has to make the recommendations to the superintendent who has to bring a legal recommendation to the board had really have the opportunity to deviate from you can see here where commissioner richard corcoran through his duties appointed three experts to review these materials those experts are bound by this florida statute which requires them to only recommend materials that accurately portray uh the ethnic social economic cultural religious physical and racial diversity of our society if any of these materials violated that these experts appointed by commissioner corcoran they would not be able to recommend the materials to be on that list there's a few other things in this statute which you know i don't think

027are as contentious from the the things that i've heard from people in the comments i don't think that anyone is really debating um you know tobacco alcohol and things of that nature nor this bullet which is this is really the third of four broke it up on these slides so there's ease of of viewing but i don't think anyone has any issues with that second one but but once again i would just draw everyone's attention to the highlighted part there where you know we may not recommend any materials that contain any matter reflecting unfairly upon persons because of the race color creed national origin ancestry gender religion disability or socioeconomic status so those are the materials that once that evaluation was conducted by the the experts appointed by commissioner corcoran he released that list and

028you can see here you know where the statute lists his power and duties to do so so as that was occurring here's our timeline and this has been something that is you know for anyone that's been in this business for a while it's always frustrating to districts because we can see the bids that are there we start our review process but but generally speaking we don't get the list in a timely fashion i'm just going to set out publicly big kudos to commissioner corker and his team because there's a statute that i didn't reference on there but it does require them to release that by april 1st they met that a day or two early so it was a big shout out to the department of education for getting that list out but we we

029had to go through our process sort of unknowing to what the department of education would do and like i said earlier about my background of what went on i was excited about this but my staff can tell you how excited i was to get the instructional materials they came in was like christmas it's like oh let's go through these i love this um i don't know i like it um but you know we wanted to make sure we we took a look at everything we took a look at every single one of the materials that were on the list to make sure we weren't missing anything we didn't have any prejudices and we made our recommendations in march to the school board initially we did recommend amplify k5 amplified 68 and savas for 9 through

03012. as that list came out and we found that amplify was not on the approved materials we reconvened our instructional materials review committee and they unanimously voted to go towards hmh and so you know very proud of hmh as i said to many schools i visited a couple who really hmh was their first choice they were probably excited when hmh uh ended up being the the direction that we're going with with the recommendation um they're good solid curriculums they're they're highly rated all of them from third-party reviewers both in the state out of the state approved by the commissioner uh and i have absolutely you know 100 confidence that the the products that we're recommending meet those state statutes um and meet the criteria as required by law so with that that was my presentation

031i don't know where we want to go from here dr moore from any board members or just move on to where we go yeah one of the things that i might mention is that these this hmh has been at last count 44 out of the 67 districts in the state of florida correct have approved or will approve and are using this particular curriculum but are there any other board members who would like to start with dr schiff no i i was just going to point out that and asked um yeah mr meyer to just remind us of how many districts that have already or are about to adopt these same standards but you've just spoken to that um mrs baron borg cheers rosario uh oh you can look miss behrenberger okay sure you know um

032i read the information that was sent to people and it's interesting when somebody cherry picks something out and they send it out because of their cause and their concerns and they're upset you know it does rile people up and it does get them upset and they do come to our board meetings very concerned and i appreciate the fact that you are concerned in here um i was concerned with some of the things that i saw in there too so uh having been on a committee for the state reviewing instructional materials i did it for science i'm going to tell you the process a little bit about what i went through and that is they send you every single thing from every single publisher even if you don't approve them you get everything a year in

033advance so i went through all the materials for one year and then we convene as a group so nobody talks to anybody until we get to that point when we convenient as a group in tallahassee we had two different times that we had to go there the first time was a presentation by the different publishers i saw people fired on the spot why it's big business for one two if they didn't follow the exact rules which are following state statutes that are voted on by our legislators they don't get approved we throw them right out if they didn't send us one thing there was one company didn't forgot to send us one lab equipment that was thrown out big money to them lost okay because you can't be purchased with our dollars that we use

034for curriculum if you're not on that list so that list is really vetted and i will say that we're giving and i asked for these today thank you we were given the specifications from the um the office from the doe and these specifications are what we have to follow when we're looking at review and material so this is not haphazard by any means and racially divisive curriculum has no place in our schools absolutely not and i will prevent programs that stereotype scapegoat or demean people on the basis of race so when i saw something like that and people are bringing up terms that are upsetting people it perks my interest too as a board member i want to know what is going to be happening in our schools what are teachers going to be presenting

035to kids so curriculum is one thing what a teacher does in the classroom is something interesting and different and i've been a teacher for a long time and i know that i work with teachers that sometimes take liberals opinions on moving off the topic that is not what's here today what's here today what we're discussing today is whether or not the materials in front of us met the specifications and followed statute which if the office of the doe which is commissioner corcoran who is very conservative and governor desantis who signed off on this who's very conservative if they felt as though this had been well vetted and gone through then i felt comfortable with it but then when i saw some of the things that were sent to me i had some concerns about some

036of the terminology and the words that were there so i did more research and went through that and then i went back to the specs and i went back to the statue and i realized that's what they had to do according to the statute that's what it says that this company had to do now are they taking it to that next level of concern that concerns me as a board member no but i have been told that in our professional development we will stress to teachers that they need to stay within this statute and within this rule that is here absolutely absolutely absolutely and so um you know i think that is where people get concerned they get concerned that people are going to take something and run with it and then you're going to

037have to deal with it when your child comes home and talks to you i get it i've been a parent i've had to deal with those things so my kids come home and say something that upsets me as a parent because that's not what we believe in our home so i understand your concern i appreciate the fact that you're here there were three things that came out of this that were quite interesting in the specs one was the accuracy so i'm just going to go to that point because this was something i looked up the content must be accurate in historical context and contemporary facts and concepts that is state statute okay they are within that um multicultural part is very extensive now this was not here when i looked at curriculum that was many

038years ago when i was on the state state committee but i will say this here is what made me go oh i see why they put the terminology that they did on those pages i understand why the terminology is there now because it's right here in the specs in the statute it concerned me when i saw some of the terminology and then when i went back here i realized that's why it's there i'm very familiar with hmh i worked with them as a partner and a liaison when i worked in my other district i know them pretty well and uh they're very very good company they're a company based out of orlando they follow state law and they won't veer from that because they know not to they're going to lose money if they do

039that they will lose our money so this is not a company that's going rogue this is concerning me that people are starting to put that out there about something that when i investigated i realized this is why they had to do this because it's in statute it's right here in the specs anybody can look at these specs you're more than welcome to ask for them okay and you're more than welcome to ask for the statute and as far as governor desantis and richard corcoran agreeing to this that they have done everything that they're supposed to do and they vetted to this i feel comfortable now with what i see um dr jones mrs rosario would you care to make any comments um first i'd like to just clarify or make a little bit clearer that

040we are not voting on hmh today we are not voting on it what is happening today is that the elementary curriculum is being proposed to be on display for you all to see for the next 20 days is it it's already been on display for 20 days so what we're doing i mean you're on the right track this is to receive public comment about that and we will vote at a later date so for the next 20 days you all can go out and well depending on when the meeting is we've done the 20 days that part of statute we've it's been out there for 20 days but they can still see absolutely yeah you all can go out you can see the curriculum you can provide your feedback um and there is a specific

041form mrs d agresta notified or let me know about this earlier what mrs d agresta can you explain what the process is if parents have concerns and if they want to object absolutely mrs rosario once the school board takes official action and we're talking about elementary curriculum so if once schooler takes official action with regard to the elementary proposal from the superintendent which isn't tonight at some future board meeting that starts a 30-day timeline for parents of students or any resident of indian river county to file a challenge on the form that is on the district's website there's a specific form that must be filled out and submitted by before the 30-day deadline expires and if if someone were to file that form then there will be an independent hearing officer assigned to hear those

042challenges and make a recommendation back to the school board with regard to anything that the hearing officer determines during that hearing and then the school board at that time would make a final decision with regard to the curriculum and at that time mrs d agresta if the school board um honors the dissensions if there are many dissensions and the school board honors that and there is a a a change in in curriculum we do not go forward with hmh and we choose to go with a different um curriculum what happens at that point um i would then defer to the superintendent and to mr meyer to reconvene committees and to have additional reviews of the other state-approved curriculum or instructional materials for the elementary ela so i asked that because a lot of people don't

043understand the process and and i and i want to be able to let everybody understand that process um i also wanted to say that the list that was given to the school districts to choose from were very limited in terms of the elementary we only had four approved publishers only four approved publishers for the entire state of florida think about that only four of which we are allowed to choose from that does not give us a lot of choice and every single one of them have some kind of component that looks exactly like the other which is why you are all here we do not write the curriculum we don't write it we don't create it we're not the publishers the real fight if you all have concerns is with the publishers and with the

044department of ed as a board member as a mom and as a concern as a homeschooler a true homeschooler not just a covid homeschooler a true homeschooler for seven years you are parents and you have the right to view the curriculum and this is your opportunity you have the right to review it and to voice your concerns that said i also want to shed a little bit of light on a couple of things that i i think might be a misunderstanding as well social and emotional learning is not critical race theory and social emotional learning is not um culturally responsive teaching social and emotional learning has been in our schools for quite a while already and it's been in our curriculum for quite a while and in my opinion as an educator for many years

045it's very very important that it remain there so i don't want you know the the mixing up of information um for you all to to misunderstand what that means social and emotional learning at the really at the base in the classroom basically allows the teacher uh really in its simplest form to care for children who might be hungry you know who haven't had lunch who haven't had breakfast who um maybe whose clothes have not been washed in a while or you know who are socially having difficulties um and it there's there's so much more to that but that's really the social emotional uh component of it within curriculums it's written in there and within you know classroom environments um that's important those are core you know needed competencies that occur in classrooms and in schools

046on a daily basis and that's been happening for a while what i think the concern is is in this new term called culturally responsive teaching that's the part that i think is really the concern that many people might be here for because in culturally responsive teaching which to me is fairly new and seems to be addressing all of the statute requirements that the publishers are including in their textbooks have it has hints of critical race theory or some racially divisive words within it or some other things within it so on the surface it kind of looks benign when you're looking at you know when you're looking at um curriculum but when you dig a little deeper into it then it's there are concerns right and some of you have seen some of those concerns so

047i started doing a little research on what critical what culturally responsive teaching is and there are several definitions of it many of these publishers are not very clear in their definition either so in talking with the superintendent and and mr meyer on what does that look like for us here in indian river county it does boil down to professional development it boils down to our definition which at this for our purposes as board members uh dr moore i think at some point we're going to need to sit down and kind of have a working definition of what these things are so that we can figure out how that works in our district for our students and within the classrooms how does that unroll um especially with uh with uh professional development one of the areas

048that's in this culturally responsive teaching aspect are things and why it appears to be pretty divisive is that they're saying they say things like teachers culturally responsive teacher needs to diligently work to reflect on their unconscious attitudes and their unconscious bias or teachers need to or can cause a disruption at the district level if they don't agree with policies or norms um or that if the or that some some items in the within the curriculum can be changed which leaves it up to very subjective you know concerns or you know if a school is rolling out elementary school students might learn an environmental injustice and devise a plan for cleaning up a local river that sounds fine right we do that now anyway but middle school students might learn to apply math concepts to an

049analysis of racial inequities in traffic stop data or high school students explore solutions to police brutality now some of these things are very politically charged for obvious reasons and those are the things that need to stay out of the classroom because they're so politically charged and they're so racially divisive not that they're not real or that we don't have them in society but in my opinion they need to stay out of the curriculum so we come down to now that's not the definition of the school board that's not the definition of uh what's written inside of the curriculum in many of the these publishers that are out there they do have their own working definition of them which means that we at our level have to be very very very very purposeful in identifying what

050this means what does this portion within the curriculum how is it going to be taught how is it going to be addressed we have the opportunity to do that we have the opportunity to define everything from a to z with regard to the curriculum and how it unrolls what does that mean i know that we are not going to i know that i am not going to ignore the comments because i am an elected official i am only here to be the voice of the people and on multiple occasions there are voices [Applause] on multiple occasions there are multiple voices that come to us through email or through phone call or you know when we see each other face to face and in supermarkets and so on and so forth on playgrounds um in churches

051you know there's so many different voices and so many different opinions but when you when you're dealing with um something that's literally going to be shaping the minds of the children within this school district uh we have to listen to the parents we have to listen to you these are your kids these are your children now i'm going to take a step back there and i'm going to say on the whole these uh publishers are not terrible publishers they have excellent history they have great uh reputation they've been used um and used and used and used so their platform is not just the textbooks their platform is online right they have um a multi-use for ell students and eld students and our ese students which all these acronyms um but there are there is now

052a platform there is an opportunity for us to have spanish textbooks or spanish books available for our students in i think fellsmear but there are lots of other options for you know for purchasing any of the textbooks to be honest with you because they're all really good publishers on the whole my issue which i think is your issue or is that small portion that is unknown so we've got to get to figure out what is that unknown and how are we going to define it dr jones thank you and a special thank you to mr meyer for that presentation at our workshop today we thought it'd be great to get that information out there um and i'm interested in hearing citizen input also one thing that i see a common theme throughout our strategic plan

053our code of conduct is that we are all inclusive we do not have discrimination regardless regardless of race religion culture sexual orientation we want every child every staff member here to be safe when they come to school and i think we've honored that pretty well i have served on several textbook committees school district and state and also state standards the one thing i wanted to be very clear on is that obviously this is state adopted material and that we are following state statute which to me is so so very important when it says to include only instructional materials that accurately portray the ethnic socioeconomic cultural religious physical and racial diversity of our society and that's very important because that came from our governor and our commissioner of education standards are very very important if you

054ask any educator today it's tough to teach all the standards that are expected of them especially before testing time there is not a lot of room for fluff or creativity like we used to have so i ask that we honor our teachers and that they know the standards the principals know the standards and the expectations and they're tough every one of them every every subject area has some really tough standards so again i'm anxious to hear what everyone says and i'm very proud to be part of a district that shows were inclusive um any further comments uh from board members can i just make sure the other thing i think i'm going to stress it again i think that the importance here is understanding that you know as far as i looked at the publishers

055following what they had to follow my concern is what i'm sure a lot of parents concern is is that somebody goes beyond that when they're in the classroom and that's what's opening pandora's box i think and so we need to ensure that parents aren't going to have to deal with situations that come to the home because of what happened in a conversation in school so i think that professional development as mr rosario spoke to as well as myself i think it's extremely important that we're very very careful with how we present this with our teachers and how the teachers move forward with it in the classroom well i think all of you i could not be more pleased with my colleagues all of whom dr schiff as well have in the classroom experience they've served

056in leadership positions uh besides obviously being moms and i think that uh all of you should have great confidence that this board led by these four ladies not that i'm not on board but they have the experience that i don't have in the classroom with young children we're going to do the best we can to make sure that if at the end of the day this curriculum is formally voted on that the district dr moore and mr meyer provide the kind of developmental training that my colleagues have indicated are so necessary uh one more comment and then we'll go to public input thank you mr meyer you had mentioned before i just wanted to touch a little bit just to clarify as well on the screen you have um amplify k2 k through five amplify

057six to eight and savis nine through twelve the amplify k through five just so that um the public is clear on this is the first curriculum that you were vetting with um whomever the committees were here at the district level because that was the first choice of the district uh through the chair correct at that time as i stated we we wanted to look at everything because we did not know what would be approved by the department of education i learned a lesson in that and next time when i come to the board i'm going to bring you the ranking from the committee if we are finished with our process before the state is which is why we had to reconvene the committee after we found out that amplify was not going to be a

058viable choice we next time with the math we could go ahead and order the the math curriculum so we would know first second third fourth fifth and we would take of course the highest that's approved by the department i think uh but no amplify right now is not k5 the k5 version the 68 is uh the k5 is not approved by the department so so it's my understanding though that we even though it's not on the approved list the elementary amplified k-5 is not on the approved list for school districts from the doe it's my understanding that we still at our level can choose a curriculum that is not uh on the approved doe list but there is a process for that is there still an opportunity for us to go with amplify k5 i

059think there is so through the chair it's a it's a different process it's a process quite honestly that we would not complete uh before the start of the year and i think the other challenge there is the department of education has already you know essentially said that it doesn't meet their standards so if we were to select that and we would be going against the recommendation of commissioner corcoran and the governor in this and it's not something that i would recommend us do in order to do that we would have to release our own bid uh and negotiate with the companies independently and the challenge there is since it's a it's a just between us and and the vendors the price that we would pay would probably be substantially higher than what the the state

060bid that's one of the reasons that districts also go with the state bid process is because the state can bid on this in an economy of scale and all districts have to be offered the same product if we were to try to do our own thing we would it would be very difficult for us to do and like i said the the only publishers who um are out there remember these are new books to the entire country these are the florida best standards books they're the non-common core books any publisher who attempted to develop one tried to get on that list there's not going to be another viable product out there other than the ones that attempt to do this no one else created that product so although you're right we could you know with

061different instructional materials do our own thing there are many disadvantages to doing that and in this particular instance is definitely not something i would recommend to the superintendent for us to pursue so this is a learning curve for me too because these are the first of these kinds of conversations that i've had but what's interesting to me is um the doe did not approve would approve amplify for middle k six through eight but won't approve the same curriculum for k through five like why not just say amplify is good for k through 12 and let the districts choose you know which ones that they right i mean it just seems to make sense but i understand what you're saying i just think that that's just so through the chair they're they're all unique that the

062grade spans have different requirements and the standards are different um the the state did not release the review at this time i'm sure you know it's a public record someone could request it but it's not on the website as to why amplify fell short but as those reviewers as some of our other board members mentioned going through the process there's different reasons why amplify may not have made that list at k35 i do not know why that is um but it's not a all-inclusive k-12 it is each and every um grade level and product so something somewhere with the requirements for k-5 there was an issue all right so we're all part of an educational community now many of us have been educated at least at least to a degree so we're going to go

063to the uh citizen input portion of the meeting uh there's i there's people here that want to speak to something other than this particular curriculum issue so uh just be mindful of the time and the courtesy that would like you would like it extended to all the other folks that may want to discuss uh and make a comment to the school board i will read um what i'm required to read just so everybody knows what the rules are the public may offer public comments by appearing in person such persons will be placed in the meeting room subject to space availability additional attendees will be placed in areas outside the meeting room and invited into the meeting room at the appropriate time alternately the public may offer public comments by emailing comments to the following email

064citizen input april 27th at 7 at indianriverschools.org all public comment emails must include a completed speakers form available below in fillable infillable and pdf formats all emails must have the completed speaker form attached or the public comment submission will not be considered all emails containing public comment with a completed and attached speakers form received by 12 noon on march on april 27th 2021 we provided to all school board members prior to the meeting and will be appended to the meeting minutes the public is advised this email address will be used solely for obtaining public comments for the board meeting and should not be used for other purposes or questions persons may only speak once about any given item consisted with school board policy 0169.1 and there are further guidelines each statement made by a member

065of the public shall be limited to three minutes duration persons will be recognized in the order in which the requests were received persons may speak for up to three minutes at the beginning of the 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 in the order of business per persons may only speak once about any given item either at the citizen input portion or of the action item portion the time period may be extended by the presiding officer only the individual submitting a speaker's form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded to other speakers the other thing is no clapping no booing so on that note

066i will begin we've got quite a few here in person and understand we have three emails to read which we will uh read at the end of this the first speaker this evening is hunter crawford i'm here on behalf of sebastian river high school's welding program it's how it's in how would i say endangerment of being expelled from the school itself there should be i'm a former student of mr bottler here he's the weld instructor there they don't give him enough time and they don't give him enough materials of what he needs in order to get us through the curriculum that is supposed to be taught to us instead of rushing us through what would take a year to properly be done he had to force it through us in four to six months and

067that's not exactly how that welding program should be ran and due to limited supplies caused me and several other classmates to not exactly everybody couldn't work at once everybody had to work at separate times in order to thoroughly go through each one of our phases of our curriculum in the book um fortunately i passed the class and got my nccr certs and i didn't get it up until about two days before graduation three days before graduation and that was due to lack of materials and lack of time for the curriculum how would i say the time span of the curriculum is much shorter than what it should be and due to that there are some kids that didn't pass obviously for other reasons but since i've graduated i've been welding i'm a structural welder now

068i work 30 days out of the state i work you know i come back for 15 20 days at a time i'm 20 years old i make 90 000 a year and same thing applies with other curriculums in the school as far as you know culinary and automotive i make i would say on average 80 to 95 000 a year for the two years that i've graduated and i see i've done considerably well for myself but i feel like if that program could be extended a little more a little more given a little more time on the curriculum i feel that it would be a lot more you'd have a lot a higher passing rate in the class instead of having to rush kids through it and force stuff on them and and don't give

069them time to learn it if you if you even added two months to that program it would have a significant impact on it but them trying to get rid of the trades and push kids into college is where they're having a problem as far as the trades go automotive workshop welding you name it if it's a trade they need to put them back in schools getting rid of that welding program is probably the worst thing they could do and that's about what all i got to say thank you mr crawford please no clapping please next speaker scarlett chesser so hi my name is scarlett chesser my daughter is a freshman at sebastimer high school my family has been in this area since the 1800s my great-grandmother was the first woman principal in individual county i've

070always felt a sense of pride living in individual county i've been an educator myself for 18 years allowing my daughter to go to newark county schools though unfortunately has been an entirely different story my daughter began going to newark county schools since in seventh grade she is esc but i can tell you that over the past three years that she has not received the services that she is required for her iep as you may be well aware this is against the law your district currently owes my daughter 30.5 hours in compensatory minutes minutes that she never received that by law she was supposed to receive your district admits that they are out of compliance no my daughter are these minutes but three years is a tremendous amount of time to let a student fall behind

071coincidentally i met with your district director yesterday among other members of my daughter's iep team to discuss the fact that she had not been receiving services but we also addressed that my rights to her records had been denied since november this is called an access rights violation unfortunately dr matthews who was supposed to be a part of the meeting was not fully in attendance she said that she had multiple interruptions and when i requested this documented in our conference notes she denied me the right to place this in our notes once again a complete violation of my rights thankfully i was allowed to make a phone call to discuss my rights pertaining to this denial during our water break and i was advised to make an amendment to our notes and therefore documented documented this

072denial so i did but upon leaving this meeting yesterday there were so many red flags why wasn't your district director able to actively participate in this meeting why was she so hesitant in answering my questions why would she deny my rights here's what i found out the surrounding areas esd directors were all certified in the following areas i'm just going to say district a ed leadership mentally handicapped specific learning disabilities district b elementary education ed leadership english speakers of other languages school principle varying exceptionalities district c elementary ed english english speakers of other languages exceptional student education reading district d adaptive physical education ed leadership exceptional student education physical education school principal indian river county's esc director is certified in one thing english now in the requirement for that that position according to your own

073website the job description requires certification in ed leadership your reputation in the esc department is not good and maybe this is why on friday i'm supposed to go into further negotiations with your esc district director regarding my daughter yet this is a person who isn't even qualified nessie why would i negotiate with your county regarding my daughter's well-being with someone who doesn't even understand the gowdies in iep or students with exceptionalities this leads me to my next point it has come to my attention that your district is currently in the process of hiring a chief equity and diversity officer how or why would we trust in your hiring capabilities who is hiring i'd like you to consider it the following quote diversity and inclusion are about giving value to every human no matter our differences

074i hope when you consider hiring people that are supposed to make such a difference in the lives of each of the students living in indiana county you can first begin with making sure they're qualified thank you mrs chester and they give you your time thank you you're so welcome ladies and gentlemen this is this is the second second warning if it continues i'm going to have to ask law enforcement to come in i don't want to do that next speaker is anna downing um so i'm here on on behalf of sebastian river middle school high school's welding program um i am a 400 student of mr baldors and i was told that the program is in danger of being canceled and i think that is a huge mistake i may not look like i could

075be a welder but i learned so much from this program from the three years that i was in it i was certified when i graduated and i was lucky enough to be in a small classroom where we were able to learn all of us side by side but i know that a lot of classes weren't able to do that and this is an excellent program mr baldwiff did everything that he was supposed to be doing he was an excellent teacher to me and to my my classmates and i just think that this program is really important for students and even though i am not going into the welding career and i did choose a college path i think that is it it is extremely important for kids to have the opportunity to choose between those

076two things and to take that away is just it's it's terrible but that is all i had to say about that thank you thank you thank you next speaker is is matthew burge if i'm reading it correctly um hello i am a student at sebastian river high school and current student to mr baldwiff um over the course of that class i have learned so many skills that apply to everyday life and i don't while i do not plan to continue in the welding field i do feel that the skills learned in that class are important to know and it is a shame to close such a program down that's all i got next speaker holly burge hello my name is holly bird you've just met my son who incidentally uh that's some serious courage on

077his part to stand up here in front of all of you uh i'm here really for two reasons number one in support of mr bodorf and the welding program at indian river well sebastian river high school we very much would like to see that program continue if not indefinitely at least for the next year clearly my son is learning something my son is a straight a student at sebastian river high school but he is atd and the program offers him a hands-on opportunity that he does not get in any of his other courses especially under the certain the the current covid situation which has been a disaster as everybody knows um i would also like to talk about the future of these welding programs and the other technical type educational opportunities that they offer here

078in indian river county i have a little bit of information or a little bit of exposure to the curriculum that matthew is going through with welding and i see a lot of a lot of material and a lot of shall we say hoops that the children are required to jump through um writing assignments different things that really are not well let's just say the whole purpose of a trades type program is to teach a child who is not college bound and functioning in an academic capacity to allow that child an opportunity to grow and develop in a skill set that he can use to provide for his future his family you know and the community i see a lot of the academic angst of reading writing and arithmetic leaking into these technical programs in a

079way that is not productive and i hope that in a nutshell the leadership of indian river county school system will examine those programs and try to eliminate as much of that as they can they get enough reading of writing and arithmetic and the other side of school they need to have their hands on projects and be learning the trade specifically in those technical programs that's how i feel about it thank you for your time thank you next speaker keith garrett try and be as brief as possible i am here for my son steven and the other classmates in the welding program it seems like about a year ago this time we were here last year visiting this issue and now it's up again luckily the board came to their senses and extended it one more

080year however that doesn't do anything for the people that are now juniors looking towards their senior year and graduating there was talk about the the perkins five grant which i'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of the school board and legislation and all that and that for the department of education but the certification that these kids were to receive they were saying it didn't meet the guidelines for this grant well that is not the case and what i've gathered and um i mean you guys need to extend it one more year you heard the young gentleman was 20 years old up here i mean the ability to make money is there and guess what you know plumbers electricians welders they were all working through the cove and everybody else is sitting around collecting

081unemployment so you need the blue collar guys uh itself you know i'm here for selfish reasons because of my son but uh you know you need to keep the hands on stuff too just as much as college prep so that's all i've got hopefully you'll continue on with the program and mr botteroff he's a you know instrumental to a lot of the kids and he's a good mentor that's all i've got thank you mr garrett next speaker stephen garrett i'm stephen garrett i'm here on behalf of the welding program uh there ain't a whole lot i could say they ain't already been said but what you're doing is wrong i mean we've been in that class for two years now you ask any one of his students why do they come to that school it's

082for his program there ain't no reason and a lot of us you know we run our first beats or whatever last year we do projects and stuff we got picture that cause we're proud of doing that stuff in his class stuff we wouldn't have been able to do if it weren't for him and him teaching us how to do it now we're not asking for a whole lot here you've already taken away the certifications we're just asking one more year just to not end it so we can at least finish it for our senior year and if i'm being honest at the end of the day all y'all out there y'all get paid the same amount of money whether that that program stays or goes and you really want to take it away like there's

083not a whole lot that you know we just just let's finish the program you know that's about it thank you mr garrett next speaker nicole component campanelli good evening dr moore you sir have a conflict such as a dictator with do as you do as i say not as i do mentality the day after our last school board meeting you and a couple of the um board members were at the taxpayers association meeting with no mass you were walking around a room i'm assuming you were spreading covet since you were speaking and walking around the tables by the way the room looked to be like it was filled to capacity i took screenshots of the event and wrote you and the school board members an email and once again no one has responded and i

084think i know why because i'm right and you guys are in the wrong either asymptomatic spread is real or it isn't i stated last meeting that is asinine that our children are forced to wear masks at their desk when they're in a room with the same 18 people day after day after day and yet here you all are muzzleless with a ton of people and get here in our meetings you wear the mask as a display of political theater how are your actions okay but our children are forced to wear a mask in school at their desk all day and is it because you are the elite and we are the peasants the commissioner of the department of education has asked you to make mass voluntary for next school next year's school opening plan i

085really hope you consider to finally do the right thing for these kids um let's stop this heinous child abuse and tyranny being perpetuated against our children it's time to unmask them it's been time dr jim meehan stated when children are masked forced to read their own exhalations and capable of seeing the smiles of their friends and loved ones separated by plastic shields and commanded to remain six feet from each other they are not in school they are in hell i'm tired of coming here do the right thing for in the reopening plan and please make the mass optional thank you [Applause] um that's the third time it happens again i'm going to recess the meeting the next speaker and i'm sorry if i mispronounce it's hard to read the shuna carpenter i want to okay

086i do this way i'm oh so i'm from china i have accents when i speak i try to speak loud and slow i don't have children why i'm here i love my county i love my country and i love children i may cry i'm not allowed to do this i cry here i don't feel good energy in this room this is supposed to be happy for our children but if we protected them i don't feel that way i'm from china when i grow up we only have one kind of a book whole country countryside from north topic china we only use one book for same grid chinese one english one the same book eric every village every city now you told me in this country our state of four book four side book how far

087away from here to china i didn't see anybody's smile because this is how much we give up we give up the price we talk about if we choose the book out of this afford then we will pay extra money we will be working harder oh how much harder you work for us or for the children or you manage us you get our taxpayers money then you tell us okay this is what we have to do because the state because the law because of the big big biggest publisher they've lost money maybe but we lost our children this is the parents they have children these are the children you another side that is supposed to be work less than their voice now the worker for the government and will help help us we're looking for the

088hero from here who will be helping our children now not watching the brand watching them they're too young for learning that nobody can protect him you guys make a decision here i'm shaking next speaker is trent yuri good evening i'm trent yuri i reside in this county with my family two of our five children go to this middle school here at the beginning of the 2021 school year after learning that the children would be masked and was told that it was most likely only going to be the first semester i reluctantly kept the kids enrolled i was told by the school board that the masking would be reevaluated for the second semester in january here we are almost in may and still being told it is being looked into these mass needs to come off

089now we elect the school board officials and expect you all students to have the best interest and safety of our children in the school bill hb 241 on parental rights states that our rights as parents do not ever stop and we have the authority over anyone to what's best for our children in the doe order for no masking next year the data shows us that the districts face covering policy covering policies do not impact the spread of the virus especially we have all the vitamin d in florida that is really able to combat this virus face covering should be the individual's family decision my son and daughter attend this middle school since masking my son has been experiencing sinus to discomfort complaining about the pain behind his nose he is not required to be masked

090at all his soccer tournaments games and practices why is this different there's there's more people he's around there my poor daughter already already complicated from having a cleft lip and and having real trouble breathing through her nose when she gets most of her air through her mouth has to wear a mask seven to eight hours a day this is absurd they come home and they're tired they're zonked and ready for bed oh my gosh some of these chinese disposable masks even have been found to have parasites in them so when my children come to school and forget one they have to put one of these masks in that they found to either have them from poor storage packing or otherwise the best interests of our children need to be taking consideration and taking the cdc's

091view on this i believe they are crooked first sending out a false evaluated count and then rescinding later on after the fact the numbers don't matter thank you thank you mr yuri next speaker jennifer pippen sorry just a second good evening my name is jennifer pippen i'm one of the admins for we the people of indian river county and i'm also the chairman for moms for liberty of indian river county it's hard for parents to find the courage to ask questions for their child or children's school district and when i listen to board members refer to community and parents concerns as stirring the pot and rather than seeking to understand the reason for the scrutiny it only confirms why we can't trust you you make a plan to make a plan to unmask our children

092stop the quarantining stop the contact tracing to again turn around to make a plan to make a plan that has not changed since the first day of school we believe you're just waiting for someone else to make that decision and taking the easy way out we're not shocked anymore we are making plans too because we are tired of parents being unrepresented in the school board and in this district i have seen concerns raised recently about the sel curriculum parents are being warned by other parents around the country to be told watch what's coming out for our children there is buzzwords that are woven through these harmless to harmful curriculum that lay the foundation to understand using sel terminology to build upon the concepts of the critical race theory parents are asking questions and your immediate

093reaction is to discount them and dismiss us why how can you expect parents to trust you when you treat us like that social emotional learning is built upon respect and trust how do you expect us to trust you and teach our children about these concepts when you don't respect us the parents of the children you teach and govern i've learned recently that things once would have been unthinkable for example like peop adults keeping schools closed and requiring children to wear face masks all day are real so to every parent that is worried about your child's education good for you you should be get involved and ask questions and don't back down our kids are counting on us we do not trust the supplemental material that will become because the door is left open this distrust

094doesn't come from national policies or social media gaslighting it comes from examples of supplemental lesson plans already presented to our children that are not appropriate parents were forced to use a public records request to get the unity week curriculum and i commend you dr moore once you saw that you did pull it from the curriculum however we should be able to trust these things should never happen school board member this needs to stop with you work with parents and restore our trust that means honesty transparency accountability that does not mean you ridicule and dismiss our concerns we elected you to represent us not fight us stop planning to make a plan thank you mrs pippen next speaker april gonzalez hi my name is april gonzalez and two things um you have the mask mandate and

095half of you here don't even have a mask on but yet you expect our kids to wear them while they're in school it's a two-way road you want the rules to be obeyed you've got to obey them too two i'm here for brian bordoff my daughter was in his welding school to get rid of a teacher like him would be terrible and to get rid of this class you know some parents can't afford their kids to go to college and they have a trade that they can do and make awesome money this gentleman here he takes money out of his pocket to buy supplies for these kids he takes time with these kids he even prevented or he he made a program after school for kids to make up their grades if they didn't pass

096and i mean that's awesome there's a lot of teachers that really do care but then there's ones that just don't care they just want to pay check get the kids out of the classroom and that's done with this guy here he lives for these kids he is an awesome teacher and and this this trade that these kids can get to make awesome money i i mean it's it's awesome i i wouldn't want it to go anywhere i am going on 49 years old and i'm busting my excuse my mouth ass making over 33 34 000 a year and this gentleman's 20 years old and he's making almost a hundred thousand a year in a trade with no college i mean and and you guys want to get rid of it oh because it costs money

097but you know what it's going to cost money to lose all these kids in this class and to get rid of this program brian bordoff is an awesome teacher don't get rid of him let him continue teaching you know like i said he takes money out of his pocket to work with these kids and get them things that they need to learn you know just don't get rid of this program we need more programs like this we really do thank you thank you next speaker thomas hatch good evening my name is thomas hatch thank you for your time allowed me to be here today welding indian river county we hear that this program is being taken out of the state of florida i was a welding student in high school i ended up burning myself

098and had to transfer to wood shop because i wasn't paying attention properly and touched the metal at the wrong time but i want to say for mr b and for all the students that are here for welding excuse me i'm going to get emotional you guys walk outside the vehicles you get into have welds the handrail you walk down the stairs on is a weld these children these teenagers these young adults males and females i just saw today because there was a young lady that just approached these these human beings have a passion to do something with their hands learning something new they may have had no idea what they wanted to do in life until they got that on their agenda say oh look i can take welding i've never done that before but

099that's something i would like to try then they meet a teacher like mr b and he takes them under their wing and he says yes here's your courage i'm going to help you out with this whether it's mr b's job position or the welding itself this district this this county cannot get rid of any type of hands-on trades available for these students not every student wants to go to college and if you guys have ever been to college i know several people that have and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a on on their certificate and completion and then go and do a totally different job so in this instance my son aiden hatch says i like welding dad what can i do with welding well dad was in the military there's all kinds

100of things for underwater oil rigs and repairs and everything else so for this district even fathom thinking about getting rid of a trade it's just is unbelievable whether it's wood shop auto mechanics welding or anything else like that but as far as from mr b i can tell you that he's taken several of these students under his hand under his wing and given them courage and and a passion for a trade to go on and do something else in life that they never thought they had the courage or the ability to do thank you for your time thank you next speaker christine moyen hi i too am here to speak about welding um i think the biggest question that we always ask our children is what do you want to be when you grow up

101and in this day and age that's a very scary thing and i don't expect any of them to actually have the answers but i know for some of them they expected that when they were going to get out of high school they could actually take a trade and go into welding and have time to decide if that is what they wanted to do or if they wanted to further go to it towards another career but with that being taken away of course they're not going to graduate i don't know all these certificate degrees and everything about it but even one more year is one more year of experience so it's a trade i think it's a trade that is very you know needed in the in the world you know in our states and i

102don't understand why we're taking it away i was here last year to support it i was very glad that it was held on for another year i realize it's disappearing so my son was offered pottery i have nothing against pottery but i'm going to tell you right now pottery is not going to get my son very far in his life it is not what he wants to be when he grows up and he has considered welding and it is emotionally upsetting to him that a choice that he made is not going to be there for him and i support him 100 percent nothing against pottery but i would rather have him work towards that so everything else has been said i just want to do my support for welding and for the teachers and i

103hope that everybody is able to get together and perhaps discuss it more and make a different decision because i think it's really going to be a loss not only to the students but for the district and for everybody involved thank you very much thank you next speaker joshua terry sorry about that my name is joshua terry i was a previous student at sebastian river high school this is my second time coming here i came here last year and i really didn't think that i was going to be here a year later i was really surprised to get the call um i'm glad today that we can be here for a possible second chance and to once again voice my opinion in our opinion um when i heard that our program was getting shut down one

104of the main reasons that i heard was because of funding specifically a perkins 5 grant well the first thing that came to my mind was what exact funding have we actually gotten over the three years that i spent at sebastian river high school in the welding program i have continued to build our welding tables etc and i continued to cut metal and fabricate door stops for example so that we could produce funding for our program things that we built etc sorry about that um we just got our we just got welders last year i saw them all in a box boxes and about a few days later possibly a week i heard that our program was being shut down that was the first actual thing of funding that i've actually seen towards our program i've

105seen the same exact torn apart snap-on toolbox that we've used the same chop saws the same broken angle grinders the same things etc etc i've seen it over and over and i really don't see wire programs being shut down because of that it's kind of an insult to me because i feel that i and other people here have built this program ourself not because of the grant um aside from that um the importance of this program it's not just a welding program this is an entire program based on fabrication fixing things taking things apart learning what tools are what when i was helping people throughout the welding program there were some people that didn't even know what the difference of a phillips and a flathead screwdriver was and they learned that at the end of

106three years that was actually something i learned in my first year there's some things that i've learned in the welding program that most people in this room probably wouldn't know about i can give a real live example of that um about two weeks ago i was working at my full-time job and i was out in a warehouse um working a industrial pump what happened was is there was a plug on the ground and we constantly work through a flooded area and long story short i was electrocuted because of the gfci that was supposed to be there in the first place next speaker logan barker coming here today to speak is an opportunity i was not going to pass by to make not only my voice word but the students in the welding program and their

107concerns for the plans for this upcoming school year i don't know the situation that this district is continuing with the welding program but i'm thinking a lot on it not for myself but the students that have worked hard alongside me in mr baldur's program and enjoyed every moment in the world shop this program may not be what the district wants to keep but please at least give the students the time and opportunity to finish a class that they put the work into for almost two years now if we leave here tonight nothing changes and the program's not kept at sebastian river high school at least i got to support mr baldorf one of the best teachers i've had and also my first instructor and represent my friends that i've been that built strong relationships with

108while in this program it's been a real journey seeing them come out to school and just work in the shop learn safety skills and these kids actually want to come to school for a change they don't skip his class or want to hang out in the halls they put the work in they've been taught sacrificing time during and after school to complete projects and fixing school gym [Music] band and football equipment please don't end the welding program at the end of this school year or sooner let these kids and the instructor finish and complete the program they started like every teacher and student should be able to do they started their sophomore year by taking on this program and keeping a passing grade to come back their last year of high school and have the

109same experience let them have the same experience i've had as a senior working with mr baldorf and learning about welding and having real world knowledge in high school thank you the next speaker is sarah hewlings hi so i'm sarah hewlings and i'm from fellsmere elementary i am one of the dual language teachers um that we we started the dual language program this year um and we had the new unique opportunity to be a part of the committee um that was selecting the curriculum this year so i was asked here today to kind of talk about our how hmh benefits us at feldspar elementary so when when we were looking at the curriculums we were looking for a spanish curriculum that was not translated it was authentic text by authors that were spanish-speaking native speakers and

110um hmh was the the curriculum that was the only curriculum that showed that and um it was also a curriculum that was designed specifically for dual language schools so that was the main reason why we really wanted to select hmh although we went with amplify for that first decision we were very excited when we found out that hmh was going to be the curriculum that was selected after amplify was not approved because that left a lot less work on our part finding a curriculum and it was exciting for us because it was a curriculum that is currently used in a lot of dual language schools here in florida and also around the country so [Music] that's pretty much it i just i know that there is con i've heard obviously there's controversy with it but

111um we at the at the dual language school in fellsmere are very excited about the hmh curriculum so thank you next speaker lamar notre of giacomo well said mr barefoot i'm getting better okay uh first i want to say you know i agree wholeheartedly with everything sheena said my applause goes to you shoona um it's rather disingenuous to expect parents to come to the school board and spend hours reviewing the textbooks they need to be made accessible online for parents because parents do want to know what their children are being taught we can't come here and stand for hours and or and go through curriculum so please make them accessible for parents who can't look at them during regular hours and need to take time in the evenings to review the textbooks because we do

112want to know what's in those textbooks my grandchildren attend public school here why only for approved publishers it begs the question whether the doe really is serving our children well and we're going to be looking at that we're going to be talking to we're going to be sending emails and i hope we get responses gentlemen from the doe thank you for being here and i hope that we will get a response from you and mr corcoran when we send our emails and ask our questions it's very hard to get questions answered so we're being given false choices and the the material that that our kids are being taught and even from the the school district indian river school district training materials is very subjective and it manipulates and exploits the emotions of our children our

113children should be getting a solid foundation and to give them a a better future and we should be looking for the highest educational standards and not ex not expecting our kids to uh to bow to every emotion our emotions are god-given but we shouldn't be living our lives and making all of our decisions on our emotions this is saying that we should isolate race while acknowledging the broader scope of diversity in the variety of factors that contribute to a racialized problem these kids are in what this is for elementary school adults have trouble processing this information we are dumping on them instead of educating them they should come home happy i heard parents testify tonight they come home exhausted and and and we're dumping all this emotional baggage on them rather than giving them a

114solid foundation and i want to point out one other thing sandra stotzky was credited with giving with creating the highest english language arts standards in the country when she wrote them for massachusetts she has offered her curriculum for free why mr doe and why school board representatives of the people we the people you work for us despite the fact that you think some of you tend to think that you are better than us because you are highly educated or because of the money that you have parents are in charge not you and so we thank you that you for the job that you do but we ask you to be more sensitive to the parents and quit trying to make us feel stupid thank you the next speaker is davison i'm sorry i can't read

115your last name sorry hi my name hi my name is davidson de groat i'm here to speak on behalf of the welding program at sebastian river high school i'm a junior in the welding program and i have to say this program's helped me a lot eighth grade year i got diagnosed with crohn's disease and i had to take some very strong prescriptions for my stomach 9th grade year i was constantly sick due to the medication and 10th grade year i was taken off the meds and i went into the welding program my grades skyrocketed and i kind of had to continue to keep them up to stay in the program otter pushed me to do that he pushed me to keep going and honestly because of him i didn't drop out of school because i

116was thinking about it i have relied on this program to keep me in school and i kind of want it to keep me in school i'm really hoping for another year that's all i'm hoping for i don't want i don't care if i get certified or not i'm hoping for one more year because like steven said without this program i probably wouldn't even be in school this is the only reason i come to school for welding and i had to keep my grades up for welding so thank you guys for your time one more year thank you next speaker jesus lavendera thank you i'm very impressed by some of the comments made tonight about being forced to wear masks in within the school system so i heard some rather educated comments tonight as you all

117remember last school board meeting there were many people commenting on the masks if you remember i was talking about a study uh co-authored by dr fauci in 2008 that discovered that in the spanish flu pandemic of 1918 where 22 million people died they discovered that it was not from influenza that those people died 90 of them at least from bacterial pneumonia and then other authorities discovered that very likely the source of that bacterial pneumonia that killed millions of people in 1918 was in fact the bacteria on the verde very dirty cloth mass that the department of health forced every american to wear in 1918 which of course were not washed and worn day after day after day now of course now that doesn't happen today in this situation with covid um because today i know

118that everyone here who wears cloth masks washes or sterilizes them every two hours never touches or fusses with them and replaces them every single day however we are still hearing reports of bacterial pneumonia but i remember also last time last meeting that you all after the the discussion commented that your hands are tied you have to follow the recommendations ultimately from the highest authority of the land the cdc dr fauci the centers for disease control which as we all know is a very non-biased very informed organization that wants the best for us well not exactly actually robert kennedy jr discovered that the cdc actually functions more like a private vaccine company in fact the cdc owns patents for 56 vaccines or vaccine delivery systems and has annual revenue of 4.1 billion dollars in a current

119vaccine market of 30 billion dollars which by the way is expected to grow to a hundred billion dollars by 2025. so that means the cdc is going to be expecting to go from four billion dollars in profits to 12 billion dollars just doing the math so it seems like the cdc basically has one job in one one job only to sell us vaccines and with those of course we're gonna need the masks because guess what the vaccines don't work thank you thank you next speaker d lavendera i really didn't want to speak tonight um but i feel like i need to speak um talk about a lack of diversity look at the textbooks four four textbooks and of course y'all are hands are tied because of the state the tallahassee doe the tallahassee legislature way

120up there in tallahassee they make the rules and y'all just have to follow them you have no choice i would um i also want to say i think we need a trades charter school um but it sounds like the florida department of education is happy to take the heat and the florida legislature is too to protect the local school boards so they can hide behind the powerful and practically impenetrable walls in tallahassee four books i'm i'm so stunned by that thank you uh chairman barefoot for educating us all on the tons and and the um the curriculum uh superintendent deputy superintendent on the tons of red tape and months of time it takes to go through and pick one of four books all with mostly the same stuff in them we give the taxpayers the

121the taxpayers in indians in indonesia river county give the this county close to 300 million dollars a year for 18 000 less than 18 000 students that's a that we don't have a money problem where we and in this county unlike many other um less wealthy counties our our tax base mostly funds the money that comes to this school board we pay for it um and and probably mostly thankful to the the residents on the beach because they probably pay by far more than any of us but given the fact that you have 300 million plus and it's really they have 350 million 15 million dollars but it comes from various sources um we're still underperforming our schools are like seas our kids are struggling there's no jobs in this community really there's piper and

122in fact the school board if you didn't know it is the biggest employer in the county thank you the last speaker is ethan galentine hello i'm here on behalf of mr bodorf and the welding program at sebastian river high school and i'd like to start off by by saying that i believe that it is a big mistake to get rid of the welding program at the uh sebastian river high school i would like to clarify that i'm not actually in the welding program however i am in the automotive program and i have been for the last two years and in this automotive program i am considered the number one student out of all the classes and i've earned two ase certifications now you would expect that out of these two ase certifications that you could

123ask me whatever in any of these topics and i could answer your questions with the snap of my fingers however i can guaran almost guarantee that if you were to ask me any question in any of these topics i really couldn't answer your questions and i uh expressed these concerns to some of my friends over there and they recommended that i went over to the auto the welding program after school and i went over to the welding program after school now keep in mind i went into this welding program and after two years the automotive program i could barely name the parts of brakes or change oil something that you would not even think about you just bring it somewhere and then have it done and after going to this welding program i was able

124to do most of these things within two weeks that the automotive program never taught me after two years and it just it doesn't make any sense that they're considering getting rid of this program that keep in mind you also learn about welding that there is so many things in life that use welding like someone i heard someone mention earlier the stairwells have some of the welds that you hold on just like you hold on to something as simple as that and i just want i just can't understand why they want to get rid of the welding program when there's so many things to earn you could go work instead of changing oil for a living you could go and work after school you can get an internship working at an accident repair shop and a

125dealership or something like that making tons of money a year and it just it strikes me that they really would even consider getting rid of this just for something so small just get rid of all the opportunities of the students just to start some small funding that probably wouldn't even be an issue that is all thank you for having me thank you mr bear oh sorry i'm just going to ask for a 10 minute recess before we go into the next part we have we have three emails to be read and then we will take a recess and mr bear i'd like to comment to a few of the comments pardon me let's listen to the emails because i want to comment on a couple too yeah i think some of the board members also

126have comments on this yeah i'm i've got a few myself comments or questions miss maddox or miss miss nolman would you read the email system please yes we had three emails submitted with the speakers forum tonight it's from jamie mariano good evening again we are here at the school board meeting without answers to when these masks can come off of our children's faces my preschool daughter is not in a mask and no outbreaks in her school they haven't closed at all during the so-called pandemic i'm sure you've heard from experts not the health department as to why these need to come off our children so i'm not going to cite references or statistics please know that as a parent i will not enforce masking of my children now to the second part of my email

127i've had the chance to look at the new curriculum this is not what i want my child to be learning in school we need to be focusing on the fundamentals rather than social injustices that are provoked by the government influence if this is passed i will certainly be considering starting my child into private education where i will know where i will know she will be provided with the proper education please consider adopting a new curriculum that is based on the fundamentals of education this is from john karapi will go down in the history books on your watch and nobody else's the amount of kids wearing muzzles under their chin or over their mouth while just leaving school and walking down the street is highly alarming and this is in florida imagine what's about to take

128place in the coming school year here with kids that did virtual school and will be finally coming back in person and in states that have not even been back to school yet and are forced to wear muzzles for the 2021-22 school year like dr mark mccain said in his school board appearance a few weeks ago he has treated more children for non-coveted related issues this whole time that includes depression anxiety suicide and social isolation what's going to be next ptsd unmask our children now their future men are unmasked our children now their future mental health depends on it ask yourself this do you want a world without touch no feeling in a world without smiles no meaning next email is from chris allen let our children have a choice in mask wearing at school i'm

129fairly sure we're the only animals who force our children and others to obstruct our breathing a good quote from the public health roundtable desantis hosted is children should not wear face masks they don't need it for their own protection and they don't need it for protecting other people shortly after this richard cochran the commissioner of education in florida sent a memo to school district superintendents asking for optional masking by the 2021-2022 school year i've heard this school district declare themselves the first in a few things but parental choice has been last from what i've witnessed hopefully with the parental rights bill having passed florida congress this will change after desantis signature signature it's sad how parental rights has been disrespected over a virus how little parental rights has mattered over teachers unions i've seen only

130one school board member realize that what the cdc asks for are indeed recommendations not laws some of the school board members refuse to be leaders and insist on permission from an organization they feel is above them enough of being last in parental rights let parents make the choice of masking in schools it also comes to my attention that a book sdirc is considering adopting contains critical race theory ideology desantis also banned these types of curriculums in our schools and i ask that you review this and remove its possible adoption the book is florida program guide get your best start for grades three through five starting on pages 118. the pages talk about discuss discussing immigration community police relationships race relations etc these topics are highly politicized at the moment and can cause tensions between students

131and their peers my child does not care or think about the color of his friend's skin and bringing up these topics will skew his innocence my child is mixed and should not be taught that one of his races oppresses the other that's all all right i'm sure we all have lots of comments questions i want to thank everybody it's been a long for you all to sit um obviously you're passionate concerned about issues there's the mask issue there's this the curriculum issue the discussion around welding i'm curious i'm sure as well i happen to be very involved in a school in vermont where the demographics are quite similar to here and the biggest uh the most popular programs are the trades it's automotive it's plumbing it's electrician it's welding and woodworking and if it weren't

132for those programs many kids would have really no path uh to success they're not inclined to either can't afford or not interested in college in the traditional sense so these are really pathways to start their own business join a family business and really have the opportunity to do quite well in life so i'll be interested in this was all obviously news to me maybe not to my colleagues but i'll be interested in what others have to say and and you know why this program um i'm not judging i'm just questioning why this program is evidently so special to be removed if you want me to address i i can tell you news to me too and i communicate with the deputy superintendent communicate with the assistant superintendent communicate with the directors regarding the process that

133was in place from two years ago so obviously there is a relationship with kids this is powerful great relationship great things going on so i'm going to do some research in in terms of what has changed from two years ago my understanding is their students were in that course this year were scheduled in a way in which they should particularly graduate but i need to be empowered with the opportunity to engage in the dialogue with the principal with the appropriate district staff to determine what changed from two years ago when this was a a conversation to where it is now dr jones had having been missed from sebastian river high school i'm sure you've got i will not be i will not be objective on this one sebastian river high school was billed as a

134comprehensive high school starting in 1995. i have the privilege of serving at its prison as his principal from 98 to 2009 what was unique about sebastian river high school was all of the programs from ib dual enrollment ap honors and then all of the career and tech academies and i know things have changed as far as funding and so forth but that was what made sebastian river high school young man who's a teacher was the first one to greet me on my first day in october of 1998 and i just want you to know that not only the welding a cat academy but we talk about automotive and fabrication and nursing and digital and some new ones that are coming with mr anderson this year but that's what made sebastian river high school who we

135are and what we represent i did talk uh right when i came on board with our person at that time who was career in tech about you know why why are we even talking about this because and and the answer was something to do with perkins and grant and money but we have a wonderful um finance person mr fagan and this kind of became of a shock to me right now too because i knew it was coming down the pike but i wasn't sure when it was and i i would be ready but i'm going to ask dr moore and his team to really really look at this because and even dr moore and i have talked about this and i'm sure he's talked about it with other board members um a career in tech

136high school or whatever i mean whatever it is that we need because not everyone is going to college not everyone has that ambition they want to get out into the workforce when duncan thomas and robbie robinson started that and then along with um tyler it became an absolute i could say right now dropout prevention program as far as what we're doing as far as career in tech because you know we have to have our high excellence for everything we want to do not only for college but for career and tech and there's a lot of technical reading in this and i understand that and duncan and robert used to talk to me about that as well so they've got to be ready to do this and that's why you're doing the extra work after school

137but i'm just going to ask the superintendent to look into this very very very carefully because this is about our students and i don't want to lose them mrs barrenborg thank you um you know i'm surprised that you're back here as well because i was part of that vote that asked to to extend it along with dr schiff and mrs rosario um i remember the conversation well um sometimes it's better to go through though your principal and and the superintendent for for the superintendent be surprised right here we're told not to do that um because i get that you're passionate about your program and you you call your students and ask them to come speak and take time and it's important that board members know what's going on because then we can question as well

138so i appreciate people calling me i had a call right before this meeting about a concern and i appreciated the fact that that person called directly to a board member or you have that opportunity as a as a teacher to call who told you that okay so let me that's that was my next comment that was my next comment he's no longer here um so we're not going to bring his name up but i will say this that that was my concern is that i was told by that same man that um the cte programs that were happening in your program for one had different certifications that were coming down the line in order to meet the perkins 5 grant and we were allowed to extend it a year even though we might lose funding

139and that's why kids are talking about loss of supplies and things like that because we lose funding and funding is categorical in other words you can't rob peter to pay paul even though i know this man would love to do that sometimes she's our finance person um but i think that you know you get pockets of money that's how it's created for ct and it goes to your program so and it's protected that way for your program you know some programs have more money than other programs but that's how it protects programs too so it concerns me cte does have a lot of money in their programs but it concerned me that it had something to do with certification i'm not sure if it's your certification or the certification that kids would get when they

140came out of the program so we were told that we offer a different welding program at technical college at treasure coast technical college and i understand that some kids don't want to get on a bus and go down to the technical college they want to stay at sebastian river high school because they have a class there and then they want to go we get that i i understand that part um so that's why i voted to continue it there because i understood these kids are passionate about the program they want their program we want them to have their program we don't want to stop it um but we also you know people say well you're tied by the doe and your time but yeah we are in some respects we are yeah we can go

141outside the the box on a lot of things and some things but um when you're talking about certification then we got another ball game because when kids aren't coming out certified at a program and a parent was promised that they were going to have a certification when they graduate then we've got a problem because we offered a program that doesn't have that certification so when they graduate they're not going to get that piece of paper so when they go to an employer they can actually be employed so that that's my concern is yes that individual did tell me the same thing because as soon as that meeting was over the next day i was in his office and i said okay tell me exactly why we can't have this welding program keep going and i

142didn't like the answer so again my job as a board member is to go to that superintendent and say okay we need to fix this problem how are we going to fix it so that's the best way to handle this sir i know but i i think and i'm not saying it's not good to hear from kids it is because they're very passionate about what they're doing yeah and it is important to tell us you know tell us when you're frustrated as a teacher you know and you feel like you can't go up the chain of command that's what our job is to our job is for citizens your taxpayer you know call us up i've had t i had a teacher a couple hours ago call me so i think it's important though that

143because we kind of know when we can kind of like i i stepped right in his office the next day and said explain to me why we had all those parents here last night talking to us like that in our meeting why are these kids having to come at night and defend their program good job guys by the way yeah and so uh we want your program to continue we're not asking for it to stop okay but we the superintendent wasn't aware of this so let's let's give him a chance to try to see if he can fix this yes well of course you can and let us know if you you've been told not to okay yeah let us totally on one conversation with you yeah all right um there's an okay what are

144you talking about yes all right dr schiff i have a a few things to say here um on this topic and a few others um but i'm going to speak to this one first and i'm going to speak to it from a slightly different perspective than as a board member and forgive me if i get emotional i don't know why that's coming up but it is wow i know um my son is in your program wow this is i'm like shocked i don't usually do this i'm not channeling a previous board member um i have had communication sorry couldn't resist um i have been communicating with mr bodorf as a parent this entire semester because when my kid was not doing well at sebastian high school and he chose that he wanted to go into

145welding um which he loves mr botterov has been in constant communication with me i'm not speaking theoretically i'm not speaking historically i'm not speaking conceptually i'm like right now today he communicates to me all the time about how my child is doing where he's being successful where he's not being success successful he's given him special projects to engage him when he's not engaged in the day-to-day work um i was here the last the last time that you came and i heard the complaints and i heard what mrs barrenborg is referring to about why we were and weren't keeping this program um we have had a few conversations about it but i think it was in a different context because what i'm hearing is that you saw something different tonight than when you heard a a

146conversation about something that happened historically which is different then thank you to all of you who came out all of you guys um i think it's kind of clear that i i i get it i hear you i feel it um i don't want to lose a teacher like you i really really don't and i say that not just as a board member i say it is a parent i have when i communicate with teachers at sebastian high school i try really hard to keep my parent role and my board role separate and and i think you've heard me say that in emails a lot um i think it's a disservice to this district to lose teachers who are as committed as you are i know there have been issues with certification i know there

147have been issues with uh wrong word but in a way competition between the technical college and the program at sebastian high school i do know that there's the dual enrollment program at the technical and college which will give a different degree and certification at the end my son will be in that next year um i don't know what we can do at this point but i'm glad we're talking about it um i feel really passionately about this obviously and i want to personally acknowledge and thank you for the care you've taken with my son and every other student in this program and and i want that um for and on the record 100 percent yeah i um how you treat those kids is not a theoretical concept to me it's very very real um so

148that on welding and i know um that we're all going to be talking about this more no through the chair it's i'm sorry no go ahead i was going to say let mr rosario address welding but go ahead dr moore we will look at the program i just want to give up um some clear facts money is not an issue there's tying funding to perkins which has certain requirements as the administrators on the stage know but it also draws fte so any any illusion that after funding is an issue from two years ago wasn't there two years ago but i'm going to say it's a little bit misleading because it could be funded that's issue one we need to ensure that we are expanding ct offerings and those ct offerings are relevant welding is relevant

149there's no question about that that the certifications earned lead to high yield employment we need to ensure that the instructors meet the requirements set forth by the state in order to ensure that those instructors are certified we can't have individuals who are not certified we cannot invest in programs that mislead students or the community to go into programs and say hey i just i just finished welding and i'm not able to get employed because the entry level certification isn't i wasn't afforded that particular opportunity so an absolute commitment we are expanding cte programs um drastically ensuring there's a comprehensive review going on in terms of what programs are being offered where what programs can we pushing in next year we're pushing in new programs at sebastian river criminal justice is going to be uploaded that's

150going to be uh another new program that we're that we're working on now so a great deal of expansion in the value of evaluation so we will circle back with team the appropriate staff uh to look at the issue around those particular parameters uh what happened two years ago this is not that school district sir mr sarah you wanted to offer something yeah i was just going to ask dr mora which i i trust that he's going to look into the history the conversations that we had were prior to your coming on um and the previous cte director in conversation did uh if i remember the conversation correctly it had did have something to do with the doe um saying that something was going on with certifications statewide it wasn't just an indian rural county

151um but uh i'm sure that dr moore i mean he is the boss and he does seem a little uh you know maybe not so comfortable to talk to but you can talk to him you can tell him [Laughter] you could talk to him don't be afraid to let him know you know what's going on with all due respect with all fun i'll take it this is a conversation that we'll have yeah he he he will know what's what what to do how to take care of it and then even anything needs to come back to the board members at that point he'll make sure to get it back to us otherwise we go on guys you did a great job great job all of you so any other questions go through your your teacher

152please you can write to the board and or the superintendent you can write to the board and or the superintendent and he will direct you to the staff member who who will handle that who might be mr seymour no mr seymour would bring it to mr meyer and myself attention we'll conduct the review a typical email to me is a response within 24 hours dr jones what is an example of alternative certification with our teaching program here and so that's just an example of someone coming in doing the job that he knows how to do and i certainly understand um with our treasure coast technical if students go there but you know when i look at all these sharks out there it's because they want to stay at the high school they want to stay

153and continue to get the education at the high school the hands-on experience not have to take a bus ride 30 minutes there or 20 minutes back or whatever it is now but um and and that means a lot to me as a former principal and educator for kids wanting to stay at the school uh because of the teacher you know i think i think um the last thing i'd like to say first of all thank you all and and you young guys and the young lady who also spoke on your behalf your parents will be very proud that you were articulate passionate and stand up for what you believe in so so keep up the good work and i'm sure you'll you'll hear from dr moore and he'll do a complete review and it sounds

154to me like you got all the support you need as far as the school board is concerned with your program and others just like it so keep up the good work and we'll we'll find a way to figure this out mr barefoot i had two other things i wanted to addre if we want to move to another topic or do you want to address welding no i think i'm done with welding okay no i'm sure there's probably other things a couple of the other topics raised this evening so go ahead doctor yeah two things one um i'm assuming at some point suzanne is going to update us on the executive uh the state of emergency in the executive order that was signed today which i think addresses some comments that were made today as well

155and i don't know when that's going to happen if that's now or if that's later um yeah let me just address that go ahead thank you and board members you may remember in previous agenda items at previous meetings discussing both the department of health state surgeon general um orders issue with regard to covert 19 as well as the governor's executive orders with regard to cove 19 and the state of emergency today the governor did sign an extension of his coven 19 state of emergency statewide which has been in place since the beginning he signed it today and it's good for another 60 days so this most recent executive order of the governor will expire june 26 of this year in addition to that it took me a little longer to find but i did finally

156locate it the state surgeon general also issued a renewal of his declaration of public health emergency that was actually issued back on april 20th i missed it um and so that one is also good for another 60 days so that um renewed declaration of public health emergency will expire on june the 19th so both of the state level documents that we have been referring to in the past both were extended and they are extended through june and i will get copies around to everyone in case you were like me and couldn't find it on the website thank you because that very much influences our policy decisions as well as we've been talking about tonight so i wanted to make sure that we were all aware of that update last thing um one comment was made

157to tonight about how money flows up to tallahassee and comes back and i forget the name the term mrs behrenborg you'll probably know the term and i forget it yeah and i just it just lost yeah i can't even remember the name but but but in essence thank you is what it was district cost district cost differential which um just to clarify for the public what that means is that the money that comes out of indian river county and goes up to tallahassee does not flow proportionately back to indian river county wealthier counties all counties send taxes up to tallahassee wealthier the money is then distributed across all counties so we don't get back because we are a wealthy county we don't get back proportionately what we send up we help fund smaller less property

158rich districts so it's not a one-to-one ratio and i want to just be clear about that because we have wealthy people on the island doesn't mean that that money flows back to our schools it actually flows all over the state as well so how the so it's a complicated procedure that it took me a while to understand as well but it's a common misconception that what we put in is what we get back and and it's not um not only that but it doesn't come back to us in a timely fashion either we have to sometimes go out for a tan in order to pay for it and and on top of that we actually sometimes lose money because of the way our schools are distributed because you get money for certain things depending on

159on the geographic distribution of your schools because we have two high schools that serve a certain geographic location money is calculated based on that geogra i'm i'm not good at explaining it mr fagan would be much better but we've had that argument in budget or discussion and budget conversations before that we actually lose money because of the distribution of our school so so it's far from proportionate and i just want to be we actually we lose money we lose money in transportation we lose money because of what kind of district were considered again i forget the name of that but it has to do with with how many schools we have how much the tax base that we have and how that gets distributed so that's same by the way that same issue exists in

160many other states i can tell you firsthand from massachusetts and vermont it's exactly the same problem you know they call them the gold towns in vermont they pay most of the taxes in the state which means the ones that have ski resorts or montpelier or burlington where the university of vermont is same issue same arguments same problems go ahead we didn't get the money back that we all sent up there um i have two comments on two of the things the topics that were brought up um and you know we used to not do this we used to sit here and listen and not be able to speak and um you were asking us about that it's we changed it because it is frustrating for people to sit here and talk to us and think

161that we're not human and think that we don't care and we do care and um and it is frustrating because i i do have a lot of compassion for people that are frustrated with what's been going on it's it is frustrating and i do have a grandchild that will be coming up through the school so i'm not without care on this but there was a comment made about online accessibility on books whenever books are available out here yes they're accessible online later once we purchase them but my question is are they available for online for people to look at now before they're purchased through the chair yes they have been available so they are on our website yes and so how come mrs nodogamow did not know where they're located then i don't have an

162answer for why she doesn't know that okay are they on the front page is it easy for somebody to find through the chair they were our front page does change uh periodically but um they were there for a period of time yes they were there during the um open adoption time where it was open to people to look okay i wanted to make sure that that was available because she made the comment that it wasn't yeah is that uh yes uh they're there and and if not we can certainly make those available um to anyone who needs them okay so can we can we make them i you know i mean i can email them directly if they're having trouble finding it no can we make them put them back on the website yeah if

163they're if they aren't i'm not certain i think that they are okay yeah here it is it's right here so i want people to know that they still have that ability to look at them online okay and then the other one was um the mask mandate which has been so much fun to deal with and and i did ask for this date today for the superintendent to give us an update as to what's going to happen this summer and i asked for an update as to what's going to happen in the fall and he did give us that update today i don't know if you were paying attention to it or saw it but dr moore can you tell us please what's going to happen with summer programs summer programming we have have updated our

164safeword school program the major shift is a six foot physical distancing to three foot physical distancing um as well as other modifications as an example water fountains and classrooms will now be able to use them um to fill up your water your water bottle also the relief of not having to go to a doctor to be signed out if you had covered that's no longer the case if you had the vaccination or you had covet within the last three weeks um you would not be quarantined or subject to possibly not being quarantined but the big thing is the six to three feet and when you look at summer school programming the size of our campuses the limited number of students that are going to be there the reduced rate ratio we will be at a

165have opportunities where students can spend the overwhelming majority of their day to have the option not to wear a mask matter of fact we looked at that at a larger scale so i spoke to the principal at both storm grove and vero beach senior high school and it said how many of your classrooms at a distance of three feet uh would be able to allow the students to be in their classroom from the beginning of the bell to the end of the bell and have the opportunity to be optional regarding its mask and the answer was that storm growth every single class in the majority of classrooms at vero beach senior high school we also reviewed the the rates that the cdc is using using we want to be in low in both of those

166two different rates there's two different ways of doing it that is one of which is the seven day total of students or students of our population under that five percent positive rate and then the cases per 100 000 and they've identified certain criteria don't have in front of me now but we've made significant improvement we are in the low in one area and then high or substantial in the other areas so we're seeing progress in terms of the movement we are making a plan over the course of the next month um and that plan is to determine what's the criteria what's the process what will the opening of school look like and then communicate that uh to the community uh the end of june june 22nd off the top of my head and also graduation

167graduation we just yesterday had a meeting regarding the dividers that were we're purchasing uh to ensure that graduations will be ultimately a once again almost a completely optional in terms of masking the seats in the field will be six feet apart or now three feet apart uh which will save us some space uh the opportunity to walk across the stage and stand next to the principal with the divider uh to have that opportunity to have a face your full face with all the makeup on if you know you're gonna wear it um to have that that picture taken so taking the proactive steps i think our principles have been very very innovative in providing those opportunities um vero beach had its prom last week and you know i'm getting texts from other districts saying how

168did you make that happen and that's just the leadership of the schools and they're working with the students on how do we make this happen so fully open moving in the right direction i know there's a point of frustration about let's get them off let's get them off let's get them off but we didn't get here in one day and we got to stand in honor and reference of the entire community and create a plan where we all feel comfortable it is our desire to get to that space where we're back to normal but we're going to take the time and do it in a way uh that gives everyone a level of confidence in terms of how we're doing it and i think you know sometimes the public isn't aware that um when you

169make a big decision like take a mask off immediately um that's going to affect a ripple effect throughout the schools that will be incredible disruption because right now we're in assessment time and so we have to be very careful about how we do this do i want them off immediately yes are we socially distanced right now because somebody complained that we're not wearing ours yes are we leading exactly what we're asking kids and teachers to do in the classroom yes if they are farther than six feet apart they should be without a mask on and that's why i've gone in classrooms and asked are kids able to take their mask off because they're six feet away and here and we did i know a lot of board members have done that we walk classrooms to

170see so it is it has been very frustrating to deal with we are hopefully seeing a light at the end of this tunnel we are moving in that direction all right any other comments that were related to citizens input how about we take a five minute recess and just uh people are coming in and out but but at least walking around for five minutes it's been two and a half hours and so why don't we come back at 8 40. my fellow board members for the commentary and the dialogue with the audience important issues the next item on the agenda make sure i get this right is the approval of the consent agenda um and the uh there were no items pulled for discussion but there was item 12b pulled to dr moore's request uh

171so can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda less item 12b i'll make a motion second mr rosario did you second dr schiff uh all in favor aye aye aye okay motion carries five zero mr barefoot yeah uh just to comment that um i'm not gonna list them all because there were 18 of them but there are so many donations that have been given to our district uh it has been incredible so we thank everybody yeah was that uh dr chef you wanted to yeah i i'm sorry i got distracted for a second did we just approve the consent agenda not approve the um so sorry get lost for a minute um the donations are on the consent that's why i said that yeah no that what just don't cry please i'm so

172embarrassed um i i actually though i wanted to speak to that too and i certainly won't go through all of them but what is really significant about those um is that the total amount received and i do want to say that the total amount received reported for april alone was two hundred and seventy two thousand eight hundred and eighty five dollars that's extraordinary that's a lot that's a lot of money for one month the total amount received for the 2020 2021 year is 507 529 dollars and 15 cents that's half a million dollars in donations so again like mrs behrenborg while i won't go through all of them um that is exceptional generosity on from our community on behalf of our students in this district and i want to acknowledge that there were some in

173there that i think do deserve to be recognized sorry but um there are some large ones yes yeah seventy five thousand eight hundred ninety three dollars from the united way um that's not peanuts there was um sixty thousand for dodger town from the lj foundation and a number of others i won't there there were 17 000 to beachland um from the beachland elementary pta these are extraordinary donations this is not we often have a thousand here five thousand here to 2500 there and and by no means to discount those because those are highly significant but when we are talking 65 000 75 65 000 um the title one department received two donations from the ed foundation of indian river county so we've got sixty five thousand seventy five thousand sixty thousand seventeen thousand these are

174noteworthy donations and to those who so donated we we humbly thank you and i think it's also a credit to all of you and to dr moore and his team because i can tell you in the community that i live in the awareness of the opportunities to support public education is up a huge percentage uh there there are uh quail valley charities john's island service league john have always supported specific projects so indirectly but now you're starting to hear it in conversation and uh what can we do to help and i think that you know another time we'll continue the conversation that we started a few months back but this is a very good sign and and i and i thank all of you for whatever you do to make sure you promote not that

175you have it in the past but i think we're starting to get people's attention and uh that's that that proffers very well for the future um all right the next item is uh this is one where we've already discussed it but we go through the process here and this is the recommended instructional materials for k-5 english language arts have been available for public review for at least 20 calendar days as part of the instructional material adoption process the school board must receive public comment during the public hearing and meeting in accordance with school board policy 0169.1 public participation the instructional materials adoption committee has made the recommendations for hmh in in into reading english language arts materials the approximate cost of this adoption is approximately and sixty 1 thousand and forty seven dollars and obviously

176we've got plenty of public input already so at this point in time this item deals with the adoption of the english language arts and structural materials for for elementary doctor moore have you documented that this public hearing was properly advertised in accordance with state statutes i have all right we now recess this meeting conduct the public hearing as advertised the public hearing is now in session dr moore are there any written responses to the advertised public hearing to be read at this time through the chair no one signed up to speak but for the record there were a number of speakers during public hearing today and uh the public uh that's here is invited to address this that they haven't already all right um the chair concludes that the announced public hearing on the adoption

177of the english language arts instructional materials have been conducted pursuant to notice and that apple offered ample opportunity to address this issue has been provided to all the board meeting is reconvened at this time i guess um that's the process that i want to make sure i'm correct on this that there's nothing else we do now except them correct okay it's for public input all right but there's nothing else do we have to do anything at this meeting on this topic or do we move to the next okay all right good i didn't want to not follow thank you [Laughter] so the next item is equity 2019 equity committee recommendations uh and i want to read this for the record um and then i'll recognize dr moore as part of the 2018 joint plan the

178school board established the equity committee that is responsible for monitoring and documenting compliance with a desegregation order and for making recommendations to the school board in october 2019 the 2019 equity committed committee provided 53 recommendations as related to the 2018 joint plan in honor of the contributions and work of the 2019 equity committee the school board approves the receipt of the recommendations which have been instrumental in informing the superintendent's development of the newly created district strategic plan and african-american achievement plan these recommendations will continue to inform the work of the district in order to memorialize the recommendations provided by the established equity committees as well as ensure a systematic process for receiving equity committee recommendations the superintendent is directed to utilize the following process when receiving equity committee recommendations prior to board approval of the

179annual targets for the district strategic plan an african-american achievement plan the superintendent will one request recommendations if the equity committee be presented at a scheduled equity committee meeting next provide a presentation to the equity committee and the school board on how the recommendations will inform the district's work and plan revisions next ensure that any recommendations made by the equity committee in which no action will be taken will be clearly communicated to the equity committee with detailed rationale as to why lastly bring forward an item to the school board seeking approval of annual targets for the district strategic plan and african-american achievement plan and include the rationale for the inclusion or exclusion of the equity committee recommendations made this action does not modify any requirements curt currently established when the with the 2018 plan uh dr

180moore would you care i mean that was a lot of words uh not meaningful words would you care to comment um yes sir so as you know not in today's workshop but our previous workshop we had the opportunity to present the 53 recommendations that presented a crosswalk and um gave the board a presentation regarding uh how we use those 53 recommendations as foundational to the creation of our strategic plan upon my arrival as well as the african-american achievement plan uh that presentation came at the request uh of the equity committee the equity committee who is currently functioning equity committee convened or last week understood the presentation but thought it would be best and i concur that we formally bring an item signifying two things a that those recommendations fully embraced and accepted uh and used

181in the creation of our strategic plan did not use all of them but overwhelming majority there's three or four in which we did not act upon but the others that we did but even more importantly solidify the process on how we move this work forward clearly defining the expectations of my responsibilities to inform the equity committee to inform the board regarding the use of future recommendations and what that does is establish uh the feedback loop my team hears me hears me talk about feedback loops all the time these are the rules of engagement on how we're going to facilitate the conversation clear understanding so this is a a great step for the for the school district around this work on my worksheets here there's no request for a motion but should we not have a

182motion to approve what i just read as as it's an action item we we should approve the action right so so it is directing me to do work i'll make a motion a second uh doctor terry and dr mrs byron bergen and dr jones second it uh any further discussion all in favor aye aye motion carries five zero thank you i can i i do have one thing to say sure um been attending equity meetings for about a year now and um i just saw a really collaborative discussion and getting this on point last week when we were talking about these recommendations and what we needed to do and um you know as a board member i i and i know probably most of you do too you just we want to be clear on

183what our expectations are we want to make sure we're there for support you know the equity committee is a federally mandated committee and i just think the naacp our equity committee and the board working together we can really really move this work forward where the will there be issues or questions once a while heck yes but you know if we collaborate discuss sometimes agree to disagree that's okay but we want to move forward for our students and this community you know and and and i would just add to that you know being relatively new although it seems like i've been at it for a couple of years now um the uh imagine how we feel i'm sorry yeah the um we really gotta focus on the future and too often we get bogged down in

184all the things that should have could or would have been done in the past and it's not helpful yes it's always helpful to have that perspective uh but it's sort of like we've got to have a baseline and i i hope we've got that baseline and the baseline is the is the recommendations that came forth from a couple of years ago that dr moore outlined for us and that we can we can focus on what we're going to do and and i think i said to one of the reporters if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem and the only way you're part of the solution is focus on the future so so hopefully we will do that in partnership with the naacp and with the the equity committee and i'm

185looking forward to real progress being made because it seems like we've sort of been stuck in the mud here for a while dr schiff yeah just uh following up on that and in response i i want to um acknowledge the new equity committee um and thank you for your work i want um also to acknowledge that this is uh this board um that this board i think now we have a board in place who really is committed to this work who is committed not to obstructing the work but to forwarding the work to working as collaborative live collaboratively as we are able um and that there really is commitment um in this board and in this district to getting this work done um it is unconscionable that it's taken as long as it has it's

186unconscionable that there are things um that should have been addressed decades ago if not years and months ago and i wish i could say that those were done and i'm sorry that they haven't been but i do believe that we have an opportunity now with this board this committee this leadership to really get something done um and i i actually appreciate all of you as partners in that work i know many of us have been doing this work for a long time in a variety of different roles so so thank you also for the work that we will do together great progress uh the next item on the agenda is a superintendent's report and you've been speaking a lot so you're oh i did prepare a report based on the length of this meeting so

187um sorry the next item dr schiff is your item and it's ensuring student health education safety and well-being yeah and i want to say i put this item on the board uh on the agenda not anticipating we would have such a long meeting tonight um not knowing much that would come before us but also because um i'm gonna speak to a uh and i know we're all tired but what is potentially a controversial topic because the parental rights bill that came up at our last meeting moved through the legislature since that meeting in this one and is now sitting on the governor's desk waiting to be signed i had thought that it might be signed by tonight which it is not and as mrs barenborg mentioned earlier that the deadline for that is upcoming and

188it will probably likely be signed at that time so i want to speak to it um proactively and preemptively because there are some things in it that mrs barenborg started mentioning last week but i want to at the outset be clear that nobody disputes that parents and families are fundamental to the upbringing and education and well-being of children that's not under dispute or debate i have no objection to parental rights that's not what this is about i'm a parent as is obvious tonight i'm emotional about being a parent as well and advocate for my own child and there's no doubt that parents play a role in the protection of well-being of children this bill predominantly consolidates most existing rights that parents already have in one place and i have there's no problem with that um

189what i want us to be attentive to and aware of is that children also have fundamental rights and that schools have a role in promoting the health and safety and education and well-being of all of our children my primary concern with this is that not every child comes from a loving home not every child has supportive parents who operate in their best interest and tragically there are some children who need protection from their parents and i'm not suggesting that's the majority it most certainly isn't but some parents may actually be threatening the health education or safety or well-being of their children again it's not the majority but the reality is that there are parents who are violent who are criminal who are unfit who have children removed and this really can have disastrous consequences for

190our most vulnerable and most marginalized children i know of many educators and there are probably several sitting at this dais right now who have experiences of students sharing things in confidence out of fear of physical harm emotional harm possible disownment by parents due to their political religious opinions sexual preferences desire to obtain reproductive health information i'm concerned that under this bill teachers or other school personnel might potentially be disciplined fined if they withheld information from parents even if the student asked for privacy and argued that sharing such information could lead to their disownment or their harm or their abuse it is not the majority but it's our job to protect our most vulnerable students i take that responsibility very seriously um when even if we look at school sports that we may have instances where

191school nurses or athletic trainers at events need to see and treat children quickly for illnesses and sports injuries and while we have blanket waivers for some of those things the bill could undermine that school if school personnel can't get a health care evaluation or service to a child suffering from an asthma attack or appendicitis or they've sprained an ankle or broken bone without first obtaining written parental consent what that may mean so that when parental while parental adolescent communication about health health issues should always be encouraged and i'm by no means suggesting that it shouldn't but what about when a child wants to seek treatment but can't approach their parent and otherwise will not seek help and could be harmed not all adolescents have parents who are available willing and able to communicate with them

192about really sensitive issues we have abused kids we have neglected kids we have foster kids we have kids from divorced homes where parents use their children as a battleground and to a lesser degree we also have parents where their shared custody and so what happens when we have to decide what parent to report to and who has custody and what are the legal agreements in that family that we may not be aware of we have parents of esc or immunocompromised kids who also want and need our protection from a variety of decisions that we have to make and we have to care for these kids there are things that don't rise to the level of dcf reporting there are things that are not we are mandatory reporters when when there are instances of known abuse

193or neglect but there are things that are borderline that don't rise to that level that children need to have somebody to talk to and they need to feel safe to be able to talk to adults sometimes outside of that home and i want to protect those kids and i want to give them a space i want them to be able to seek help in school which may be the only place they can turn to so for these reasons and others and while guidance has not yet come down on this which it will once this bill is signed which i anticipate that it will be and guidance will at that time come down from the state about some of these implementation issues what i am asking for support from this board for is to direct the

194superintendent to very carefully think about and identify student populations and circumstances who also need our protection i am requesting the board support to direct the superintendent to develop local language language that applies specifically to this school district for policy and procedure consistent with state guidelines when they emerge of course um but that identifies the needs of of these children of these marginalized children of these children with sensitive needs of of kids who may have nowhere else to turn and that helps us protect these children that helps us protect teachers and administrators from prosecution in the case that a student seeks confidential help and support and protects the interests of students and teachers as well as parents so i'm asking for the board's support to make sure that we have local guidelines that that we ask

195the superintendent to start immediately on identifying these populations these kids and bring back to us guidance about how we will also protect and support children and teachers and administrators in our district and that's that's my item just in response dr schiff you know having run a college for seven years i could tell you stories at the college level you wouldn't believe i have heard them but they but the but but you're right the kids have rights and the only thing that i would suggest not that it wouldn't have happened anyways make sure mr agresta because the legality of some of this stuff is also got to guide you know your whatever you come up with in terms of how we how we want to define or how we use these words because it can be

196quite tricky and we don't want to find ourselves in a lawsuit with a parent um who who in a college study will say well i'm paying his or her tuition i i need to know or want to know well guess what tough luck that's the law protects the student i don't know what the law how the law pertains to juveniles whatever if there's an age definition of a child versus a college age student i don't know but this this this can be tricky stuff so you're wise to bring it up uh dr barrenburg wow i've got a doctorate degree awesome thank you um we just you just got i started towards zappos thank you um you brought up legal documents and custodial and non-custodial parents we're trained as administrators to get that documentation when there

197is that situation so that's already in place so you brought up a couple of things that you're questioning that are already in place there have been protections for children that you are talking about i have had multiple occasions to deal with these situations both as a teacher and as administrator i think that the reason why this bill came about and a lot of the things that are in the bill are already in statute so what some concerns of people i'm wondering if they've read the final bill because there are protections in place for kids there are protection place for adults when reporting that i don't think is going away the concern we've had and i have it as well is sometimes a parent is not the sometimes people supersede their positions of protecting the child

198without really thinking about the parents right either and i think that's why this all came about was because sometimes that has been breached and parents finding out later on that decisions were made without their consent or without their knowledge i don't think that's fair to a parent so i i will be very careful with what you're asking us to do i think that we need to make sure that we understand the law that's going to be in place like you said they are going to give us lots of direction they always do on things like this there have been a lot of education bills and a lot of bills and this one is done by our local representative so i do know that um [Music] you know it's interesting you're bringing it up now before

199we've had a chance to see what's finally approved by the governor when he signs it we will get information sent to us about how school districts can proceed and i don't think it's our job to go outside the law so and i do know a lot of protections are already in place and have always been in place and i don't think they were meant to remove those protections for kids that are marginalized um you know there are kids that will share very personal stuff with teachers and a lot of times it's really tough when you're put in that position as an adult do i share do i not share what do i share how can i share you know is this going to hurt the child not hurt the child like you said we don't

200know what parent out there might do harm to their child because of some news that they get it's really difficult decision but i don't think we're not i don't think this bill is going to be signed without that guidance either i think there will be guidance for that mrs rosario you want um i i i'm gonna have to agree with mrs barrenborg um there are there's no doubt that we don't all want to protect um and support the marginalized students there's no there's no question um and and and i didn't see when i right which bill are you reading which so we're clear so that everybody else is one i think is that so two four four one oh i was on 5'4 and you're needing to look at the latest 341 i'm on 241

201yeah look at the version that's final version that goes to the governor so i i first i want to say that for parents there is a legal definition in here of what is a parent which includes legal guardian or adoptive parent but i know that there are situations where not everybody receives the same uh personal care as uh as others from the school level though when students speak with teachers or administrators and share sensitive information there is a um a level of common sense that at least and i can only speak on my in my experience where i always share with my students if there's something that you're going to share with me that that i feel is cause for concern there i'm not a medical professional i'm not a psychiatrist i'm not an md

202um i i will have to respond and at it at the most um you know call your parent and let your parent know that there is cause for concern or the guardian at the least i'm letting my administrator know i just had this conversation the student understands i don't know where to go with this information but that is something that that we are um well i was i was trained in it and and when i was an administrator i trained my teachers um i'm assuming that that training is still in there so there are so mrs barenborg is right because we do have a lot of these uh daily practices policies and procedures that are already in place that address um much of what you're you're stating or asking your concerns the other part is

203we don't know how it's going to look when neola actually assuming that neola is going to send over their revisions of what the policies are going to look like how it's actually going to be written um when it is signed i suppose we're going to have a conversation which i intended to have already do we have to create our own policy or do we uh um go into the policies that we currently have and just fix the policies that we have it was a conversation that dr moore and i have had now on multiple occasions discussing this but we are also waiting for that signed final copy so that we can at that point take a look at everything that we have in our policies because i know that there are multiple policies that are

204repetitive in nature and so why have so many policies that may say different things so in our conversation it was more about when we get there let's see what we have in terms currently in terms of parent rights and if we don't have anything then let's create one that obviously um mirrors the the new bill and of course with suzanne's help and or what will come down for from neola so at this point it's all very unknown um but we are not health professionals we're not medical professionals we're not doctors so there are lots of things in what was proposed in this bill that we don't actually have a say in you know if a student has a runny nose we're not the ones who unfortunately we're not the ones who take the children to

205their doctor that falls on parents to do and that's a very very small that's a very it's not what i'm talking about well maybe we need to have further conversations about this later on uh because i didn't hear any specific examples of what you were looking for but at this point i would wait until everything is finalized and we can uh figure out what it's going to look like at the end of the day so when i put this on the agenda it was it had to be in before friday i assumed that the bill would be signed um it hasn't been signed and so i didn't my choice was to remove it from discussion or to start opening up a conversation about it sooner rather than later and i chose the latter i have

206heard as have we all i um though not at the k-12 level certainly at the college level i have had students um certainly come to me with things that i am not equipped to handle of course i'm not um and i'm not suggesting that i'm not suggesting by any means that educators should take the place of doctors i do think though that there are um so in the bill a health care practitioner or other person who violates this section is sublime subject to disciplinary action pursuant to yada yada we'll get legal guidance on this stuff i'm clear that we will um but i think that alongside parent rights we have to be really if we are going to consolidate parent rights and make let's consolidate student rights let's make sure that we also are aware

207of where students are protected i've had college students come to me and say that in high school they were aware of either their own or others mental health issues that they wouldn't talk to anybody about for fear of being baker acted so that that's not the same thing as notifying parents but but there are presumptions that every parent is a loving supportive parent and they're just not and i want us to be who's presuming that pardon me who's presuming that i can't hear you who is pursuing that i think there are some presumptions in the bill that parents are generally supportive and act in the best interests of their children most parents do not all parents do um and i i want us to take our role very seriously of protecting the children who do

208not have those parents and that's and and that's what i am raising for discussion here and that i think we need to continue to talk about um because i want to be really really clear um there are there there has been in in uh there has been some concern in the public about potentially doing home to lgbtq students in the review of the bill and i watched the tapes that was not um that was raised by people questioning the bill and it was stated that that no teacher or counselor is going to be required to out a student or make comments to if a student feels unsafe but as much as i want to support parent rights and protect parents i want to support student rights and protect students and i want to make sure

209we take that seriously if if all of those things are in place well then let's have a document that says that let's have it let's have a document that promotes that equally equally if we are going to put parents rights in one place and everybody's aware of them let's have students rights be in one place and have everybody be equally aware of them we already but is that our job are we the legislators if the outcome of the bill which was suggested last week was that we are going to produce a document detailing student parents rights so they are all in one place i think we should do the same for for student rights that was a request of last week so i'm following up on that conversation of last week as since i'm sorry

210two weeks ago that as that when we had that conversation the bill was still in process since that conversation in this one it made its way through the legislature um and is likely to be signed so i am suggesting um that of course we'll get legal guidance but that if we are talking about putting together a document consolidating parent rights i'd also like students to be aware of their rights and i would like teachers to be aware of what they can and cannot say because they cannot be disciplined for you're asking for clarity absolutely and i'm asking that we have that in in legally sanctioned policy and procedures so that we are are consistent and and take our role very seriously about um about our kids who may have nowhere else to go you know

211says where where in here does it say that the students don't have any place to go oh it doesn't say it in the bill but it's it's students lives it's reality i've had students so we already have policy on um lgbtq and protecting the rights of students we already have i mean we just saw it today mr meyer mentioned um the protection of students who are of different race who are different culture who uh we saw all about that that's pertaining to curriculum that was about curriculum but we do have policy addressing that already so we do we maybe we just need to put it in one we actually have it in multiple okay multiple places i believe um and suzanne can can attest to that but my question for dr moore i have a

212question for dr moore dr moore as an educational facility institution rather children in in your experience do you have you ever had a child have legal rights as an adult would have you ever experienced a child having legal rights as an adult would if you're not sure i understand the question but i've i've had plenty of adult students who are 18 19 20 years old okay so that answers my question is that there you have to be 18 or more or over to make certain decisions on your own unless you're emancipated prior to 18 years old that's the question yeah so this bill addresses minor children and minor children are children who are under the age of 18. right um uh mrs diagresta am i correct in that yes and in general um the right

213a minor child is no longer a minor child once they reach the age of 18 there are some rights that do attach at 16 but i don't think that's applicable to what you're talking about so i i think yes 18 generally unless it's someone who um perhaps is under a guardianship or a ward of the state they would still not have these rights at 18. i don't know that that's that's exactly right so this bill addresses minor children as in its states the legislature finds further fines that information that important information relating to a minor child should not be withheld and then everything else goes on so it's about minor children so i'm not so sure i'm not so clear a minor child is still a minor child they're not 18 years old to make

214decisions without the parent or the guardian and there are circumstances where minor children can be harmed by their parents there are there are processes that are in place if a child is harmed then we call if it rises to the level of mandatory reporting we call dcf it always rises to the level of mandatory group if a child is harmed even if there is an a suggestion for harm we are supposed to mandatory mandatory reporting report it to dcf so so i'm going to give you a scenario tell me if this rises to the level of mandatory reporting you may know better than i do i'm going to i'm going to defer that to the superintendent [Laughter] yeah i mean this is not the level of detail we have to get into at this moment

215but they're a child's parent gets a new spouse a new boyfriend a new girlfriend a minor child feels uncomfortable in the presence of that person isn't harmed isn't neglected but the person sits a little too close on the sofa the person finds reasons to be in that child's room for example may not rise to it it's the child's feeling there may not be documentation there may not be evidence the child has a feeling that something is not right it doesn't rise to the level of dcf reporting in my understanding are we required then to we will get guidance but are we then required to report that into a home where that could do harm i don't know how to be sensitive to that we don't we don't know yet dr moore dr jones wants to

216talk go ahead dr jones sorry would you mind well i know but i haven't been able to say anything yet but go ahead dr moore go ahead each scenario is different the same scenarios i myself as a counselor have called dcf um in other situations as it was described haven't called and i think as this move forward and guidance is provided and we review our current policy it it is creating a a presentation and confu and clearing up any confusion or developing clearly defined systems on reporting um so individuals who are empowered to support and keep our children safe know the roles and responsibilities that they're supposed to fulfill um and really reviewing that policy so we've initially already have reviewed it as it was moving through the process um we feel comfortable with some

217of the our parental rights policy that we have housing additional things in but as we receive that guidance there will be opportunities to clarify and i think it's a good point to bring that conversation back and do it because it is a a hot topic here that we do not want to have miscommunicated or misrepresented in any way we want to be on the front end of informing our community is this is our updated policy which i think now that we're probably going to have to add a few things too enhancements as to what we currently have which is better than most districts because they're they probably have them all over the place um but incorporating that training in those systems as we open up schools as well with faculty and staff so everyone clearly

218understands a the the intent and b how our implementation supports the intent dr jones if you want to i'll be watching this very carefully after it's signed and uh looking at how we will handle this and what we are doing because um and dr schiff i appreciate what you said we always want to keep our students safe we always want to be there for them as a former educator in many many different positions many students share things with teachers principals and so forth they did not want to share with their parents and if this becomes law and the policies are written in neola or whatever we do from there i just want to make sure that we have the tools to make sure that if a teacher has to report something legally that we have

219the tools to help that teacher help those staff members and make sure we are in communication in a collaborative way with parents i think a lot of us are just kind of skirting the issue here i mean heard from many people on this and you know if a student comes out to a teacher and say they're gay and they're afraid to tell their parents and now it's legally reported you have to tell your parents now so how are we going to handle that what will be our our focus on that because we want to make sure that um we are doing it in the best interest of our families and our students and one thing i don't want to deal with later are unintended consequences unintended consequences can come in many ways you know the

220best scenario is you know meeting with the student meeting with the parent and it all goes well but an unintended consequence for any issue um i don't want to deal with later let's let's be proactive on that in helping our students and our families our parents the extended family whatever we can do to help because it's very very important to our students so what you're suggesting is first of all judgment plays a big role in this and not everybody has good judgment but one of the things you just have to be mindful of is that whatever policy we have is not law and so however a policy is drafted crafted and then implemented it's got to be done in a way that that doesn't put us in legal jeopardy because a policy does not protect

221us for doing something that we're not legally allowed to do so i've just seen the unintended consequences of all good deeds go do not go unpunished so this is a great discussion but it's it's it's tricky that's all i can say i mean we can we can talk about this well and i think i i want to refine what i was saying um is that rather that that um that the superintendent keep us surprised and as exactly you said and provide guidelines and a presentation as this moves through the process as there is legal guidance as it signed exactly how the school district is going to handle it and make everybody aware of our legal rights and responsibilities and our protections july 1st we worked through implementation to insert as we open up the school

222year we we have it operationalized in order to implement which would record that trend mr meyer mr d.o.e guy will it um [Laughter] when this kind of i don't know about you i'm tired when this kind of um i i don't know if there's any kind of comparative bill or law i don't know but when you the does see stuff like that will they then be able to kind of help create i mean all school districts will be looking at this and so will there be any kind of template that they could say okay maybe we need to look at this or that or this is how maybe this could work do you anticipate that so through the chair thank you for using my name first before calling me generally speaking the uh the department

223is careful not to overstep its bounds also so i i apologize i don't have the entirety of this bill memorized to see whether or not it does explicitly give the department rulemaking authority or task the department of education to provide guidance you'll see that in some bills but there are places within the the general scope of the department of education where they they have that overarching authority anyway so um you know i i i don't know that i would lay any money one way or the other on whether or not they're going to take um action on providing explicit instruction on this or the timely fashion of which that may arise you know i just checked that the bill has not been presented to the governor right um there's no limit to how long the

224legislature can sit on a bill before presenting it to the governor they can they could wait until june to present it to the governor and then he would have 15 days to do it so i agree with dr moore we um just need to be prepared and start looking at it ahead of time to be proactive so that we're not behind the eight ball thank you i thought it was seven days now it's seven days if presented to the governor during session so it has not they have not i mean they have three more days and of course if the session is extended they could present it then please no yeah right so one thing i was gonna say and i think part of the reason i know the reason why this bill came about

225um the story behind it no it's a personal story from a parent that in this district um but i will say this that um you know mr rosario mentioned common sense and unfortunately common sense isn't so common and i have learned that the hard way on both ways of looking at this when you're looking at reporting or over reporting or under reporting common sense sometimes isn't there and i think that's why protections are put in place for the kids and for the parents and i will say i i was privy to a situation my very first year of teaching that i unfortunately had a child that committed suicide and left me the note and i will say that you know it still hurts today because my first year teaching you know you go to the

226counselor and you say i'm concerned about this child and everything else but back then you know they counseled the child and they didn't tell the parent had the parent known what the situation was i don't think that would have happened and and that haunts me to this day that that father didn't have that opportunity to know that his child was hurting and so for that reason i understand why laws like this are in place so think about the kids that are reaching out for help and you think you're doing good as a as a counselor to help them not knowing that that parent would have probably handled it a different way and just well i'm i i would never discount that experience or the pain or harm that that caused in another scenario um it

227could have gone a different it could have been worse um so i just want us to be attentive i don't know how else that could have been worse but okay it could have been a parent who caused the child to feel suicidal that that was a supportive parent who might have been able to really support that child but in another scenario the child's pain could have been caused by the parent and i think many of us as have um and we're not going to debate this but i'm going to tell you that was the scenario the parent was causing the pain and didn't know it so i think you know we need to start giving some parents the benefit of the doubt they are the parents and i think sometimes we over protect kids without

228knowing that the parent if they had information and away its approach to a parent sometimes helps the parent receive information so i'm done talking about it there are lots of scenarios i'm sure we could talk about but i think it's better that we wait and get guidance i agree okay this has been an interesting discussion so before we move to members matter i'm sitting here looking at mr fagan who sat here all night and not said a word is there would you like to give a pep speech or do you have some words of wisdom before we i mean i hate to have you sit there and not have the opportunity to express yourself [Laughter] he was crunching numbers i just want to make sure you're okay i mean you don't want to feel we

229don't want you to feel unwanted or insecure or any of those kind of things okay you're doing just fine okay i get it all right members matters uh dr jones you've got both hands up so this is going to be good equity meeting i as i said earlier i really um enjoyed the dialogue equity committee members and mr browning keeping us on target with some of our information and i appreciate that and like i said we know we've got work to do and we're going to do the work if you were at the vero baseball game where i threw out the first pitch it was a strike and it was on um it was taped i didn't i didn't throw from 60 feet but i threw for 45. sebastian river high school scholarship night was

230amazing tomorrow's vero beach high school scholarship spring concert at sebastian this thursday i'm the alternate for the value adjustment board miss rosario could not make that meeting and i really enjoyed it learned some things about our costs for the magistrates and so forth but really good information about what we do with our taxpayer money it was really good i did go to the steam um at the ig center last saturday it was it was fun it was a week before and um the most important thing is that i have a new grandson and if i look at my pictures god bless him he's got lots of hair lots of hair and i'll be going over on friday and just very grateful thank you okay other member matters dr schiff uh just real quick because i

231could echo what dr jones said but i i won't um the only other thing i'd add is one of the best events that i have been to since i've been on school board was the bikers against bully presentation of the buddy bench at sebastian elementary which was just a total blast we had like i don't know 30 bikers roaring in on their bikes riding around the circle in front of sebastian elementary and pumping up not in a bad way the kids and presenting the bully bunch there was bench not bunch um the buddy bench i'm sorry it's late um really like one of the most fun events that i've gotten to go to so shout out to bikers against bullying and sebastian elementary school for that uh they may be presenting other benches to other

232schools they said they were interested in so doing and i highly encourage folks to go if that happens it was really fun um equity committee scholarships yadda yadda won't belabor it so that's it um mr zarya yes ditto and ditto um to so without um repeating them i i just want to say thank you to vero beach academy steam fest was not our event it wasn't a school district of indian river county event but i am super super proud that we were able to partner with them and uh collaborate on their event and have our students um and our schools rather you know uh participate in the district participate in the way that we did so that was wonderful and on a more somber note i attended the funeral of sebastian river high school student

233on saturday ryan and i just have no words um very very very sad but it it makes you walk away and really think i'm going home to my son and this parent is not and it is devastating to think so um for anybody watching hug your children tell them that you love them this is yes i also attended scholarship night with all of you and it's always wonderful to see so many kids getting so many um scholarships and and the generosity that is in this town is amazing and i know tomorrow we're going to see that again that's vero beach high school i'm going to put a little plug in last minute if you'd like to make a donation for matthew um mcgary please do so tomorrow morning if you can at vero beach high

234school his mom was sherry mcgarry who was our library assistant at oslo who died from covid and his father died on april fool's day so anyways this young man is amazing his resiliency he um he's amazing so he's worth investing in let's just put it that way um bikers against bullies just so you know um that was something i brought up a while ago i'm i don't know if you remember that conversation i brought up about the bully bench or the buddy benches yeah um kids that feel like they need a friend or are being bullied they sit on the bench and they somebody recognizes the fact that they can go be a friend but what's also interesting about it is those are recycled materials that they use to make the bench so i just

235want to put that little plug in that they do that um this was something i put out there for schools to do uh and challenge schools to do it but then i found out these guys are wanting to do that for all the schools they can so we really want to encourage those guys you got their card correct mr bass yeah let's reach out to them because they were awesome to help and then steam fest was great it's always wonderful to see homeschoolers coming together for something like that and that we got to participate in that and shout out to mrs sleeper and her group of kids that were there because you know she's she's a nasa teacher and she's bringing in what she's doing out there all the time and bringing it out to

236the community events so that's really neat to see and then the last thing is isn't it teacher and staff appreciation week next week next week okay i wanted to make sure we didn't miss out on no i know you won't next week but we don't have a meeting next week so right we don't so um i just wanted to say we appreciate teachers and staff members dr schiff yes speaking of appreciation i believe it was administrative assistance appreciation day i am remiss in not having acknowledged it when no it was it was like last wednesday nancy and so so so i've been thinking about it ever since and how remiss i am and not having directly acknowledged it um nor sent you the gift card that was in my head but never actually made it

237to click the button um but in public acknowledgement uh we could not do this work without you um i have no words you are the best administrative assistant i have ever experienced in my entire life so thank you for that and happy to have you back and to every other administrative assistant in this district though i may not work with you personally um i thank you for your service and you deserve to be acknowledged so and oh and miss poisel and ms davis and and and and and yes i have worked with you directly and you do deserve to be acknowledged and i thank you for your work and i i'm in final grading in my other job and so i'm just a bit of a mess because i'm trying to keep track of you

238know hundreds of students and this and so things are slipping through the cracks sorry well we also like to see nancy back in in yeah and welcome back from her hip replacement and moving where we're going to see you see how quickly you can run around the circle here and the only the only thing i would like to add to this is that i thought dr moore did a particularly effective job at the taxpayers i i mentioned earlier the level of awareness there were some people there that questioned how we spend our money but that's their right but i thought you did a really nice job and you dealt with some of the more challenging uh comments or questions but i think that's all part of why the level of awareness in this community is

239is on the rise and so nice job anybody else dr moore do you have any words of wisdom before we adjourn for the evening please yeah drive safely that's a good one no no sir thank you all right meeting is adjourned at 9 42. thank you you