School Board Business Meeting 6 p.m. 6-22-21

001good evening it is tuesday june 22nd 2021. this is the business meeting for the school board of indian river county it is um time to start our meeting so i'll call the meeting to order it is 6 p.m officially and at this time i'd like to call mr john teske ford please for the pledge of allegiance you will lead us please stand i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] thank you mr tuske hey board members we're going to adopt the orders of the day as we discussed today in today's workshop one of the consent items was moved to action and that is the english language arts instructional materials item board

002members are there any other items that you wish to move from consent to action superintendent yes i do have one item that i need to pull a job description and i'll give you one second i will find it it is the under 8b the ese para professional job description i'm going to pull that and then work with the union and bring it back you said 8b 8b correct question about that yes dr schiff you were recognized in pulling 8b that's also approval of all the just just so just to clarify it's only the job description and not the rest of 8b i just want to make that clear okay correct any other items yes i also see uh 5b and those are the business meeting minutes from six eight for correction so those will be

003moved to next meeting is that correct ms esplan okay [Laughter] okay i'll call for a motion um is there a motion for adopting the orders of the day i'll make a motion okay thank you and a second doctor uh i'm sorry adopting the orders as amended yes as amended thank you okay and let's have a vote all in favor aye aye any opposed okay is mr barefoot on yet he wasn't on okay so it's 4-0 vote thank you okay at this time we're going to have citizen input oh i'm sorry yes why does she have this next sorry we have a proclamation follow the story we have shining star first yes we have presentations thank you um shining star award um we do have a number of presentations i i want to a little bit

004of leeway begin our first presentation the florida department of education released third grade scores today this has been a long awaited release and when i say a long-awaited release this is the first official statewide data point that we have post pandemic and i think everyone in the community across the nation has been preparing for a great deal of decline as a result of the pandemic and as you recall we shut down our school systems as did the entire state of florida on march 13th we quickly created a very a number of different options to complete the school year we were shut down and did virtual for the summer and then we opened up with 62 percent of our students in brick and mortar and then over the course of time we grew to 85 percent

005we heard a lot about um covet loss learning loss learning slide and we were anticipating or preparing for the worst in fact there are 54 districts in the state of florida of 67 that actually declined from the year 2019. there are only four districts in the state of florida that improved uh and there's a total of 13 that maintained or approved the school district of indian river county is not one of the 54 districts that declined we were one of the districts that maintained our 60 percent pre-pandemic and that is something we should be extremely proud of preparing [Applause] it is a reflection of the hard work of our educators of our support staff of our principals we were a district that never took our foot off the gas in the midst of the pandemic

006we committed a series of professional development for our administrators we created a strategic plan a strategic plan that puts us in the top 10 of most categories academically across the state we improved 10 or 10 rankings in state state rankings when you look at our third grade scores and that's something to be extremely extremely proud of when you look at other districts around us you see decline all around us but not here in the school district of indian river county when you look at the smallest percent of schools with level 1 students we are the 15th ranked district with the lowest level percent of level ones and we're the 20th percentile for 20th percent 20 ranked 20th ranking in the highest percent of level fives so the district is making significant movement as you know

007we're in the midst of a a joint plan as it relates to unitary status and we've been working through a desegregation order for a very very very long time and we made a commitment to improve the performance of our african-american students the state declined three percentage points in african-american students the school district of indian river county improved three percentage points so that's a significant rate of improvement for us as a system this is a sign of things that are yet to come in terms of the improvement of performance here in the school district of indian river county we have a strategic plan that is set we have faculty and staff who are fully committed to our students and doing everything that they need to do in the midst of a pandemic so as we close

008out what has been a very odd and complicated school year we are so excited about what lies in front of our children our teachers and our staff so this is just our first presentation looking forward to coming back at later board board meetings and providing additional information regarding the rest of our academic outcomes uh but this is a great sign so with that that is our first presentation and i will turn it over to miss maddox for our second presentation good evening thank you for being here with us tonight i'm going to start this presentation out in a positive way because the way i had planned started out was it sounded negative so most of you may have heard about a week ago we had 18 students who survived a very bad bus accident so

009can we just clap first for that [Applause] and we just wanted to bring a few people here tonight that were just so important in getting our students off the bus safely handling all the emergency procedures and protocols dealing with the students and getting them to their families and it was just amazing everyone came together to make sure that all the kids were okay we even had passerbys passing by just to stop and help and there were some students on the bus too who we heard help the other students off so it was just it was something very scary that happened and it had just an amazing ending so tonight i would like to bring out um our director of transportation miss jennifer idalette and mr tony sears our safety operations manager for south county and

010last but certainly not least i want to hear a big round of applause for miss nikki norris she was the bus driver we're very proud of you i'm not going to cry because i'm not i'm not a pretty crier i'm an ugly crier so um we have our shining star awards um mr sears thank you very much and miss idalette thank you thank you and nikki i'm going to give you this award and also present you with the shining star award for this month for getting all of our kids is good evening everyone i just want to let you know that we do practice evacuation drills annually but we never hope to experience it but when it does happen we're just so proud of our students the way that they followed and executed everything that

011they were taught our transportation professional miss nicki naras could not have performed any better so it was such a tragic not tragic but unfortunate event thank god it wasn't tragic but unfortunate it's something we never want to experience but like i said if it happens we're just happy that they're prepared and know how to execute the plan so we're very proud and thankful for our community members as well as miss maddox mentioned many passer buyers stopped and jumped into action so we're just happy that everything just came together as best as possible in this incident so thank you and and all three of these individuals were on the scene mr sears you were out there taking care of our kids making sure that they got to the right parent checking off the list i know

012you were working super hard because i was communicating back and forth so i just wanted to make sure everyone knew what his part was in in that day so again thank you so much if we can get a picture over here with the board please thank you so much [Music] so before our shining stars depart i just want to personally thank each and every single one of you for your uh going above and beyond and this miss idalette says this is something you prepare for and you train for and you hope that you never have to use and i can tell you i was actually in tampa getting ready for a state presentation to our board members were there and mr bass came up and whispered in my ear we just had a bus accident

013and it flipped over um so you can imagine how stress stressful i was you know across on the other side of the state mr bass just very calmly said don't worry we got this we have the right people in place um and i just took a little breath took a deep breath said a little prayer and realized we absolutely do have the right people in place so thank you so much for everything that you do in such a scary environment you guys did an absolutely outstanding job thank you our our final presentation for this evening is a very special presentation to me and i think for us as a community they're just celebrating the stars back there i have the opportunity to meet with the naacp president uh pretty frequently in one of our meetings

014about a month ago mr tony brown asked me do i know where the first black school was in our community and my answer was the wrong answer and he took that time to share with me a event that took place last saturday and it was identifying where at i'm going to say it wrong park uh there is actually the ground in which the first uh black school in our community resided and they were having a special event where they were going to place a historical marker uh at that site to acknowledge that as being ultimately sacred ground and as i heard about that and tony shared with with me i wanted to take the opportunity to learn a little bit more so mr seymour in his new role is hard at work and fast at

015work had the opportunity to connect me with the gifford historical museum and cultural center and i had the opportunity to go on that tour and it was powerful it was very very powerful and anyone in the audience if you haven't had the opportunity to see a small building filled with a great deal of history you need to do that and then we walked over to gifford middle school where we have a legacy room established for the gifford giver the old gifford high school and once again more history in terms of the the impact that individuals throughout our history have made here in our community and i wanted to ensure as a public school system that we took every opportunity to acknowledge um where that school resided so i created the opportunity for us to um

016have a proclamation and as we bring the group out i've asked johnny may perry uh who will be coming out in a second if this proclamation could reside in one of those two historical locations to acknowledge the support that this school district this school board has as it relates to our african-american students and creating a school system that ensures that each and every single child has everything that they need to claim their success when i had the opportunity to speak at that event i spoke through the movement of schools going back for you know a very very very long time and here we are fast forward still in the midst of a desegregation order and what an opportunity for us to acknowledge how we as a community can come together to unite and create a

017school system schools connecting our community to creating opportunities for all students that's the power of public education and when you put your hearts in your mind to work not only will you experience the results that we just shared for our third grade our third grade students but you create a lifetime of a children achieving their potential and this is an opportunity for us as a school board in a community to acknowledge uh where it all started for so many people in our community so with that i'm going to turn it over to mr seymour some additional remarks and then he will give it over to miss maddox thank you uh again uh i i have to commend dr moore for making that effort but um it's what we're about and it's all about community and

018continuing to reach out to those who have information that we can utilize to better prepare our students for classes in this history there have been so many different things that i thought i knew i went to gifford middle school but prior to that it was gifford elementary before i went to osceola and we talked of some of the same teachers and some of the information but i know there's more history behind this that i could ever come up with and i actually learned more than i i honestly do and the connectivity you know of this group and if you know of gifford high school it's a very powerful group and when you hear of some of the titles and the backgrounds of these individuals these are the people that we're interested in learning from so

019i will not hold this any longer we will bring out our first speaker mrs johnny may perry who is the ceo of the gifford historical museum and culture center is here tonight to read the proclamation and tell us a little bit more about this important event good evening we would like to thank the superintendent the school board members for this prestigious honor on behalf of the gifford historical museum and cultural center and the gifford community we want to thank you for this proclamation as we tell the historic paths of gifford high school we are proud to have been a gift of tiger many students from the early days of gifford high school returned to gilford out of love and dedication and taught at gifford elementary in gifford high school such as dr eddie hudson who

020is with us this evening mr garfi gibson mr scott perry dr a ronald hudson miss catherine washington the late bernice broxton johnson and the late pam perry just to name a few gifford high school represented dignity culture and pride for the gifford community it was the heart of gifford and that heart is still beating today within each one of us thank you and mrs johnny may i'm sorry i scared her she's not reading the proclamation dr peggy jones is reading the proclamation so dr jones it's so nice to see so many familiar faces before i read the proclamation i just wanted to say i attended this event on saturday with dr schiff dr moore and mr seymour it was the dedication of the first gifford school in jose shuman park a historical marker was placed

021there just this past saturday i was also the principal of gifford middle six in its last three years of existence and proudly opened gifford middle school along with a great middle school faculty in 1995. proclamation designating june 19th 2021 as gifford school jose shuman park historical marker dedication day whereas in 1901 william edward jeffrey purchased 80 acres of land in gifford and donated a portion for the construction of a black school where none existed whereas the new school giffords school first served students in first through sixth grade until 1938 whereas in 1938 gifford school was expanded to include high school students due to collaboration with the julius rosenwald foundation st lucie county and the citizens of gifford as until that time black high school students were required to travel to fort pierce to attend high

022school whereas in 1952 the indian river county school board funded the construction of a new high school named the gifford high school whereas following integration in 1969 gifford high school became a middle school now known as gifford middle school whereas the historical and philosophical importance of the creation of black schools in gifford where none existed is memorialized by a historic marker and whereas the school district of indian river county recognizes the importance impact and relevance of events of the past in our community and is dedicated to serving all students with a quality education now therefore be it proclaimed by the school board of indie river county florida that june 19 2021 shall be designated as gifford school josie schuman park historic marker dedication day a day to remember and honor the past and a day

023to recommit to the vision and goals of the school district of indian river county to be best by kids transforming education to inspire and empower all students to maximize their full potential adopted this 22nd day of june 2021 school board of indian river county and david moore superintendent thank you thank you dr jones and before we kristen ushers everyone up here to have a picture i i would be honored if if any of the great people who are amongst us would like to provide a few remarks i should have brought my box thank you for having us this evening i am the county historian and we are in the midst of history right now but there are many stories about history of the past and what is important that we take those stories we bring

024them to the present and we learn for the future historians call that connections on saturday we heard stories of the generosity of a black man and given his land for school we heard the commitment of a white man julius rosenwald whose foundation funded schools for black students all over the south and also the commitment of a very small community gifford who had to provide funds as a cost share for that school they did it they built that school and we had a number of our students as as johnny had said that came back and served other students so they came from the past to the present and these students are going into the future decades later when the site and the abandoned school fell into hard times a large corporation gulf western in fellsmere purchased

025the school and the site and they did it for a public park to honor one of their employees a very loyal employees jose schumann so that's come fir full circle and these commitments and these connections exist today the state of florida on saturday bestowed one of their honors on this little site and that is a florida historical landmark and that will be there forever thank you i just want to i just want to mention that the county historian is not a paid position um so ruth is is volunteering and if you have the opportunity for her to take you around the museums put your tennis shoes on lace them up she's gonna she's gonna move quick i was appointed 21 years ago so we're long-lived [Applause] good evening i'm katherine washington many of you may

026know me but i am a 1964 graduate of gifford high school i was also teacher i came back and taught one semester before entering into vero beach high school as a home economics teacher back in 1967 but tonight my remarks will come from something that is very dear to all of the different nation and that's our alma mater o gifford high has stood the test it is the very best it has struggled hard to win its name and now it's not a shame and now it's not a shame my friend and now it's not a shame it has struggled hard to win its name and now it's not a shame it was started long ago my friend with a few and honest men these men knew that they were sure to win if their hearts

027were free from sin my friend if their hearts were free from sin these men knew that they were cured to win if their hearts were free from sin we pledged ourselves to do our best we are sure to stand the test we boys and girls will always strive to make school and community one to make school and community one my friend to make school and community one we boys and girls will always strive to make school and community one and this was written mr merrill russ vice president of the class of 1951 verse 1 raymond jackson president of the class of 1951 verse 2 and verse 3 the writer is unknown but isn't it beautiful thank you good evening my name is anthony brown today i'm truly proud honored and hopeful of our future as

028i said on saturday i'll repeat black history loss stolen forgotten and oftentimes altered it is important that our children our community and our people know who we are where we came from and our struggles from the dirt of gifford florida came many monumental people many people we had generals we had phds we had all of these people who evolved from a school that was never wanted to be dr hudson said on saturday he had to quit school for three years in order to work dr hudson eddie will probably tell you how we went they went three months or four months but they were determined to educate themselves and be educated and be a positive force in our community as you step forward from this day i'm honored that the proclamation was given i'm honored that

029it's not a historical society a historical site but i pledge all of you to realize we cannot bury the past it is relevant for the future we cannot bury the past if if we bury the past it's to say that all of these people are irrelevant it's to say our deeds our actions our struggle has been for naught it's to say that our struggle never occurred so as you go forth as a district to deny any child the true history is to deny all children our children are strong enough they are intelligent enough to decipher this stuff and understand what is relevant and needed as our clothes are saying frederick douglass said a man cannot have a future if he does not have understand his past thank you dr moore thank you school board we

030truly appreciate you good afternoon uh my name is joe adelet the third i'm here on for my father joanne outlet jr who was a school board member for 20 years he's a 1957 graduate of guilford high school and a couple of quick things uh as we travel we see how the uh the railroad tracks are blocked by the uh by the trains my dad and mother tells me the story of the train blocked them they had to crawl up under the train to get on the other side of the road to make it to school so that's been a part of a problem in our community a long time but that was a part of their story all right my dad guilford high school was did not have a football program i'm going to just

031hit this and um they started it while my dad was in school he was a 57 graduate as i said he told me that um when they first started the program they asked viral beach for some equipment and vero beach did send some equipment to help him out but he said when they that first year because they didn't understand the game he said they got beat pretty good but he said but he said as tigers they matured and they and they uh he said that next year all those whoopings that they took they gave them back good evening i'm eddie hudson i don't know whether i'm eligible enough to pinch it for my brother ron but i'll do the best i can um my family was born all of my brothers and sisters were born

032in tallahassee where we were out in the boonies as they say uh in town excuse me tallahassee and my mother uh was pushing my father to get us out so we could get a better education and in 1943 the first time i ever left the city of tallahassee was to get on a train to come to indian river county where i've been now for more than 75 years when it was time for me to go to school because we had us one that was the main thoroughfare from and especially from the north going to the south miami and other areas in that vicinity it was very difficult for us small kids to cross us one so my mother i didn't know it then but my mother kept me out for that year until i got

033big enough that i could cross us one by myself i started first grade in 1945 and graduated from gifford high school in 1957 and there was one of my teachers who were so gracious took me to saint augustine after i graduated and i had an audience with the president of the college it was the time was florida normal college in san augustine and that's where i got my bachelor's degree my first job was back at the school that i had graduated and i taught fifth graders and i can go on and on and on but i know the time is short but i had a wonderful wonderful time going to uh gifford high school and and it really made me feel good to come back so that i could teach or work teach i am

034reminded of president abraham lincoln when he said that he will work hard and study now that he'll be prepared for an opportunity to come and ek mills also said i i really want to aspire as well as inspire thank you board members and superintendent for what you've done for gifford high school [Applause] good evening thank you i'm curtis edward johnson jr i currently am the sitting city commissioner the city of fort pierce mayor pro tem of the city of fort pierce dr moore it's a pleasure to be here i am probably the youngest with tiger blood running through the veins because i am the grandson of ernest jeffrey my mother was his daughter who was an educator in st lucie county for 33 years my grandfather valued education as i looked through the area of

035gifford and looked through the city of vero beach it was well known his generosity to donate for education there are two placards in this county that bear his name based on his donation and belief in education i had my grandfather in my life until 1983 when he passed i was a junior in high school yes i was a junior in high school he was born in the 1800s i was a blessing that came along a little later in my parents life but i'm glad that i did because i'm the start of that history making sure we get it right and what's being done here tonight and what has been done this weekend is getting it right so that the stories are being told they're being recorded and it's being factual and i can't thank you

036enough for telling that i know my grandfather is smiling down he's buried just up the street here not too far from here and i know he's smiling and i know my mom's smiling i've got my cousins here and we are so proud on behalf of the joffrey family johnson family to be here to see this moment and we can't thank you enough thank you [Applause] good evening my name is freddie woolfolk lifelong residents of indones county you know when i was growing up here in gifford i knew one thing about the laura and the gift of where the school was located and that mr jeffrey had the best hayden mangoes in town still do my wife is from that area and she was born and raised in the lower end of guilford and she used

037to tell me stories about how if she sweep his porch and do some dishes for it she can get those hayden mangoes so i have a big investment down there but but but it seems to me that i came along a year too late when things were happening and what i mean by that i didn't attend the school on the lower end of gifford 1951 i was born 1952 the school was built across the track so i missed all of that great history over there but one thing about it i felt that the tiger growl reached from over there by the hospital all the way over where gifford high school is today and it's still growling cat said a piece of miss washington said a piece of the song and now i'm not ashamed my

038friend and now i'm not ashamed we have struggled hard to win his name and now i'm not ashamed and i'm not ashamed because i didn't get the opportunity to become a tiger graduate the year i was going to be a senior tiger they cut my ground off and it had to become a whoa but i never forget i never forget that tiger growled that mr uh horskin and mr dr hunter and others dr hudson they said boy you can get an education in a tent you don't have to be in a building and that inspired me not to give up because i would not be a graduate in 1970 at gifford high school it also inspired me when i worked so hard that junior year to send his seniors to washington dc selling candy washing

039cars and guess what i won't get a chance to go i could have became very bitter quit school but i remembered that tiger growl and now i'm not ashamed my friend and now i'm not ashamed we have struggled hard to win our name and now we're not ashamed thank you so much thank you dr moore and members of the board my name is james broxter jr i'm the son of james broxton senior who is a 1960 graduate and alumni of gifford high school and a veteran of the u.s army we're relatives of mr john broxton who took it upon himself to transport black students to lincoln park academy in fort pierce due to the lack of educational options for blacks in indian river county during that time my father continued to transport students for the

040indian river county school district in the 70s when he drove the bus during the early stages of integration the legacy of broxton's being a part of transporting students in our area continued as donald broxton jr drove the indian river county indian river community college school bus and he transported students from fellsmere all over indian river county to fort pierce so that they could get higher education [Music] when he got ready to go into the army the mantle fell on me to do that same job so i did that as well i'm currently serving as a teacher in indian river county today because of the sacrifices and the dedication of the gifford tigers and everybody that was a part of making that happen and i don't take that for granted i don't take it lightly my

041opportunities in education i have a master's in business administration i could have not been there if the chance to go to school was not there for my mom and my dad so today i stand before you grateful i stand before you acknowledging the fact that you can a person by taking education from them and i want to thank this county for acknowledging the fact that education is important to all people thank you and i was disappointed that mr gibson couldn't be here tonight because he was my principal at bbe so if someone could tell him that kristen dees said hi i would appreciate that that concludes our presentations for tonight well we're going to take a picture yes but that's the end of the presentations and if everyone would please come up here in front

042of the desk we want to take a large group photo for the proclamation she doesn't have any here she doesn't have anything okay we just vote on the proclamation okay all right board members um i need a uh emotionally approved the proclamation designating i'm going to say it wrong too uh gifford school and jose park a historical site second okay thank you um all in favor aye aye are we gonna fit everybody can they come up can they come up kristen can they come up this way yeah there you go hello you're yes okay [Applause] thank you freddie thank you for speaking thank you for being here so here as you walk out here is the the proclamation and what we what we'd like to do is take a picture from today uh and frame

043it in a nice piece of wood and send it over so we can put it up but we all have signed it and it's ready and just for the record it was a 5-0 vote that's perfect so i will get it over to you thank you thank you thank you thank you for being here and madam sure that does uh conclude our appreciate it presentation is the proclamation gonna go in the interview one historical society and then one in that school i believe that's yours thank you for being here [Music] i wanted to use that one i know it's like somebody's like thank you can can we close that door back there yeah thank you all right now it is time for the citizen input and i appreciate the presentations thank you dr moore all

044right these are the guidelines for citizen input according to our school board policy zero one six nine point one each statement made by a member of the public shall be limited to three minutes in duration persons will be recognized in the order in which the requests were received the time shall start when the speaker is at the podium and the school board attorney will be the official time keeper you will hear a beep at the end of your three minutes persons may speak up for up to three minutes at the beginning of the business meeting during citizen input as indicated in the order of business and for up to three minutes to each action item during the action agenda and each board member discussion item as indicated on the order of business persons may only

045speak once about a given item the time period may be extended by the presiding officer only the individual submitting the speaker's form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded to other speakers during the meeting please refrain from clapping or outbursts of any sort so that we can proceed with dignity and with decorum by not infringing on anyone's individual first amendment rights i need to remind everyone to direct all comments to the vice chair who's running the meeting tonight not to individual board members or to the superintendent board members may or may not address any citizen inputs statements at the end of the citizen input comments as board members listen to citizens without interruption citizens are asked to give board members the same respect as per florida statute 1001.372 subsection three the

046presiding officer of any district school board may order the removal from a public meeting held by the district school board of any person interfering with the expeditious or orderly process of such meeting provided such officer has first issued a warning and continued interference with the orderly processes of the meeting will result in that removal i will call you up in the order for which the forms were submitted and i'll call the first speaker first and the next speaker will be on deck at the back of the room so i'll call two people at the same time so first speaker will be joseph parr the second speaker will be mary zerby mr parr okay and can you also call mrs derby thank you good evening good evening so in the last meeting um we the parents

047for equality the group that i'm in were pretty much accused of pushing a communist marxist agenda i'm getting really tired of having to deal with these types of attacks just a person who fights for justice the accusation that we have some sort of hidden agenda to institute communism in our school district it's completely false look parents for equality it's a group of people with diverse political ideologies could there be people that are literal communists in our group absolutely there are also republicans libertarians democrats and people that don't have mainstream political ideologies in our group but what we are fighting for does not fit within a single political ideology we aren't beholden to democrats republicans big donors like the koch brothers or george soros special interest groups etc the thing that we all share in common

048is that we all fight for justice and what we we've also what we've also heard from some within moms for liberty and such and other organizations is that the terms diversity equity and inclusion are code words for communism and marxism now i go to a university where we have what's called the office of diversity and inclusion something that is very common amongst colleges and the people that i know who have worked for and or with them are some of the most compassionate most anti-racist people i've ever met and the director of it is someone who is massively respected by me and so many of my peers and the person who mentored me in my first year of college and is one of my best friends in turn for them and to say that they are

049the actual racists to say that they have this hidden agenda to promote communism it's it's a deception of the highest magnitude and honestly it's hurtful diversity equity and inclusion aren't euphemisms or code words they are words and practices that we live by because they are the right and just things to do and i said in my speech last meeting that i wish that everyone had teachers like miss walton and dr kerrigan i truly meant it now some here may think that i may have just been indoctrinated with leftist or communist ideology and that's just not true dr kerrigan's class for instance was completely fact-based and pretty much every single class you would provide us with texts of government policies and historical documents that prove systemic injustices exist maybe if everyone had a dr kerrigan there

050would not be so many people fighting to keep unjust systems in place maybe more people would care for more than just themselves because people are actually being harmed by these systems people i care about and the fact that there are people here that fight for this unjust status quo i take that personally thank you for your comments all right we have next up is mary zerby and on deck is angela love nancy could get angela oh she's here thank you dr moore members of the board my name is mary zarby i have a 12 year old in the school district she's been here her whole life being uncomfortable is a necessary part of unlearning oppressive behaviors one of the most popular misconceptions about black history is that over time americans have gradually become less racist

051that's not true the first enslaved did not arrive in 1619 they were just the first to arrive in the english colonies nearly a century earlier in 1526 600 europeans founded the colony of san miguel de guadalupe and what is now georgetown south carolina they brought enslaved africans who revolted almost immediately on arrival the first slave rebellion predates the mayflower by almost a century another notion is that american slavery was like british slavery but america's race-based slavery was quite different great britain never codified slavery into their laws while it was not illegal it was never ensconced into their constitution and british slave trade was not exclusively race-based like america brits had enslaved people of every color buying slaves from the barbary pirates who enslaved peoples from europe the middle east northern africa and asia when the

05220 and odd negroes in quotes arrived in america there were some indentured servants already here but the twice stolen africans who came here couldn't not speak the language or read or write so instead of being treated like indentured servants providing free labor white virginians changed the game the africans got no contractual periods of servitude these new brand of white people were like freedom we don't do that over here then in 1640 an enslaved african ran away along with two european indentured servants a virginia court sentenced them to 30 lashes extending the white man's period of servitude by one year the black man was given a very different sentence quote and that the third being a negro named john punch shall serve his said master or his assens for the time of his natural life here

053or elsewhere in 1642 the virginia legislature declared the children of enslaved black women could also be enslaved in south carolina in 1739 a group of enslaved congo soldiers formed an army and began marching as they marched led by a literate black man named jimmy they burned six plantations killing two dozen whites the stono rebellion scared so many south carolinians they passed the negro act of 1740. the act forbid slaves gathering in one place growing food and learning to read states across the south passed similar laws they required communities to patrol for runaway slaves south carolina had created one of the nation's first slave patrols in 1704. this time they made it mandatory in 1757 georgia followed suit in 1792 georgia even prohibited slaves from worshiping god those slave patrol roles were the base of state

054militias that later fought in the revolution now y'all i could go on all night it's important the truth will set all of us free and i want my daughter and all of our children to learn real history american history thank you for your comments okay angela love is next and then grace olsen is on deck i want to apologize for coming off harshly in the last meeting i have very strong feelings towards this issue of fighting racism and inequalities and i let those feelings rule my words last time i love the quote be the change you wish to see in the world and i want our world to be more civil and peaceful so i should be civil i want our world to be welcoming to all so i should be welcoming i want us

055to learn from each other so i will start learning myself i've realized that we are all here because we care about our children every one of us we have something in common we care about our community enough to come out here tonight we are all doing our best to survive pay our bills teach our kids and build a better world i have had a long journey to where i'm at today to start unlearning the racism my grandpa taught me the media has taught me our society has taught me i have made many mistakes i have so much more to learn and will keep reading learning and trying to do better as i learn more i am human as a visa are you we have diversity here in this room republicans democrats liberals conservatives white black

056brown hetero homo bisexuals we are all in this school district together we need to be examples for our children of how to work together with people that are different than us we do work well together after local tragedies we pull together after hurricanes so we should be able to come together and work on this as well i've brought some questions we could all ask of ourselves when was the last time i was in the minority race of the room how do i build bridges against across race and cultures and people different than for me what can i learn from them am i afraid or uncomfortable with change why when was the last time i had a caring thoughtful discussion with someone who is across the political aisle are my close friendships diverse or have i

057self-segregated to only be around people more like me hearing only voices that echo my own opinion did i ever ask someone questions about their race as if they were a spokesperson for all other members did i ever act overly friendly to a person of another race to make sure i didn't seem biased when was the last time i was pulled over by the police was i afraid they would shoot me because of my skin color how do i respond when someone around me makes a racist comment can our black and brown students have more teachers that look like them more role models more mentors let's not waste more of the school board's time with bogus fears about marxism they have so many projects and things to coordinate let them do the job of educating our

058children about this complex world we live in how we got here and how we're going to make it out together all of us together thank you for your comments grace olson is next laura torres is on deck welcome hello i am here today to show my support for those who value equality and value teaching their children about equality what we have seen from the great majority of people coming to speak at these meetings has been bullying inappropriate comments to those fighting for great greater equality in the school system at the meeting on june 8th many people spoke out saying that there is no need to teach children about race or move towards a more inclusive education due to the fact that there are already plenty of successful black people in our society already this is

059exactly why we do need to teach about race and its role in our world and to create a more inclusive education the concept and definitions of race and racism are not quite as simple and binary of concept as many people think race is an arbitrary social construct that is not supported by science but is used in society to create unjust hierarchies and systems racism is a manifestation of discrimination and legal authority and institutional control shown through various ideologies and social penalties these definitions and concepts of race and racism make it easier to understand that there are still disparities that are present that may be hard for some privileged people to see yet actively and consistently diminish in varying degrees the quality of life for people of color and other people without privilege thus white people

060sitting complacently holds these violent systems and we can only escape our complacency by actively being an anti-racist that starts in the classroom it is simply not a true statement to say that each and every child will be granted the same opportunities and can each achieve their goals in the same exact way they are each different they are each unique and they each face their own set of obstacles trying to achieve these same goals these obstacles are systems of oppression that automatically place certain groups of students behind in this journey to achieve their goals the same opportunities for each student can only truly be attained if each student is treated in an equitable way as opposed to being treated in the same way as their privileged counterparts as a student who attended all 13 years of

061primary education through the indian river county school district and graduated just two years ago i can speak from the perspective of someone that this curriculum would actually impact and say that i am embarrassed and ashamed to have only learned the whitewashed version of history and how to teach myself about the various systems of oppression that are constantly being upheld in our society the beginning of positive change starts with knowledge which is exactly why i would hope to see a drastic change towards a more incl inclusive and truthful curriculum in the future thank you all right next up is laura torres and then kelly koch is next coach coke hello hello i believe you were asked to do the impossible this year and we've asked administrators to do the impossible teachers to do the impossible support

062staff to do the impossible to follow cdc guidelines and open up schools without the needed resources to make things safe for students for themselves we asked teachers to go back to school before they were ready to juggle in-person schooling with online schooling to navigate quarantines and absences you're probably at your breaking point but you've done a great job and i'm grateful just as we started to see a light at the end of the tunnel you now have to sit through a bunch of parents talking about critical race theory it seems like most of the people that come up here wanting to ban critical race theory don't even know what it is they just don't want students to engage with the concept of racism i've heard many parents and even a council member speak about critical

063race theory in ways that are intellectually dishonest maybe a simplistic way to define it is history has consequences it's an advanced theory that you might use in legal or academic settings and talking about it in a public education setting is like me coming up here and protesting against teaching advanced calculus in third grade there are layers to this absurdity aren't there because you can't remove something that isn't there to begin with so i find this unproductive and what i'd like to offer is this we must accept that we inherently all come to the table with our own bias based on where we're from how we are raised what our own lived experiences are it's a fact that if we grow up in a society where racist ideas are all around us it's almost impossible that

064we wouldn't absorb some of them as humans we are terrible at evaluating our own bias the good news is once we recognize that every one of us has the ability to think about it and try to push back against these internalized ideas it shouldn't be controversial to admit this and commit to correcting the blind spots we find there's nothing political about correcting false information or criticizing those who knowingly spread it there are going to be a whole host of issues that we need to give oxygen to next year continuing public health measures catching up students after an irregular year meeting special education students needs my ask to you is can you commit to centering real issues like these thank you for coming okay is it keeley and the last name scotch i did say it

065right okay koch thank you and chris allen is on deck thank you good evening community members you have nothing to fear in this county or state the hands of your board members and your educators have all been tied and bound your antiquated way of life will be preserved in florida critical race theory is a topic or any associated or adjacent topics have all been banned by your governor you can all breathe easy what is happening here is actually called dog whistling and community members such as miss justice are getting exactly what they want from you you are significantly up in arms about a non-existent issue something of no consequence to your children's daily education while completely missing the fact that no one is actually attempting to enlighten your children about this country's violent and ever-present

066history of racism you are being led down a dark and divisive road and your children and their education are being used in a much more sinister way than i think you may ever realize what you seem to fear the most the brainwashing of your kids is literally what you are allowing to happen to yourselves there is no longer time to ignore the history of our country nor is there time to waste debating whether systemic racism is real there is only time for educating yourselves and your children about what systemic racism is and how we all as white people benefit from the foundation of white supremacy and racism that this beautiful land is actually founded on acknowledging systemic racism is not saying there are a lot of racists in the simple system it simply asks that

067we begin to understand and ultimately correct the fact that if there were no racists in the systems those being our judicial economic and education systems that those systems would all still harm black people and people of color disproportionately it does not mean we are all horrible people but we must acknowledge that the game is rigged in our favor in many ways based on the color of our white skin that even if we were poor abused neglected and have suffered that the act of being born white keeps us safer and gives us greater access to opportunities and the ability to bounce back i can say this to you as a white woman that has been an abuse survivor survived homelessness sex trafficked as a teen and has lost everything at least twice as an adult due

068to major illness or most recently a pandemic speaking about or educating our kids on what a privilege it is to have always has been to be white in america is not as scary as you think it is it is possible to do with fearless and gentle honesty growth is possible change is possible but fear is not going to get you anywhere but on the wrong side of history i challenge you to stop being so triggered by buzz words and start investing the energy of divesting from your own inherent racism and growing from the lessons that have learned we have learned from history and breaking a vicious and malicious cycle if you did not see your black community members up here and feel something you're missing the point thank you thank you chris allen is next

069and rick allen is on deck hi um i'm here i listened to the 1 pm meeting from earlier today and since i can't point one of you out i'll just say this to all of you how can you say that our opinion as community members and parents mean nothing this curriculum directly affects us for five years so because i'm not some person in tallahassee you just expect me to stay quiet you don't want to hear from the pavians then why have the curriculum out for parents in the community to review you imply that we shouldn't even submit petitions and you won't listen because the community is not more expert than those in tallahassee what type of elitist attitude is this it's your constitutional duty and responsibility to select and provide adequate instructional material for all

070students this is written in the statute it's not the doe if you would do parents a disservice to purchase the hmh i was told that by choosing the do approved curriculum you save roughly ten dollars per student has there been an appropriate cost analysis to compare the prices i'd like to talk about a few stories mentioned in the hmh curriculum kindergartners are expected to do opinion writings and these are five to six year olds they're barely learning sight words as this sage house is age appropriate telling a five-year-old to write an opinion to convince someone to agree with you is an advanced concept my seven-year-old can barely write one sentence about what they just read kindergartners are told not to assume that everything the author says is true or correct in a non-fiction book they're

071instructed to question facts in an informational book in the fourth grade there's a story called yes we are latinos it shows a map without borders spanning from canada to central america the same story has racist elements in it a hispanic child is called taco and was previously referred to as no way jose students ask him if tacos contain dog meat the teacher who is a white male asked the student to rename himself to blend in this story if anything will give children ideas to bully instead of helping see what the main story is about another story is my name is lily it shows racism towards a girl who's chinese but speaks spanish people in the story say for you chinese people learning languages must be easy a fictional story talks about a family who consider

072themselves to be economic and political refugees it talks about green cards and border issues how is this age appropriate why not a story about legal immigration in the 2021 ifa quick conferences bonita flucker who is the senior vp of shared services at hmh said that the context of cultural responsive teaching is just one part of the whole approach for the student that they also plan to incorporate critical wellness which includes a pedagogy of critical race theory as well as student wellness she said that the mystery of these will be in thank you for your comments mr allen and um lamar no to giacomo is on deck hello i'm rick allen hello and i watched the the meeting you had this afternoon and i know you saw that video you saw the miss rosario showed it

073and you saw what was talked about and the response from uh mr meyer was that those comments are not found in this material well you won't find those comments what you're going to find are the concepts the constructs the methodologies that make up those structures they're all throughout the material our screening parents that that we had that screened those books found them and brought those to the attorney on friday for his hearing and what he told us there were a list of six um statutes that that were on that we had to fall within or whatever he said oh no i can't do all six i can only do two so if it's outside of these two i can't hear it you can talk about it but it's not going to have any impact so

074what's the disconnect there that doesn't seem to make sense but again you're not going to hear the words critical race theory you're not going to hear specific um things to say call this out that this is critical race theory you're going to see the concepts you're going to see the id the ideologies you're going to see that throughout and that's what was demonstrated friday it's a shame that your own attorney wouldn't let you guys participate in that because i think there's a lot of information that you're missing you're missing out on so i would urge you to hold off pause your vote let's see if amplify gets approved on friday and if not there is an option you can go and not use one of the board approved or the the doe approved you can

075do that other school districts are doing that you can do that you may lose some funding but you have that option it's up to you thank you thank you mr allen uh miss notre giacomo is next and stanford erickson is after that thank you thank you i'm going to read fast lamar no to giacomo as a parent and grandparent stakeholder and tax paying citizen of indian river county i wish to state unequivocally that all children regardless of race creed ethnicity zip code or skin color deserve to be treated with respect and deserve the highest quality academic instruction available without political bias or racially charged indoctrination after studying both the curriculum and the instructional materials with as much time as i was able to devote to the project i and many members of the community decided

076that hmh does not meet the high standards without political bias that our children deserve that is why i was one of the petitioners in a opposition to houghton mifflin harcourt curriculum mr meyer said in their hearing on friday that we petitioners did not spend enough time studying the actual correction curriculum while mr barefoot is quoting in the vero news as saying that we are over reading and over interpreting and sometimes i think they have a little too much time on their hands and they're looking for stuff that's not there the objective attorney spent quite a bit of time on his phone during our testimony with a few strokes of his pen said that we failed to prove our case against hmh those are just a few examples of many in which we are politely denigrated

077and marginalized by the elite members of the school board both elected and appointed yet we the public are expected to act with absolute decorum we are not attorneys nor educational experts but we do know how to read we did spend many hours as volunteers scanning through portions of the instructional materials which fall under the florida statutes regarding the governor's declaration that we will not have crt in our schools we did not study just the curriculum but we did find plenty of concerns the overall tone of the instructional materials is politically and racially divisive as well as extremely negative we gave specific examples of this to the attorney presented him with our reports documenting page numbers to no avail i hear a lot of talk about stakeholders in these discussions but the most important stakeholders are

078parents their children taxpayers in the community the entire county country is in an uproar over critical race theory yet certain members of the board have implied that we don't know what we're talking about that we are misinformed at the may 11 school board meeting jacqueline rosario mentioned that governor desantis mandated that all materials including teaching materials must be free of critical race theory she goes on to quote governor desantis is saying a moratorium must immediately be declared to stop all 67 counties from purchasing materials that embrace critical race theory the 1619 project mbl and marxist materials around the three-hour 10-minute mark if there's no critical race theory in our instructional materials though why did our own school board superintendent dr moore at the same meeting may 11th reject jackie's proposal to extend a moratorium on

079adopting any curriculum containing crt and acknowledge publish publicly that crt is embedded throughout our children's curriculum around three hours and 13 minutes mr moore said the following you're right mrs rosario the same tentacles of critical race theory will be present in amplify as it is an hmh and the definition of what critical race theory is is do we need to have that conversation does mr moore have a different definition of critical race theory than governor desantis how many definitions are there this reminds me of president clinton's statement when on the witness stand it depends on what the definition of is is the entire nation both black and white americans are showing up at school board meetings to express their concern about critical race theory thank you this is not a black or white issue thank

080you all right um stanford erickson and after that susan aguirre hi mr chairman barefoot and members of the board superintendent dr moore april 4 16 1968 reverend king was assassinated that night i wrote a poem my friend was killed the other day a bullet struck his life away his heart stopped and his blood turned gold he was but 39 years old he had gone down to memphis tennessee to lead a march upholding human dignity he had done this many times before he was quite aware of what could be in store bombs had torn his home apart men and media had turned him an upstart he had been spit upon and hit those he helped called him a hypocrite he believed in militant non-violence a warm smile and hand were his defense where others fought and

081ran he walked where others yelled and screamed he talked all he thought try to be good most seek after brotherhood then he said when they called him the n-word this he thought when they pulled the trigger he was a short black gentleman what some call negro and others african-american but all he was so much so much more he was a higher lights troubadour but that's not all there is to say no bullet can strike this man away martin luther king jr will always live as long as even one of us is willing to forgive i wrote that because i lived in the ghetto in the fillmore district in san francisco for seven years and the nation of islam was there and the black panthers were there and they thought dr tom was an uncle tom

082they thought dr martin king was an uncle tom and we have these militants today that think the same thing about anybody who wants to approach this in a nice approach a way with approachable way with our children our children do not need to use racism to teach racism and that's what the hma said it's racism to teach racism that's not what is necessary i appreciate this is a vote that you have it would be nice if you could delay it and look at something else i appreciate all the effort that you put in your public servants i appreciate the education you have please consider don't use racism against racism thank you thank you mr erickson okay miss aguirre and on deck will be um p norman grant yes susan mcguire here hello good evening [Music]

083i'm short sorry all right [Music] i think it's on all right well good evening board members superintendent um my name is susan mcguire thank you for having me um i want to start off by uh thanking you primarily primarily because i know that your job is very difficult as public servants of our county we look to you we look for you for guidance for our children for our families because they are your constituents i'm not here just to speak primarily about my own experiences but also of those because i am also an outreach leader for my my local church and um i often look and see so many children from different creeds different backgrounds and oftentimes outreach means i'm looking at children from all different walks of life walks of life that they didn't necessarily

084choose but they were put in walks of life that mean what their future will hold and what it'll be for them and so during that time in our community i have two children i have three children two of which are very distinctly different some of the same thread one very white and one very brown and it's obvious and i love their differences and everyone says well gee whiz they're so different yes they are i love them and with those differences one day a little boy said to my daughter spanish boy said to my daughter who happens to have blonde hair and blue eyes you didn't get that ball for me because you're racist and that hurt me that broke me i don't teach my children to look at each other through color i never do

085and i never will and it always is based on the content of the character and so when we look at equity equity really means redistribution and i looked at that boy and i looked at isabella and i said what are you going to say she said i'm spanish too he said well you don't look spanish she replied what the spanish look like and i thought that was the best token answer i've ever heard in my life because i grew up in the projects in queens new york i was the white girl i was alienated and i was too white to go to school and book in brooklyn bushwick nickabacca and myrtle i won't forget it i hung out with a lot of people i probably shouldn't have hung out with but that taught me a

086lot that taught me a lot of the things i wanted to see and didn't want to see and be around and i'll tell you what the redistribution of suffering is oppressive in itself and that's what crt is in my eyes because my mother is an immigrant she is the american dream my mother brought to this country with 25 bucks in her pocket slept in central park and she promised me one thing that i was going to be whatever i wanted to be through the mercy and grace of her hard work her hard work put me here it wasn't because someone said she was spanish and couldn't do it she did it because she could and she knew and she wanted to it wasn't because of the color of my mother's skin it was because of

087education in the very beginning of this board meeting everyone speaking about gifford all of them referenced education that it was afforded to them in gifford and i thought and it moved me at some point it was given to them and they hung on to it because they knew that that meant the difference educating our children is important and i do believe that but i also believe thank you very much for your comments p norman grant is next and then ariel garrett's is after that i'm a retired professor of english composition writing from an unnamed northern state and i just was browsing the hmh materials a couple of weeks ago and just a little shocked kindergarten first grade second grade it was mentioned before i didn't get up to the fourth grade i was stunned with

088what they're asking the teachers to teach in kindergarten as a teacher of persuasive writing and debate and rhetoric i'm looking at what they're asking kids come up with a great idea that you can have an opinion about think about the research and the sources and go find some facts and support your opinion with some facts come up with some great closings and a good argument that's opinion writing in the kindergarten if i could do that as a freshman in my community college i would pass them all somebody's being bamboozled here seriously you can't have that second grade third grade fourth grade up to fifth grade opinion writing i could say what's better an orange or grapefruit i never taught kindergarten but i can see that some thinking that has to go on here some critical

089thinking uh the guy who's running the show no he's not annoying the show mr moore uh sorry mr howard not mr mr howard um he's teaching equity that's what he wants to be taught this is his opening remarks his introduction to the teacher's handbook culturally responsive pedagogy is situated in a framework that recognizes the rich and varied cultural wealth knowledge and skills that diverse students diverse students differ students bring to schools and seek to develop dynamic teaching practices multicultural content multiple means of assessment and a philosophic view of teaching that's dedicated to nurturing students academic social emotional and cultural and psychological learning what does that mean this is the philosophy this is educational philosophy that's going to trickle down to the teachers i have serious doubts that has any concrete effect on teaching kids language

090arts there's some bamboozlement going on here thank you sir uh miss ariel garrett's is next and on deck will be susan curtis hello welcome we won't bite you i'm just really nervous that's okay take a deep breath sorry you got this oh shoot i'm sorry i'm sorry i don't want to touch it okay i'm just going to do this like that's good wait a minute hold on oh thank you so much look at that i gotta help her here um hi um okay i'm gonna before i actually read this i just want to um say something um someone just said he was talking about how he's like his freshman students couldn't do something well if they were taught at a younger age and they built upon that maybe they could you know i'm just saying

091um so i know you have heard all the arguments a thousand times but i just want to give you a perspective of a parent with three children in our school system i have two neurodiverse one autistic who's twelve one adhd who's six and one neurotypical who's ten and i could really go into detail and tell you personal stories and all that good stuff but um that's not really why i'm here i'm here to point out that amplify isn't even on the approved list i don't know why we keep talking about it um i have read the petitions and to be frank they're just trying to nitpick and find something anything to make say it doesn't meet standards and that doesn't even make sense because florida proved you know the stuff i mean like makes no

092sense um now most of the people who write the petitions and i read them they don't even have children in our school system so i'm not sure why they're worried about it shouldn't that be the parents responsibility i mean i know that they said that multiple times and their petitions um and and one thing that they touched on was social emotional learning and um now social emotional learning is actually helpful many as for many students as it models real life scenarios and in the autism community they call them social stories and that's nothing new to the world or in school i mean teachers use them all the time when somebody does something wrong you know they use the stories to teach them now the words equity inclusion and diversity aren't code for critical race critical

093race thinking as they'd like you to believe actually none of this has anything to do with crt and it's been banned in florida so all we're trying to do is choose a curriculum and that's it now please um i beg for you to please vote on this as soon as possible we need to give our teachers the materials and the time to prepare for teaching our children next year because without that they're going to fail i mean that's just the truth thank you thank you next up is susan curtis and after that is karen hiltz hi good evening i'm sue curtis and this is susan roberts and we are not here to talk about critical race theory or textbooks or anything like that we are here representing sunflower circle of the garden club of indian

094river county during the month of june every year the garden club of indian river county celebrates national garden week and we do that by having each circle place a plant or a piece of greenery in a public building and our circle sunflower chose to make our donation here at the school board district office because 75 percent of the sunflower circle members are current or former school district employees and very proud of it in addition i would also like you to know that the garden club the overall garden club of indian river county financially supports civic projects throughout indian river county every year in 1930 which was the first recorded evidence i could find of this the civic project was for new landscape at vero beach elementary school since that time over the last 91 years

095the garden club has provided funding for 13 different school district campuses including vero beach high school multiple times osceola magnet school treasure coast elementary wabasso school the freshman learning center highlands which is currently indian river academy and sebastian elementary and i want to point out that currently carissa circle of indian of garden club supports vero meech elementary's garden and their greenhouse which you can see very clearly from 20th avenue it's a pleasure for the garden club to keep our schools to help keep our schools beautiful on the outside just like they are on the inside thank you thank you for the gift sorry i forgot to do that karen hiltz is next and robert schmidt is on deck hello i'm dr karen hiltz and i would like to start out with saying social emotional learning

096is a subset of critical race theory let me first state it's not your responsibility as a school it is a parental responsibility to concern themselves with the social and emotional learning and capacity of their child a couple of points from the hmh curriculum and remember this is grades one and two it speaks to create a culturally responsive environment but what does this mean it includes promoting a culturally responsive anti-bias environment for your classroom points out how each child is unique and differences are to be celebrated it also continues with be mindful of gender considerations reinforcing gender-neutral versions of common words such as business person or firefighter well i grew up with businessman and fireman exposed children to books and other learning resources that reflect their ethnicity culture family structure or socioeconomic structure it also says

097to educate children about the history traditions and contributions of various groups so that children gain an understanding of topics such as these african and african-american history hispanic contributions history of the holocaust and women's contributions to the united states this is not academic focused but emotional focus most of this sounds good but in reality but the reality is children are being taught to tolerate or accept rather than think understand and formulate between right and wrong and why they believe in something these are not academic but social in nature parents should be teaching these character traits to their children not the education system again the focus is on feelings and the emotional intelligence of a child not the basics of academics these topics are unfamiliar to these ages they're also inappropriate in most cases and focus on

098cultural differences rather than educational values they promote divisive and demeaning emotions language from the rule passed on june 10th the state board meeting requires you to ensure efficient and faithful teaching and factual and objective instruction is provided as our elected officials you are expected to make tough decisions and this is your decision not the superintendents not the state boards it's your decision so don't abdicate your responsibility crt and sel is forcing children to have an emotional versus academic iq please think about what you're supporting and import your decision one last point i believe instead of focusing on isms such as racism genderism socialism and activism we should be focusing on exceptionalism thank you dr hiltz every child is exceptional all right robert schmidt is next and donna bertram is after all right that you uh

099vice chair terry barrenbaugh thank you my name is robert schmidt and i love my country i love the united states constitution and i love what happened here tonight everything with griffith and how people are all empowered and i love your word and transform an education to inspire all and empower all students to maximize their full potential i think it's grand you know the equality that we have and we the people somewhere else that said that we are equal equal somewhere right equal we have equal ability to uh become the best that we can be with education school hard work opportunities this country has come very very far i don't see any slavery today i don't see any slavery from ireland or africa or china or i don't see any of that in the united states

100any longer i see our country has grown in leaps and bounds could ask many people that i i'm here to inject that amplify which is going to be taught to all the students throughout florida i hope uh will be passed friday or monday and people can see that their individuality counts and that they don't need to be told that they're racist i i've been watching youtube videos all week long from around the nation all over people are in an uproar about this critical race theory that people are just you must do this and you must do that and if you're white and if you're black and if you're this and if you're that everybody has to look at you like you're evil you're bad you can't do this for what because of color i think

101america is a lot better than that which we are i know we are and i know the school board i commend you on last week last time i was here you all enjoyed the amplify i think it was amplify that we're trying to get past and to stop the the uh the dumbing down of america with critical race theory i mean we know that there's 197 nations in the world something like that every single one of those nations want to come to america why because we're racist because we're going to put you in jail because we're going to treat you bad no because it's the land of opportunity where people could get the education and become free and individuals so i commend the board for amplify thank you very much thank you sir okay donna

102bertram is next and susan meals after that good evening [Music] my name is donna bertram and i've been a resident of indian river county since 1980. my husband and i raised our two daughters here and they received their public education right here in indian river county today one of those daughters resides in vero beach and is a single mother of three daughters is bringing up three fine young women in a christian home my granddaughters were also educated right here in indian river county and this coming school year the youngest will be dual enrolled at the high school and indian river state college i'm standing here today because i'm concerned about the future of all of the children in our county i understand why parents who are busy raising their families and working are not able

103to come i am speaking on their behalf i have the luxury of time i also have a passion which includes my love of god and this country while looking into hmh curriculum i have learned that it is no one's first choice and purchasing something without exhausting all avenues of a better curriculum is a wasteful burden on the taxpayers of indian river county i believe that our children are entitled to the best there is hmh takes the family particularly the parents out of the focus and the lives of those students i am so grateful that when we were raising our daughters the schools did not take that approach i am asking that you not purchase hmh and that you go directly to amplify and work with them no matter what you may have been told you

104do not have to follow what the state has what the state has said on this thank you so much for your time thank you all right susan meal is next and on deck is christy milotto good evening good evening um i'm not going to get into a lot of detail we've been over this i think a few times we a team of us spent days and hours and hours reviewing the curriculums and one of our experts one of our team members is over 20 years history of teaching elementary english decay through to second grade and she helped us understand a lot more about what were it what is in the other curriculums and she did send some information to one of the board members who i must say blew off the information and said that

105he's not an expert in education so he will refer to the defer to the experts and the other board members and i'm thinking what is she if she isn't an expert in this what we've realized though is like in every industry there are education elites just like there are transportation elites i can tell you there are liberal ngos there are progressive college professors and they have all told us over the last year or so what their plan is they're the experts they say and then they want to use coveted and a divided country to transform education in fact two executives of hmh have said that they want to transform education and one of them said crt is at the heart of that transformation these are people leaders of hmh they're telling us what the plan

106is and it's by design this reminds me back when common core was developed and overnight it was approved and it was in schools and it took some moms in the midwest to say holy mackerel what's going on here i came to the school board in indian river county in about 2010 and said do not accept this expert version of education but we got it instead we couldn't even review all the things that were involved in hmh and report back to you because there was a select package but we know what they're doing and selling in california and what's being taught and i just want you to to say to us that you guarantee that none of the stuff that we're finding that we believe is truly bad for our kids that is being taught in

107other states by hmh curriculum curriculum won't come to our county yes we followed the process you followed the process and there was a hearing but as the hearing officer said unless we had problems with the process there wasn't anything he could do and he wasn't there to tell us whether it was right for there to be inaccurate inappropriate and biased material he did his job now you have to you do your job and accepting hmh is the wrong thing for this county thank you miss meal christie milano malado did i say it ray okay and uh ryan blade is on deck hello hello how are you great so last night at a really neat meeting it was said that equity is not guaranteed and all children are given equality in florida but it is up

108to the families to provide equity equity is an individual choice quote wow i remind these individuals that not every home is safe and stable not every child has a home it is imperative that our school provide resources to all children in order for each child to reach their full potential each child's full potential may not look like the next child's next to them it is our duty as adults to give them the opportunity to be successful however that may look i continue to hear that teachers should stick to facts well the truth is the facts were being taught are false teaching history as it was can be healing and a way for us to all grow together i lived in germany for almost three years there was no germans that felt guilt over the holocaust

109but what it taught but it was taught as it was as it happened so that it never happens again so stating that teachers should be monitored is a ridiculous way to try to control our public education system a good teacher regardless of their political view should be able to encourage critical thinking asking questions and learning through others is culturally responsive teaching it is having tough conversations and asking questions so that we can learn from each other our children should question facts this is how they grow and think for themselves as adults in our community and also having an lgbtq corner does not mean we're going to fly rainbows and have a drag queen teaching reading story books it's likely means that there will be books for every family in a book center to teach every

110child that every family may look a little bit different just because the new lessons make you uncomfortable doesn't mean they are wrong my three and a year old daughter knows that she has a donor and two mommies and that her stepsister has two different parents my nine-year-old understands why we still fight for equal pay my toddler and elementary school kid are grasping concepts that you're telling me that it's too age and appropriate maybe it's time that we all start learning something from them but to the mom that said social emotional learning is taught at the house not every kid has a house the school is there for them to lay a foundation and be a family to them can i send over 200 kids on some of my caseload in florida to your home so

111you could teach them anybody no every child in our community is our responsibility and not just our own and sure you truly support all before you come up here saying that you do and then post something that's attached thank you thank you very much uh ryan blade is next and bill flynn is after that hello everybody my name is my name is ryan blade i'm the vice president of the indian river county conservative club i've been talking to some folks who have had concern about hmh i've been taking a look into this myself i do not find that this is a curriculum that this school board should be considering purchasing i would ask that instead the amplified curriculum be the one purchased what i found amplified is does not have a lot of the political

112bias in it i do not believe that our children my eight cousins include ages 4 to 16 years old need to be subjected to basically political indoctrination what dr karen hilt said was very accurate i have to know dr hiltz personally i would highly recommend that this board go and listen to what she has to say and if needed you know feel free to reach out i know jackie and terry they have my contact for me so i can always you know get the board in contact with dr hiltz if that's something i potentially arrange that's just the big thing that i hope is that this hmh curriculum is not purchased and i will say to given that my leadership role in the market sort of a movement around here some of the comments that

113we were kkk members descendants of oppressors and mind you my entire family is descended from the northeast myself included that is not accurate of who we are and the people i have spoken to around here are highly in the conservative movement are highly against racism and if there is any i will be sure to do my part to go and handle that accordingly that's as much like after say thank you thank you mr flynn is next and crystal mcintyre is after that good evening board superintendent i'm a veteran and as a with my experience as a veteran i got the opportunity to work with the moroccan military and i can tell you that there is no racism in a foxhole just like this community we have people coming here and they have a choice of

114how they're going to live their life we see our nation elected the first black president all i see is the other side that the pro-critical race theory they're not minorities they're all white so if we're all racist then why are they trying trying to trying to push critical race theory i have a two grandchildren in the school system my two kids graduated from the school system i'm proud to be in indian river i'm proud to be a part of this society and part of this community i was really encouraged with what was going on with the history with gifford it's very important that we learn from our past so we don't repeat the mistakes however if we attack the people that's changed what we were doing how does that help the community move forward when

115we see people coming from nations this is a shining city on the hill they come here to prosper they work hard not everybody has the same goals in life i'm a blue collar worker i also own my own two two businesses i work long hours why because i believe in the american dream i believe that you can succeed if you put enough effort into it i've helped i try to mentor both minority minority kids and kids that don't speak english well the hispanic community why because i can help them i don't need to focus on anything else other than what's good for the community it's not the school board's responsibility to be the community your responsibility is to educate to teach them how economics work how math works they can learn everything else with their

116community i've never been in a situation where i had to be told what was good and what was bad i knew within me that racism was wrong i don't like to hang around racist people on either side i like my community i think we can get beyond this please don't accept the the poli the the the stuff that you're thinking of let's go with the one that the state doesn't approve of and i'm sure that we can move forward the ten dollars per student might seem like a lot of money but our kids are worth it wouldn't you say that and i also was very disappointed in hearing a school board member go on the radio talking down about people's opinions we're all encouraged to have our own opinions thank you thank you sir and

117thank you for your service okay crystal mcintyre is next and wendy mcdaniel is after that once again good evening to all the board members teachers and staff and other community members and once again until yesterday i was very unsure of stepping back up here but i've recently had the opportunity to read the objections to the proposed curriculum that curriculum that were filed by a handful of community members the objections that bring us to this divisive and as lots of us see unnecessary delay in choosing a curriculum for the district i do want to comment on the fact that out of all these textbooks and all of this information that cover 180 days a year for six years for these two have been the only complaints i especially feel like we are wasting valuable time but

118between those objections and last night's heritage meeting it's clear to me this delay in choosing the curriculum and this delay in allowing teachers time to prepare to educate our children is plain and simply political one speaker last night even went so far as to state their objection to the new curriculum was based on conserving conservative values that confused me because i always thought school systems were supposed to be nonpartisan there was also a lot of talk about how crt which yet again is not being promoted no matter how many times you see the words diversity equality social justice or equity those are not code words they are not trigger words they are just words the district has been very clear they are not pushing critical race theory hmh has been very clear it is not

119pushing critical race theory the governor and the doe have been very clear they are not pushing critical race theory believe them personally i didn't come here to push for a specific curriculum i would have trusted any curriculum the committee would have selected if if i didn't trust the board or the administration i wouldn't send my kids to a district school that said i think i can say that most of us are here for the same reason regardless of the size the best interests of our kids and that and the kids in our community every minute we delay textbook adoption is another minute the teachers lose to prepare to teach our children last year it was mass this year it's fake crt it's time to push the politics aside and bring the kids back to the

120forefront it's time to trust the people we have chosen to spend all of these hours with our children to trust the people we have elected to these positions and to move forward with a heavily vetted curriculum textbooks will not replace parents teachers will not indoctrinate our children no one is asking anyone to change the way their parent no one is asking anyone to change their values we are simply asking to move forward and we want to let the board and the teachers and all the staff know that they do have a support system here in the community we are here to help in any way possible and to say thank you thank you uh wendy mcdonald mcdaniel sorry and cindy gibbs is on deck and um okay anyway go ahead hi good afternoon um i'm

121a parent here and i have two daughters in the school system one wanted to come with me here tonight and i just wanted to speak to all of the fear that we're hearing about crt i don't know if it's if it's an issue in our younger classrooms because my girls are older but as a parent i'm speaking out against the disinformation spread by groups that seek to divide and scare us i'm speaking out because i want my daughters to know the racial history of our country and how racism still exists today in the fabric of our culture i want them to know about the tulsa massacre the fort pillow massacre redlining voter intimidation the genocide of native peoples within our borders the brutal truths about slavery i want them to know this so when versions

122of the same are encountered in their lives they will know to stand clearly and firmly against it despite those who would speak otherwise as a community we need to speak honestly about the past so that we can move forward together understanding mending reconciling as we educate our children in response to some people saying that there's no racism currently i want to respond with if history is not taught it's a matter of time before it's repeated thank you thank you very much cindy gibbs is next and before a call who was on deck board members we're getting close to the two hour mark does anybody need a break in after the speaker how many more speakers we'll have 13 after that we'll need a break yeah okay all right hi so in 2018 after 17 people

123were shot in parkland lots of people wanted teachers to be armed in the schools and now here we are just a few years later and we don't even trust them we think they're going to indoctrinate our children in our classrooms what a switch so we know that our school board and our teachers have been tasked with this decision to to choose which elementary level language arts and reading textbook to choose right the call for citizens to review these choices was in october 2020 and now we have people showing up in the 11th hour all ticked off and we have to make a last-minute hail mary decision at a meeting down in vero where we're screaming and yelling out about how racist and marxist and what have you our teachers are as if any textbook isn't

124going to have pictures of brown children and black children and native americans and other indigenous people it's everywhere you can't get away from it because it's the truth what is in these books that isn't crt is stories and articles about kids who look and live like the kids in our community and kids get really excited when they see kids that look and live just like them that's what motivates them to read at the heritage center last night i heard a lot of folks talking about how teachers need to just teach facts and i'm sorry that's the thing of the past we have an integrated curriculum we include social studies and science content because that's how we motivate kids to be excited about reading and we can't just talk about fiction or non-fiction right we have

125to talk about things that are meaningful to kids i talked to a lot of teachers since our last meeting a lot of them are my personal friends i actually had a lot of people reach out to me i know that one of our school members at school board members at the last meeting requested or suggested a desire for our teachers to come in and stand up here and speak for themselves and i'm here to tell you that they are afraid to do that they don't feel represented because they've been watching these school board meetings and they're hearing people and seeing people come down here and accuse them of being things that they are so far from the truth of being people don't go to get a bachelor's of a bachelor's in education or a master's

126in education or a phd in education because they want to come and ruin your child's life teaching school is really hard it's a passion it's a calling that's why they do it i want to share one thing with you that i did hear from a person who is a personal friend of mine and a current teacher in our educational system here something i focused on this year in my classroom and something that was shared weekly with my entire school was the concept of using children's literature as windows and mirrors students need to be able to look through a window into someone else's life and use their perspective so she was using books that share about discrimination but also books that mirror children's lives so that they feel accepted in the classroom please please choose this

127textbook series so we can get going thank you thank you all right board members it is 8 o'clock we will take a 10 minute recess thank you out of respect for people that are waiting to speak thank you um was that last speaker cindy gibbs or cindy gibbs the next speaker speaker thank you okay so uh next speaker is kim wescott and on deck will be uh wendy mcdaniel we had another wendy mcdaniel so i'm not sure if it's the same good evening thank you all i know you are having a long night and i appreciate you continuing to listen um in it kind of being out there and listening to the night i feel like there's one thing that's gotten lost as we gone through this process over the last however long it's been

128uh now weeks um we have forgotten that hmh was never the county's first choice amplify was always the county's first choice and it's simply a better curriculum that's why the selection committee for the county selected it so at the hearing on friday i closed my remarks with what's the price of our children's education and it seems now we have an answer it's less than 20 dollars per student difference i i think it's even as low as and i'd like to urge you to spend that small amount of extra money to do what you want to do and what you were elected to do to lead the county into being the best school system in this state if you purchase amplify you are following the process set forth by this county that process determined the children

129in this county would be best served by amplifies curriculum when it seemed likely the board wouldn't follow the recommendations of the county committee and and the county experts citizens came forward to say second best for our students in this county isn't good and it was done through petitions fortunately and i know some people felt very unfortunately but i feel like fortunately those petitions caused delays that now put us in the position of being of possibly knowing before a decision needs to be made that amplify will be approved by the doe and then it negates even the ten dollar issue that we're talking about per student the teachers and students in this county deserve what they have deemed the best curriculum for our students and families dr moore and you all have said you want us

130to be the best system and that will be never achieved with the second best curriculum so as a school board lead this county to academic success and please for the extra ten dollars per student don't settle for second best or worse the decision isn't the does or anyone else's it is entirely yours and i encourage you to really make the right decision thank you very much thank you next speakers wendy mcdaniel okay so she must have been filled out too okay laura boyce and angela bolling will be on deck good evening i'm speaking today as a parent and as a current teacher i'm not here to talk about critical race theory i do know what it is but i feel like the governor has settled that issue and now i have to just trust that

131this board will do the right thing however i do think it is naive to think that political activism is not already in the classroom despite whatever curriculum you may have interest increasingly teachers are viewing their classrooms as an opportunity to recruit students as political activists i hate to break it to the board and to parents but the curriculum adoption is the least of your worries teachers have a captive audience and plenty of opportunities to spew whatever ideas they want in their classroom i recently discovered that this was happening in my own child's class my child was subjected to lessons that included video lectures from violent blm activists a vidi video of a transgender activist lecturing students on civic duties gay pride parades anti-american and anti-police sentiment many lessons were factually incorrect or misleading much factual

132information was left out purposefully to promote socialism i have pictures and copies of all this if you want to see it lessons were anti-conservative president trump was mocked and lied about in class for writing assignments students were given a list of totally biased sources and they were instructed that those sources were the only ones they were allowed to use in their writing i have raised my children in a christian conservative home above all teaching them to love all people to work hard and how blessed they are to be americans my child child often felt isolated and afraid to speak up for fear of retribution he never even told me even as his values were being demonized daily where is his safe space on the first day of class his teacher announced that she is quote

133passionate about social justice showing photos of her participating in blm protest which we all know has done nothing for the black community teaching values is my to my children is my job i want to speak as a teacher i've taught school for 17 years i've taught over 2 500 students from all different backgrounds treating them all with dignity and respect i notice that many teachers don't speak up are they afraid i can tell you that teach students face a lot of issues in the school and a lot of these go unanswered as far as politics in the classroom goes as a teacher it disgusts me how hard is it for you as a teacher to just teach your subject where is the oversight for these teachers who go rogue who is monitoring this thank you

134michelle sanford is on deck next we have angela bowling hi everybody thank you it doesn't bend right here it does bend yes okay um i've been interested to hear some of the comments that were made tonight and especially some of the objections to the curriculum that were named and i personally thought that all the the things that were named out of the curriculum sounded like great great things to include in a curriculum i i think that the idea of a kindergartner writing their opinion is very easy to imagine and believe i mean my my kids all had very strong opinions by the time they were two years old and didn't really hesitate to express them and when my kids who were very privileged as whites to go to and and also to have the opportunity

135to attend osceola magnet school as as children when they were in kindergarten they were writing you know they were taught to just start writing whatever story they wanted to tell and it didn't matter if they couldn't spell it or they had bad grammar or any of that but they were getting their ideas down on paper and if they couldn't write them with words then they could draw pictures for their stories so yeah teaching them to write an opinion is is good and um you know the lessons in elementary schools should include elements that that recognize and appreciate the differences in all of us and celebrate those differences and i mean if there's those stories about racist incidents happening that's great that's such a good thing for kids to be able to learn and hear about

136because you know i was i i raised my kids in a christian conservative home and i taught them empathy from day one i didn't teach him enough about the racism that exists in our in our country still and i didn't even know about all the stuff that has gone on in our country i had to go i had to learn about so much of our history just in the last year my kids have had to go away graduate out of our our indian river county schools and go away to learn some more about american history even though they took ap american history you know in in the high school so i i hope that we will include more information about the truth of what so that we can learn from it we really we really

137do need to appreciate what's going on so that we can not make the same mistakes over again um so embedding diversity and equity in our curriculum is the right way to build understanding and empathy oh man that went so fast tonight thank you thanks alrighty michelle sanford is next mike kozad is on deck um cozad and you've called for michelle sanford did she call for michelle sanford again we have plenty of do you want to make an announcement okay yeah um there are plenty of seats in here if people that are out there would like to come in okay all right and they've left or you don't know i'll just hold the cards okay uh don wilkerson is next after that will be sarah hill good evening my name is dawn wilkerson earlier someone spoke

138about a group of people being here tonight that were coming against our teachers i don't know if they were talking about us but i just personally wanted to say that i love our teachers we have great teachers in this county i have eight or nine of them that are personal friends so i just wanted to give a shout out to our teachers they do a tremendous job in our county and by the way one of our speakers chrissy that left here that said she has a caseload i offer to help we want to help we want to reach out we want to meet these these needs that she has and just help in our community i do believe that telling a child that they are in a permanent oppressed status in america because of their

139color of their skin is racist and also telling them that someone is above them because of the color of their skin is also racist this is not something we can allow in our country children should love and respect each other based on the fact that they are human beings i am here to express my concern with both hmh and amplified upon reviewing many samples of these materials there is concern for crt being sprinkled throughout and i am strongly against this being taught to our children especially in elementary schools i would like us to please leave politics race and sexual orientation out of materials taught to our children i watched a video from the school board meeting on may 11 2021 where dr moore admitted that the same tentacles of critical race theory will be present

140and amplified as it is in hmh how does that line up with the several of you who have said that we will not be teaching crt in our schools it sounds like we're kind of talking out of both sides of our mouth florida's state board of education banned critical race theory from public school classrooms adopting new rules said would shield school children from curricula that could distort historical events crt has been banned and dr moore has admitted that both of these curriculums contain crt so now what i of course want to see our teachers get their materials as soon as possible so that they can be familiar with all this material before they come back to school however will you petition the doe will you find the best curriculum for our children that does not

141contain crt do you plan to knowingly violate the governor's order by moving forward with curriculum that of your own admission has elements of crt in it i would really welcome a response from anyone that would be willing to shed some light on that thank you very much and i do appreciate all that you do for our community thank you uh sarah hill is the next speaker and tony brown i think went home he told me he already spoke okay after that will be paul westcott good evening dr moore and school board good evening very patient very patient tonight um i have read the stories in grade 4 hmh and looked at the books offered in the sequence of reading instruction and amplify and i find these publishers are different as night and day since you

142did not attend the hearing of multiple objections to hmh here are a few reviews of the offensive material used for instruction the lesson on narrative poetry there are three pages that shows a land mass from northern canada to the central american countries with no borders the only country labeled is mexico fourth graders should be able to locate the united states on a map but i would not assume that if using this series this story is my name is jose miguel not joe not mike children are bullying miguel about using dog meat and tacos being sold at the new miguel's tacos mr tate his teacher comes over not to stop the bullying but as the story goes mr tate keeps saying to me quote if you would let us call you joe or mike it would

143let you blend in this is condoning bullying and making a racist statement to a child the next story by name is lily who is chinese but speaks spanish other children say to her for you chinese people learning languages must be easy lily complains quote it's nice when i don't have to explain year of the rat is also a chinese story about pacey who's questioning her talents she wants her parents to help her decide but her dad explains but that doesn't mean we really know you you see only you really know yourself and only you can make your decisions unquote this is undermining the influence of parents in the family rent party jazz describes a young boy sonny and his interaction with a street musician he is sad because he and his mother may be evicted

144due to her loss of job the musician smile and gym suddenly looked serious quote back in mississippi where i come from they did the same thing to colored folks all the time unquote this insertion of historical racism is inflammatory my diary from here to there is a lesson on autobiographical fiction the author's family left mexico for the united states when she was five she states that quote i didn't know that i like so many other economic and political refugees could survive in a completely new place unquote the story deals with border issues green cards and a situation where an immigration officer kicks a woman and her children off the bus thank you miss hill thank you okay mr wescott is next and shawna carpenter is after that i want to start first reminding you of

145your statutory and constitutional responsibility not as a threat not to wag my fingers but to empower you to do the right thing for the constitution and florida statutes give you the duty and responsibility to pick the best curriculum we have an integration order that also demands the same thing we need to satisfy that order not defeat it unfortunately our history has been litigation involved spending millions of dollars trying to defeat it we need to satisfy it how are we going to satisfy it by teaching well how are we going to teach well by providing the best curriculum now we had a process a few months ago that produced two those are the two topics for tonight amplify hmh crt was not part of the conversation as best i can tell from my conversations with mr

146meyer amplify was the best choice period why wouldn't we want to use that your leadership role puts you in the position of having actually a more difficult job than mr meyer mr meyer has the technical job of reviewing what was in his green boxes okay you've been told by way of website if you've done your homework online material that hmh is committed to clouding the waters with critical race theory they've made that very clear okay amplify has not made that clear well why does that matter well it matters because when you buy this curriculum you're purchasing a five-year relationship it's five year marriage during that marriage what's going to happen hmh is going to feed you online digital material consumables etcetera so you're going to have to continually monitor them because they've told you what

147they want to do they've made it very clear you're going to have to monitor them so you're going to buy the second best curriculum after spending millions of dollars fighting an order rather than possibly spending ten dollars and is my understanding it may only be eighty thousand dollars between the two buys i would much rather you invest that extra eighty thousand dollars to buy the right curriculum that's going to do the job that your own system has produced as the best choice you have the freedom to make that choice you do not get to hide behind doe don't get high behind the committee process you've got two curriculums to choose from not one you've got two one of them is superior to the other by operation of your own system pick that one i appreciate

148that you haven't excuse me you previously ruled out crt for our community and you remember this video months ago crt to give isn't about history it's about teaching one of these boys that he's the oppressor and the other one that he's the oppressed and that's the problem history is fine good and bad this is not thank you thank you shawna carpenter is next and um the speaker after that on deck is kevin browning no shawna carpenter okay is mr browning here okay good evening i think i lose my phone sorry i want to say thank you tonight uh for allowing us to be here and speak i want to tell you about my family and my family we have of course some black people white puerto ricans mexicans arabs indians and others very true thank

149you board for the presentation tonight the gifford history and and about what's happening in the county i've been in this community since 1978 went to citrus elementary gifford middle school gifford middle seventh vero beach junior high school and finally vero beach high school then graduated with about four scholarships from this wonderful place seeing a lot of events in a lot of school boards but until now i've never seen a board person or a person on the board who has intentionally stoked racial divisions for herself or former members political folly and on top of that disrupted and nearly destroys a curriculum adoption process needlessly which puts the whole system behind the curve in teaching the standards and testing one board member has insulted demonized and used old age stereotypical tactics to make black people the villains

150by saying black people want whites to apologize them by saying black lives matter is doing things in the curriculum and saying that racial justice and equity and equality is racism well in my humble little old opinion i don't think we should stick around and watch this board member lie on black people as well as lie on teachers by saying that they're teaching critical race theory or other things and then pretend like they're the victim you're not the victim this community is the victim of the chaos and the division that's been perpetrated and unfortunately will probably ring in this community for a while until people realize the damage that's been done we need board members who can unite the community and represent all people not one who comes in as a wolf in sheep's clothing and

151then turn and divide and scapegoat those who you think are weak in the most insulting ways hopefully we all remember the mistake made the first time and not repeated thank you mr browning miss pippen and that is our last speaker good evening good evening good evening my name is jennifer pippen i am the moms for liberty chairman of indian river county and also the administrator one of them for we the people of indian river county i feel like we're going back about a year when we first started talking about the masking mandates and who was in power and who was in charge and you're talking to cleveland clinic you're talking to the health department you're talking to all of these places and at the end of the day we elected you to take care of

152our children our teachers our staff we chose you to make the best decision for them and school was pushed back two weeks to make sure that the covid 19 protocols were in place and everything was ready to go for our children against anything that the parents wanted to do we understood so why can't we do that with this of course nobody wants to push it back but our children our staff our teachers deserve the best curriculum it's not just for the students it's for the teachers and staff as well so if we can push back school two weeks for a virus why can't we push this back a little longer to make the best decision because you see the conflict i'm not going to repeat anything that anybody has said this evening hmh is not

153the right choice amplify may or may not be the right choice either i personally don't believe so because when you look at the websites it tells you right on there what they're about so please make the right choice for the teachers the staff and everybody and this hostility between the two groups and parties i don't know where it happened or what's going on but the division we haven't even adopted a curriculum yet and people in that second room can't even make eye contact with each other or you hear them whisper under their breath there's the kkk members there's the klan members i've been called the worst names that i've ever been called in my entire life because i stand up for children and parental rights and i believe in moms for liberty we're a national

154organization i had somebody ask me this weekend do you have any black people in your organization i gave them my business card and i wrote keisha king on the back she's been on fox news she's been everywhere she's a mother of four she's african-american she talked about oppressors oppressing she went to the d.o.e she made a statement we are not racist children are taught racism and that's wrong we're the human race we should not be jealous judged by the color of our skin and it should not be in our curriculum look at lawyers look at doctors they're white they're african-american they're hispanic if they grew up in the public school systems because they did the right things they went through education and made the right choices please if we can push it back for a

155virus push it back to make the best decision for everybody in our school district thank you thank you uh one last call for sean carpenter michelle sanford or mike kozad they're not in the lobby okay great okay board members i guess that concludes our citizen input i'd just like to say thank you to our community for coming out exercising your first amendment rights for being example to other communities on how to be respectful and have a dignified exchange of opinions and ideas without disdain and discord i appreciate that i have watched other board meetings and this was probably the best behaved one i have seen in a long time so i appreciate indian river county for that thank you anyone else dr moore okay all right so now we're on to consent agenda there was

156one item two items that were pulled um i needed approval for consent agenda items thank you jackie okay doc on the second any discussion okay all right i'll call for the vote hi hi aye aye any opposed all right okay thank you fibo great all right so now we'll move to our action item we did pull uh two items one is going to be put on a further agenda the other one is been moved from consent to this agenda uh superintendent that was your actual that was your consent item it's now an action item thank you madam chair um that is the item regarding the topic of the evening which is the curriculum i'll provide a brief um overview of the process that we have taken provide some remarks and ask mr meyer to provide

157some additional remarks we had our hearing on friday as everyone knows the hearing came back that the school system the district has followed the appropriate process it has the authority to fully approve hmh which is on the state's list a lot of conversation about amplify uh truth in point amplify was the district's first process um first initially identified curriculum went through the process it was the selection when the state produced its list it was not on the state's approved list we have continued to keep amplify alive as a board and as a team providing um we went back to the process we added hmh as a the curriculum that we would approve in order to have a curriculum that is on the state's approved list not being on the state's approved list is a concern

158i don't think i would bring a recommendation to this board to so approve an item that's not on this state list this is the experts who have gone through done a review of the curriculum this is the state experts as well who are looking at the criteria that need to be in place amplify for the last two and a half months has been working with the state and the state working with amplify in order to determine uh what needs to be done in order to be placed on that list i don't know what needs to be done to be placed on that list i do know there's been a volume of work in order to to make that that happen hmh is a quality product hmh will allow us to obtain all of the goals

159that we set for ourselves and we say it all the time the goals that we've set for ourselves are absolutely rigorous in nature and truly ambitious in terms of what we will accomplish for our children and we can accomplish the same with amplify we need to provide resources to our teachers we need to provide the appropriate time for pacing guides to be developed part of the work that we do over the summer is the creation of how information will be delivered to children what information will be pulled from our textbooks to be delivered to children the appropriate amount of time lessons will be created in classrooms how to monitor that from a a leadership perspective and coaching perspective there's a great deal of work that we're already behind in terms of making sure that we're

160ready for the opening of schools teachers want the curriculum in their hand they want to look at it they want to digest it they want to understand what it is what that what they're being asked to teach moving to a new curriculum is going to be extremely difficult we're going from an environment where there were a number of different curriculums being taught many of them not at all aligned to the standards some of the issues and concerns about is it age-appropriate isn't driven by the textbook but in the textbook's response to the standards that the state has approved they're providing the lessons based on the information in the standards that need to be covered at specific grade levels that's why you're seeing those particular lessons so what's before the board is a curriculum that's fully

161approved on the state's list appropriately vetted with the assurances this district gives in the preparation professional development and training uh that we will ensure that staff and teachers are ready to provide meaningful support and instruction to students so as mr meyer to go through some of the findings from the hearing and touch on some of the the critical race theory responses also including some of the state board rule information that was released by the governor earlier the week before last uh thank you dr moore um i think you did a great job of uh going through the process you know and certainly you know at this juncture we we have done everything by the book by both florida statute and by local school board policy to review uh curriculum and make a recommendation to the

162board on friday we did have the opportunity to sit before an unbiased public hearing officer petitioners were able to state their case as to whether or not the material violated specific statutes as referenced in policy and the hearing officer did have 14 days for which to return a final order but we received that much earlier than expected we received that yesterday and the findings were that the petitioners did not make a case that the materials violated the statute that did not come as a surprise as aforementioned the material has been reviewed by the department of education it was petitioned in another florida public school district before a different public hearing officer and all three results were the same you know the the the rule that was recently passed by the state board of education which

163bans uh critical race theory is certainly something that we intend to make sure it's fully implemented within our schools as well but in looking at how the state board of education defined that rule it is also clear that the hmh into reading florida does not contain those components within certain buzzwords that some people may want to to make you know be connected that's not i don't think there's a wide agreement about that i don't believe there's a wide agreement to social emotional learning is the same thing as uh critical race theory i think most people would completely disagree with that and certainly the state board did not include that in their definition when they did have the opportunity to do so so and looking at the totality of what the district has gone through certainly

164a long and arduous process but at this juncture as dr moore stated we are at a position where we have a recommendation that i feel is fully vetted and as an appropriate recommendation to the board keeping in mind the governor's directive to eliminate common core and keeping in mind the legislature's directive to implement core instructional materials beginning the july 2021 the meet certain criteria i do feel like we're at the point now where we do have to make a decision to be in compliance with state laws so simply saying that we're just not going to do something would not be a recommendation that i could make i feel is my obligation to make recommendation to the board of product that meets all criteria set forth by statute rule and the recommendations of the governor so

165we've done that through hmh and to read in florida and i'm not sure what other questions i can answer but i'd be happy to do so okay board members i'm sure everyone wants to weigh in i know we had a long discussion today in our workshop but we did pull this to action so that we could have some comments made before at the business meeting um before we do that though could i ask the board attorney to please explain why board members were asked not to attend the appeal hearing absolutely um thank you mrs berenborg uh the the process that was put in board policy with regard to instructional material adoption and the process that was followed by district staff um is similar to other administrative processes that this board has followed for instance when

166there is a student discipline matter that needs to come before the board the process put in place is for an independent hearing officer to initially have the evidentiary hearing and then make a written recommendation to the board with regard to student discipline or student expulsion uh similar to issues that excuse me with regard to personnel personnel discipline or termination provision there is a a policy or our practice here that issues that need to come before the board are first put before the division of administrative hearings for a hearing officer to do evidentiary findings and then present a written recommendation to the school board for the school board to take action so with those other processes in mind the process put together for instructional material adoption was very similar was for the board to initially hear

167the matter take a lot of public comment hear public hearing in front of yourselves and in the event individuals were not pleased with any outcome of those meetings with the school board an independent hearing officer process was put in place by law for an independent hearing officer to then also conduct a public hearing my recommendation has always been with regard to these other administrative processes with regard to student discipline and employee discipline or termination that board members not involve themselves with the hearing officer process allow the hearing officer to perform their work and present their written recommendation to you and then you take action with regard to the written recommendation and that was again my recommendation with regard to this instructional material adoption process when you have an independent hearing officer conducting the evidentiary hearing

168to allow that hearing officer to do their work and then prepare their written recommendation which happened here and presented to the board for you to take final action it wasn't removing you from the process it wasn't delegating your authority to anyone it was simply following a very standard administrative law process when you're using an independent hearing officer for that hearing officer to handle the evidentiary hearing and then present that recommendation to you in writing okay thank you so just two other things to finalize mr meyer's comment and my my comments before we turn it over just a little bit more about seo social emotional learning um is not critical race theory that is the opportunity for us to address the social emotional needs of students ensuring that they are equipped to sit in classrooms and

169empowered to learn culturally responsive teaching uh is a practice of ensuring that our educators have a full understanding of who the students are in the classroom and a deep understanding of their particular backgrounds in order to provide the most meaningful education possible it was also said during public comments that the board has paid millions of dollars as it relates to our desegregation order not this board this board has done more in the last six months uh than any other board for the last 54 years and misinforming the community everyone has the right to to speak um freely but we have to be consistent and be truthful in what we're saying uh we've done more work around ensuring that every single student in this community feels welcomed and embraced uh and this board should be proud

170of the work that they've done in that particular area okay thank you um board members who would like to speak i want to ask oh okay dr jones just a question before we have a discussion um and i'm sorry i didn't bring this up at the workshop are we in violation of any state law if we don't begin the year with a language arts series that's been state adopted with the new benchmarks we are not in violation of any state law but we are provide we would not be providing the standards to the students that were obligated to provide so we need to be able to teach the standards this is a brand new standard that's going into place we currently do not have the resources the materials to cover those particular standards okay mrs

171rosario yeah i also have a couple of questions before discussion mr meyer the process that the district took to to vet hmh or amplify during that process why was amplify the district's first choice so as we through the chair as we move through the process uh we wanted to make sure we were looking at all of the available options that we're going to be bidding on the state list and so we moved and requested those materials as those materials were received by the schools the the various teachers looked through the different materials and then reported their findings to committee members who came back here to the district office and there was very powerful discussion that like as we stated uh and the timeline began um you know almost seven months ago now um you know

172there's pros and cons right when you're looking at six seven different publishers there's going to be some things that some do better than others this publisher may have a better online material this publisher may have better student-centered material these may be more strong in the science of reading these may be more strong in alignment to the standards right so there's a lot of different components that the committee took into consideration before making the final decision i should say that a very large number of our teachers and a number of the committee members found hmh to be their first choice uh and as those discussions were going on between the committee members uh you know hmh was looking like it was going to be the the first choice but as we discussed other components amplify came

173out on top you know i did have to speak to a number of faculties after that because they felt like their voice wasn't heard in the selection of amplify they felt like their voice was loud enough that hmh should have been the first choice but i tried to reassure them that you know we we will work together to get this done and all voices really and truly are are valued and we move forward with amplify because as we can see now though the position that we're in uh we knew that we needed to looking at the timeline looking at the florida statutes begin our review process had we not done that you just can't wait until the department of education releases their list you know on april 1st so amplify did come out to be

174you know on top compared to that committee but there were many teachers at the low at the teacher level local level um that felt like hmh was a high quality product and it is you know when you look at the the ratings uh released by the department of education that amplify is not on yet we don't know when or really honestly if we we hear that you know they're going to be but we don't know when but but hmh is is highly rated on that list of products released by the the state of florida so um that was the process we went through amplify was the the first choice and you know it took some convincing i think to get a vote there that was um close to unanimous you know we'd like to say

175we were teetering on the 50 50 range and then there's a discussion like we need to all be uniform in this and can we come to consensus so that we're supporting each other even those that you know we're more on the hmh bandwagon initially said okay we understand why the proponents of amplify uh were were leaning in that direction uh and i feel you know supporting them now um being on the side that was more supportive of amplify is the right thing to do because that's the product that meets the criteria set forth by the state of florida so i don't know if that answers your question no no what are you looking for yes it you did in terms of the in terms of process but i i i was looking for examples of

176of the content i was looking yeah okay gotcha components that you mentioned that were better in amplify than in hmh and you may not have that immediately in front of you i don't know if you do if you're able to answer that i mean i can speak to the generalities uh the generalities of it were that the text and amplify was uh more rigorous um it was more content-based and more informational text and there were those that felt like that was a a strong selling point um and so they felt like that you know there was there were challenges from the committee around the usability of amplify and we've heard that in other places as well that it's more difficult for teachers to implement now this district has done a lot of work under dr

177moore's direction to improve coaching and so there were those that felt you know with the support of the coaching with the support of the pd we could overcome some of what was perceived to be shortcomings of the ability for teachers to quickly implement that and that's where teachers were coming from and some spaces saying hmh is going to be you know much more easy to get to 100 fidelity of implementation which is going to benefit the students and ultimately i think that was the great part that i i enjoyed about that committee is that everyone on there had the the students outcomes in mind they wanted to teach the students to read they wanted to make sure we were maximizing our ability to serve our students i will tell you that the political conversations were

178nowhere to be found it was all about how do we how do we get to the best implementation so our students have the best outcomes because that's what they deserve and there's definitely different ways of of making that happen right and belief structures as to you know can we do it with more support or with less support is it better to have you know the differences and beliefs between some of the committee members on foundational reading components or the the density of the text and providing them you know more rigorous background knowledge so it was great conversation i enjoyed it um you know but at this juncture like i said it's time to make the i i feel at least in the board's hand but i feel like we're at the point where um we've

179discussed it and you know we need to make a decision but i would keep talking about it forever but i know we can't do that i know we we know your passion for everything um but to take it just a little bit further in that when people when the committee is looking at the the pages that are before them they're not just flipping the pages saying oh that story sounds nice that question sounds nice this seems like it would be a good lesson for students in the classroom it's not that way how are they how is the committee prepared to do this crosswalk between what they're looking at in the pages of the book with the new standards and that was a great thing to be able to do that we had did have the

180standards guide released and and so that was you know where i think that the the value of listening to some of the individuals who had spent more time in the training like the coaches and some of the other individuals that had had an opportunity to participate in more of the training on the new standards could see the alignment between the tasks not just between hmh and amplify but the others as well to make sure that they were aligned closely to the standards because that that that's what we've learned right that's what we've learned over the past couple decades as standards line instruction has become a more important tool is that you know you have to teach what's expected by the state otherwise you aren't meeting those levels of performance and ultimately the entire system is

181going to suffer so as the state's adopted the the new best standards is it's imperative that we have a material that they've reviewed and they agree matches those standards because you know the if the district was not to do that my fear would be you know you're going to get d schools you're going to get f schools you're going to have the state take over because you're preparing students for something that's not on the state test and once again it's not the boogie man you know common core these are the standards that were developed under the direction of governor desantis to eliminate common core uh to make sure our students have the highest outcome so i i just feel it's imperative to select a product that's on the list where we have the assurances that

182our students will be successful well i don't think you need to try to convince me that we don't need common core that's a sure sell but i i want to talk i'm asking about this process and the best standards with regard to hmh and or amplify essentially my initial question was why amplify was the better uh the the first choice for the district um because the kindergarten the issues of regarding kindergarten dr moore i'm going to disagree here i do know that publishers write their curriculum based on they're supposed to write their curriculum based on the standards so that there is an alignment here but what has been brought forth with regard to the kindergarten concerns and what kindergartners are expected to write in hmh does not is not in the standards i'm looking at

183the standards right here they're expected in kindergarten to print upper and lower case letters and when they're expected to express opinions it's through drawing so i do you prefer vanilla ice cream i'm not saying that's it but as a kindergartener their opinion i like ice cream i like vanilla more than strawberry ice cream whatever it is kindergartners cannot do what was expressed multiple times by the people that we heard tonight by those who expressed their opinions at the hearing by those who submitted objections that's not age appropriate and those do not fall in line with the standards that are in uh and on and listed in c palms um from elementary i'm sorry from ela let me go to the front so people can look for it florida's best standards english language arts florida i'm

184sorry florida ela standards and benchmarks with clarifications and examples so that's a concern talk to the chair i'm looking at the best standards that document the pdf that was approved by the state board and there are three types of writing that kindergarteners are expected to do argumentative expository and um and let me just page and narrative so but to your point uh the way that the kindergarten version and these are standard spirals so they they grow as you start in kindergarten get to 12th grade so narrative writing the explicit language of that standards is using a combination of drawing dictating and or writing create narratives with the events in chronological order argumentative writing is using a combination of drawing dictating and or writing express opinions about a topic or text with at least one supporting

185reason but your point's valid right and some of the the other petitioners have a point as well but you think about the wide variety of talent that our kindergartners come in with while not all of them can write some of them can some of them can absolutely read and some of them come out absolutely right and so having a standard that says using that combination thereof certainly enables us to differentiate and ensure there's growth for each and every student and not have lower set of standards simply because some students may not be ready for that but i i think that's where we get into the the materials themselves were designed around these standards and that's why you three seed three different types of writing um and we can you know between you and i and

186like i said i'll continue to talk about this but you know the state board adopted these standards right these are the three these are the the standards from the state board of education that we're required to teach in august no i i think that they're i think they're accurate i think they're spot on without question uh we had a someone today um come up and say that her two-year-old is able was able and uh to to argue their point my two-year-old was able to argue his point too he's still arguing with me to this day he's still trying to explain to me his point of views and why they're right uh versus and why mine are wrong you know and and that's not it's not the issue but it should be age appropriate we're not

187expecting kindergarteners i'm not expecting kindergarteners to do a research project that a higher elementary school student can do i mean they're they're very it's a vast difference of expectation my wonder uh my question is i i wonder if hmh has uh lesson plans which we've heard multiple times by many people that they have brought forth objections to many things within hmh's curriculum being not being age-appropriate i wonder what would happen at the in at the classroom level so they're given a textbook workbook whatever it is teacher teaches to it what would happen in the event that teachers say this is not acceptable for my class grade level are we what would happen then to the chair that's a great question so i think it is important also to note that none of these um no

188instructional material in any course should just be you know thrown at a teacher and expect them to be able to do this all by themselves that's why we have instructional coaches that's why we have collaborative planning that's why we have district curriculum support specialists that we make sure that every lesson that we're providing to every student is of the most aligned quality that it possibly can be and if we have to supplement we supplement if we have to refine the lesson we refine the lesson and and that's just the nature of high quality instruction simply you know cracking up in the book and saying just read straight through this and that's it that's the end-all be-all you're not going to get as high of results as if you are truly looking at each page and

189making the most uh use of that through you know i guess i use the word supplementation but it is it is done with the coach who is the expert of the content it is done collaboratively so a teacher is not just there together and so yeah absolutely when we find that certain chapters or certain stories or certain tasks within a module aren't going to generate the outcomes that we we want we modify that and that's what that's what that's what everyone does in every content so and i just i think you effectively answered the question but we've made a significant contribution to coaches and the training of coaches the days of saying teacher here is your book here is your teacher guide and here are your 22 18 or 25 kids see at the end

190of the year no longer exist we will not obtain the outcomes that our children deserve if that's our structure so all of the power bi dashboards that we have celebrated over the course of the last year are linked to student outcomes and that's informative data that we use to determine the impact of instruction and we use our coaches we use our common planning time teachers helping teachers really to define and create lessons using the materials and resources that are provided so this is working shoulder to shoulder teachers working with teachers coaches working with teachers administrators working with coaches and teachers to come together with a common understanding as to what core instruction looks like that is in fact aligned to the standard this is hard complex work we have children in classrooms who are at

19118 different learning needs the foundation is that core curriculum whether it be amplify or whether it be hmh we need to have the skills of the teacher in the classroom to say how do i take this and make it appropriate for every single student in my class to take wherever he or she may be up to the rigor of the standard and i think we've grown so much in the last year in doing that and will continue to do so yeah i'm i'm going to end here madam chair vice chair i um i appreciate that dr moore because the work that the coaches do and with colla and with collaborative planning and differentiated instruction is very very critical but i ask these questions because we have constituents who have not had these questions answered and

192it's important for us as board members uh to allow more opportunity for clarification on some of these topics so i appreciate the responses that you're giving thank you thank you and before i read the um motion that we discussed this afternoon i just wanted to clarify something that we discussed called the drop dead date since we're asking questions of staff um dr mora would you like to discuss what that means because i think it is imperative imperative that we understand what that is before we vote so in preparing for this evening's meeting um tonight's meeting what do you want to call it i looked at the drop dead date this would be the date in which we could order the materials the resources needed to have them with enough time in order to ensure they

193are in the hands of teachers with enough time prior to pre-planning so they can have them in their hands at the same time enough time for the district team to work pull coaches and teachers together to write our pacing guides we are not dependent and we do not outsource professional development in this district we don't say oh well thank you go in and teach our teachers how to use this curriculum it's vetted by us we are the gatekeepers in terms of what's getting into our pacing guys which is what we're asking our teachers to do it is vetted yes we will vet every resource every single year in order to ensure that it is appropriate for our students our teachers live in this community our teachers are this community there's a single number one job

194that is the most in this county that of a teacher and a discredit teacher saying that they don't have the skills and the ability to understand what they need to expose their students from is exposing is selling our our teachers short now i've lost my point or whatever for the drop dead date sir okay that's what happens to be honest with you when you start talking the business of the board at nine o'clock you end up saying things like critical race theory instead of culturally responsive teacher and you have people from the community coming up here teaching that just proves my point even more when you start talking about the business of the board this is the public school board and it's nine o'clock when we start talking the business of the board and you

195you misspeak the drop dead date would be october i'm sorry i don't need to go to bed i believe july july 6 but as we debrief that would be the day that we would need to order the materials so the drop dead date actually would be it needs to be approved by the 2nd of um july which allows us to come back on the 6th and place that order so it can be back in the hands of teachers okay thank you to clarify on that drop dead date because of the process in order to order the decision has to be made you said by the second in order to get the order out by the sixth in order to have books received two weeks prior to the opening of schools correct through the chair yes

196and that presumes that absolutely nothing goes wrong that presumes there's no hurricane there's no gas crisis as there was which didn't affect florida but i was in north carolina during that and we couldn't you couldn't get gas like it presumes that everything operates as it as we anticipate it will with no hitches no delays no miscalculations no nothing through the chair and it's it's extending it by about a week a week and a half so the answer to the question is it's already late and we're all the answer to your question is yes but if me and mr meyer are going to get in our trucks and go pick up the curriculum ourselves then that's what we'll do in a hurricane just out of curiosity when do we normally in a non-controversial year when would

197we normally place an order for books and have them received in the district by i'm sorry you you said a non-controversial year [Laughter] so what we did is a system and i think the board has become familiar with how i like to be at least six months ahead we're prepping items that we'll be discussing in two months from now uh in our last cmes we went through this process we're in this boat because we're trying to be proactive in looking at curriculums prior to april 1st in the release of the date and one of the conversations mr meyer has had with some board members as well as myself is our first legislative priority next year needs to be to set this time frame so we have this information january 1st um and if anything good

198comes from this a lot will come good from this that that's one of those particular things that's a great idea okay so before we go into further discussion we actually do need to have the motion wait wait wait miss mrs barrenburg i'm sorry but you mentioned something else earlier today that i think is important for us to um bring up again and i might have a question about it you mentioned uh piggybacking from another district yes on a procurement can you talk a little bit about that and why because if that comes up again we need to be able to explain why that would be yeah i'm going to defer that to our board attorney who can explain piggy backing and pre-purchase i'm sorry and you said it was the research that you did was

199that um highlands i wrote hillsboro highlands county uh i'm sorry can you i don't want to say here i don't want to miss highlands county was going to try to select amplify even though it wasn't on the appeals list but they have a different procedure than we do that's why i asked about piggybacking because sometimes you can piggyback and avoid a lot of the long delays in 30 days and 40 days and all that if you piggyback on a process but the process has to be aligned to the process that we use i'll defer to this to the board attorney and if i can add it has to be consistent with our own specific indian river county policies right yeah it is late i am sorry go ahead the procurement process that's allowed for school

200boards as well as other local governments in the state of florida if another government has gone through a bid process god bless you and has selected to purchase a thing and that bid process allows for other local governments here in the state of florida to also buy off of that awarded contract whatever that thing is that would allow the school board we call it piggyback to piggyback on their bid process to piggyback on their contract and buy that same thing that they went through a bid process for right so that's the general procurement process of piggybacking when when mrs berenborg mentioned that another school board had gone through a procurement process and had gotten to the end and had selected amplify my first question was how did they do it is it possible to piggyback

201but the answer is no they didn't go through a procurement process and a locally developed procurement process to buy something not on the state list what i understand that school district did was they followed a similar process to what indian river followed and they did a selection committee to buy off the state list they used the state list as their the basis for their process but at the end of the day i understand they'll be selecting amplify even though amplify is not on the state list which is not in compliance with the statutory provisions and it doesn't comply with our policy that says you either select off the state list and go through that procurement or you do a non-state adopted process and you select off of that list this other school district is using

202some hybrid and i cannot recommend that you piggyback off of this contract that was not the basis of an open procurement process but why would an amplified be a non a non-state adopted instructional material when they are indeed they got state adopted for edu for elementary they would be and in order to adopt non-state adopted materials we would then need to have our own procurement process with an advertisement that said k-5 publishers come one come all to indian river show us all everything that you're interested in selling to us for k5 uh instructional materials here are the standards we would then have our own committee like with the state had our own committee here in indian river who would have to go through each page of all those materials be sure that everything complies with

203the standards the superintendent would have to sign an affidavit saying yes these non-state adopted materials comply with the state standards and at the end of that process a structural materials would be selected not on the state list a non-state approved list but you just said that amplify would be a non yes okay so what am i missing indian river did not go through a non-state adopted process for procurement correct and it's a different process than the one we went through for a state adopted curriculum process so we would have to stop backups start again redo the process to go through the non-state approved procurement process re-advertise rehab the 30 days review re-go to committee all of that and then the superintendent would have to certify that yes i'm good these meet the state standards and

204i support that we can go forward with a non-state approved curriculum but that process would take as i understand it anywhere from at best two to three months at which point we're already starting school am i understanding that correctly mr gresta yes ma'am that's good just want to be clear yeah okay so that's the problem it's a whole other three months okay start school with no books so so let me read the motion we'll start school with books just not we haven't gotten to discussion yet okay we haven't even gotten a discussion yet okay um we were asking questions of staff so i'm gonna i'm gonna state the the motion that was um asked to be stated tonight and um we'll either get a second or we won't and the uh motion is approve amplify

205if it is approved by the doe by july 6th but now we're backing that up to july 2nd correct uh no it would have to be july 1st because we would have to meet on the first or the second we would have to schedule a meeting to approve it remember we'd be approving it now got it you're right you're right sorry so july 2nd is it so okay july 2nd um if amplify is not approved by the doe by the drop dead date then hmh will be ordered that is the item that was discussed today that was asked to be stated tonight is there a second i seconded it okay and and oh sorry hold on one sec i got to get to that page i am so tired okay so there was a second

206it was um mr barefoot yes okay all right the motion was put by you mrs barenborg the motion was put by me um because we moved it from consent to uh to uh where are we thank you action um so i just uh met with the superintendent between those two meetings and wrote that so i have a first sorry who who was first me okay and um before we hello i need to know i'm so tired right now yes ma'am do we need to vote we need to discuss first and then vote yes because we do not want to vote on something that we haven't further discussion first that's right okay who would like to talk i think doc jones i have seen your hand up go ahead thank you very much um i want

207to thank everyone who came out tonight and and spoke to us i think it was a really good meeting and i think people presented both sides very well i think a couple people talked about the roles and responsibilities of school board members and i know each and every one of us up here takes those responsibilities very carefully we're here for all students and looking at the state statute of our responsibilities we have a big job and we are here to do it the process which i have been through as a teacher and a district person for textbook adoption is a lot of work it began in october we had all the information on our website and i think the committee did a really good job in the workshop today we talked a little bit about

208this i brought it up i think about two-thirds of our counties are are using hmnh in either elementary middle or high and i think so far all but two or three have adopted their k-5 language arts so we're a little bit behind here i took some time to look at the curriculum maps for 612 and you can tell already curriculum instruction put a lot of work in there the curriculum maps help the teachers as far as pacing when the unit tests will be taken kind of helping them plan with the block schedule at middle and high schools because if you remember we started that with covid and that was a really quick turnaround for teachers so i looked at those curriculum maps very very impressed and also we also have them in math right now

209we're behind in k5 we've not started it because we have not adopted a series yet so obviously a former educator teacher in every other role i'm concerned about that we all know amplify is the first choice that's a given we've talked about that several times right now hmh is state adopted and governor desantis said no crt so no crt i think that's pretty clear and what mr meyer read into the um information today at the workshop was also very clear and i want to reiterate sel is not crt i want to date myself long time ago i was teaching it and sel was part of my classroom in all other teachers classrooms about a warm welcoming environment it is not crt if you look at the curriculum maps benchmarks are given to us by the

210state the curricular support is what we do in the county how are we going to get there to that benchmark and that's so very important and i know we always have to um like dr moore said we're helping with the coaches and everything that we're moving along with those areas and we're helping our teachers to make sure they understand the pacing they understand the objectives they understand what we can use with our unit tests and how we use that data to move forward so our teachers can do this our teachers can do this job as far what we are expecting with their benchmarks but we cannot we cannot put them at a disadvantage of getting this to them late we cannot put our students at a disadvantage by getting this to them late again like

211i said governor desantis and mr corcoran this is a state adopted series um we understand there is not to be crt we understand that but i'm just saying whatever happens today whether we have a drop dead date for amplify and that's voted upon and we move forward don't put our kids and teachers behind because it will affect us in ways that we don't want it to affect us thank you okay who would like to speak next sure um although like everybody else i'm tired and so um one thing i want to say is i want to thank mr barefoot because it was mr barefoot who this afternoon put forward this option and i just want to acknowledge um that it having been read into the record that it was your original idea and i want

212to thank you for that um i echo a lot and i'm not go it does i'm not going to repeat it all but i echo a lot of what dr jones just said um this notion and and as one of the speakers mrs gibbs pointed out um the notion that teachers have some kind of illicit agenda here the notion that that we are demonizing teachers in some way as mrs gibbs said teaching is really hard you know teaching is hard people people come in um i i appreciated her comments as a former teacher teachers come in because this is a passion because this is they're driven to do this is a mission this is a vocation this is um and i think one of our jobs here in addition to listening to the community and

213i appreciate the very balanced comments tonight and one of our jobs is is to support the teachers and doing the best job they can and i think some of the evidence that we have of having done that this year is our increase in graduation rates our increase in third grade reading rates our decrease academic disparity our decrease in graduation disparity our um outperforming the state on pretty much every measure that's come out so far i think is a testament to the ability of this superintendent and this board to keep that first and foremost um and i think that is true in this decision as well yes it's our yes it's our responsibility yes it's our decision i am absolutely aware of that as i think as everybody who who sits here and i have been

214aware of it for the last two and a half years that i've been sitting here um and i'll be honest i think we're doing a darn good job and i think my evidence for that is not my opinion my evidence for that is the measures as they come out that indicate our performance um so this is not my this is not because of how i feel about it this is because of what the data are telling us so that said um i'm good with this motion i want to get this process moving forward so that we provide the best support coaching training professional development and curriculum instruction to our teachers to get moving for our students uh mr barefoot would you like to speak i'm sure first first of all i uh after sitting through

215the last several meetings the tone tonight was so much better than it's been and different points of view but i thought that all the speakers as you mentioned mrs barenberg early on was was civil it was respectful of everyone and that's great some of you have heard me say this before i said it once i think at that retirement dinner for teachers and administrators at quail valley parents are really important students are really important that's what everybody's here for but without teachers the rest of it doesn't matter an educational institution revolves around teachers and you've all said it in different ways but if we don't support the teachers that that selected these two curriculums and let's hope that amplify gets approved between now and it's two weeks or almost two weeks um i think we

216put them and i think dr jones you've all said it one way or another we put them at a distinct disadvantage and so i'm from for supporting the teachers that provided the input to the committee that selected the two curriculums it's unfortunate amplify didn't make the state list let's hope that it does over the next 10 days or so and that's really there is all to say let's it's time to move on and hopefully we'll have a positive vote okay um mrs rosario thank you um our job as school board members is to vote on what is in the best interest of all students we create and approve policy we approve our budget we set the goals the vision the mission we work closely with the superintendent on the strategic plan approving curriculum is one

217of those aspects as a homeschool mom myself i have the distinct privilege to choose the curriculum for my son in this particular case the school district chooses the curriculum but as we all know it is based on the approval essentially the approval of what comes to us from the doe those that are already vetted and approved by the doe are submitted to the district for the district's vetting process and then of course a a curriculum is chosen from from those options i understand what is at stake i also understand what has yet to be defined there are still many things that still need to be defined they need to be discussed they need to be presented to the to this board so that there is a clear understanding where everyone is speaking the same language

218on what on what some of these topics are and i'm looking forward to that discussion and to that presentation i think that would be critical to the professional development moving forward of our staff as well these items or the items that have been banned by the doe are not in our florida best standards they are not in our strategic plan they are not to be inclusive within any aspect of our teaching and our learning plans per the florida department of education so why would we adopt a curriculum from a publishing company that has made a public commitment to all of these things and above all has made it a mission an admission to and i'm quoting critical wellness which is about putting the pedagogy critical race theory and then student wellness at the center of

219culturally responsive teaching end of the work of creating curriculum in order to get a better ideal student outcome i do not believe hmh is the curriculum for this district so what happens in a year or two when online resources are revised or edited or supplemental materials need to be added by hmh if possible which has happened in the past do they automatically have to adopt the examples do we rather automatically have to adopt whatever they submit to us do we have an opportunity to reject who will monitor every page every update every supplemental material consumable i still have a lot of answers that have questions that have been unanswered a publishing company in my opinion should not be so heavily biased it should not be one-sided it should not be left or right with leaning

220it should be 100 percent neutral a truly neutral publishing company should be focused on the standards and the standards alone and not on politically divisive content the teaching and learning opportunities reading passages following follow-up assignments extra materials and so on should be absolutely free of indoctrinations and free of all future possibilities of being introduced of our students being introduced to these ideologies of which hmh has not done they are not a neutral publisher as such i do not trust them to produce material that would completely be free of any of these things i trust our teachers but i don't trust the publishing company hmh so let's talk about that trust for a minute why don't i trust hmh they have made public commitments and admissions and yet we have heard that in the pages of

221the books there is no critical race theory but they have made these public declarations anyway that's pretty concerning to me i think that should be pretty concerning to a lot of people why would they make these public declarations and then not include those items in their textbooks they are indeed a publishing company if they made those public declarations for those who support these ideologies that would be pretty upsetting because you would want your publishing company to follow through with what they believe and in this case we are told that it's not in the pages of the book and yet it's on their website and in the forward of their books either way you look at it i find the methodology of these issues pretty untrustworthy mr anthony brown tonight was absolutely right history should not

222be changed it should not be erased it should not be ignored but thank god we're not selecting a history curriculum that's not now nor has it ever been a discussion or consideration of this school board all history is critical it is a good thing that our history all history is important we're voting on language arts not history we have never espoused this board has never espoused that injustices or racism never existed we have never espoused that that's what we want to do moving forward ever what we have agreed to as a school district and as a board is the importance of changing the equity issues in this district of increasing opportunities for access to higher level coursework a b ap ib and dual enrollment included we have agreed to make reaching unitary status a priority

223as well as closing the achievement gap among many many many other goals the sad part of all of this is that there are so many misunderstandings misinterpretations and misuses of quotes and wrong assumptions that it's totally distorting the main issue we have never accused teachers of indoctrinating our students we have never said nor have we ever believed that teachers are responsible for what is happening because they are not people who believe critical race theory is inappropriate believe that because they do not want um believe that because it isn't that they they want to ignore black history or change history it's because critical race theory focuses on black and white issues in their opinion it is because it focuses on racism to teach against racism and i'm quoting from um a constituent that came tonight it

224is because critical race theory believes we live in a country that is systemically racist it is because they believe that they don't want their children to look at skin color or feel isolated because of their skin color or be told that they are inherently racist or oppressed because of their skin color or that they might be another quote tonight there might be a redistribution of suffering and even if these viewpoints were wrong those on the side or on the pro side of critical race theory would call them racist would call them close-minded or selfish those are the reasons why those who people who do not believe in critical race theory believe don't believe in it as a mom a teacher an educator a board member and a lifelong learner i want to sleep well at

225night knowing that i not only selected the best curriculum but that i would have selected a curriculum that i wouldn't have to worry later on down the line how their ideology is going to show up in the classroom i would prefer to spend a little bit more money on the curriculum and wait a little bit longer and get it right then spend millions of dollars on a curriculum that comes from a company that is tr is not trustworthy i would rather have an ethical unbiased 100 percent neutral 100 percent standards driven age-appropriate curriculum one that will raise students achievements uh student achievement close the help us close the academic gap and drive teachers to be better teachers in their craft tonight what is on the floor is a vote for both hello did you did

226you want to say something i'd actually like to call the question okay well i'm almost done tonight what um what is on the floor is a vote for one or the other i would like of i would have preferred to have a vote where we are voting for either amplify or hmh so i absolutely empathize with a lot of the concerns tonight not just tonight but over the last several months i will not be supporting this vote i will not be supporting this decision i do however want to make it clear that i do however support our superintendent i do support the work of the district i do support the work of equity he knows that quite well my decision and my vote tonight is a is speaking quite honestly against the publishers and against

227the doe who has in my opinion not completely accurately or appropriately vetted the curriculum that has brought been brought down to us i do hope that amplify is on uh or is is approved coming forward but the way that this is brought forth to us tonight i will not be able to support okay i would actually um before i get to say what i want to say i want to amend my my emotion and i'll tell you why after i said all that dr moore i'd like to you gave us today this afternoon you talked about july 6 july 6 july 6 says i dropped a dead date i understand that and dr moore are you over there okay um so i also know what it's like to order books i've done it um is

228it possible i'm asking this question i know it's more work on staff but is it possible to get the two orders ready and give us that july 6 date i'm sorry say that again is it possible to have two orders ready to go and give us that july 6 date so if the board votes can we vote for july 6 for you to do push the button and order the books through the chair i i will prepare both orders on the question is when i leave work on july 6 i can place the order then then yes i will place it for amplify if at the end of business on that particular day they have that so they have that window until that day yes okay so i want to mend my uh motion to

229change the date from july 2nd to july 6th and now that i want to be able to say my piece i have made several phone calls that's why i'm so punchy because i've called representative graw who's been very very helpful for for this i have called commissioners offices i've called vice chancellor's office the chancellor's office um what is kathy seed's position because everybody gives me her she is okay so everybody refers me to her and we're on a first name basis now so um i have a very very hopeful feeling that amplify is going to be approved before july 6. and i just feel like all the conversations i've had that they're now aware very much aware that this is an imminent concern of ours they weren't so aware of it when i called earlier

230they said oh we don't have to make that decision until next week or the week after no no boards are deciding boards are voting now and i think sometimes you have to let the doe know that you know hello the school districts the schools need you to make decisions a little quicker sometimes so i really feel like um board members that this can happen by july 6. so i'm asking for july 6 to be the dead the date that you push the button to order the books and make that decision that motion thank you sir you got to withdraw the first yes i have to which i i would i amended it i didn't withdraw it i am ended the date okay and i just got a second on my amendment okay right now i

231would just point out to everybody that july 5th is a holiday that's that's exactly right and that's part of why i wanted to do that so i guess practically speaking any any decision made is going to be made on friday july 2nd but whether it's the second or the sixth uh whatever the latest date is is is at the sixth is the date uh let's go with it thank you so um mrs marinborg may i for a moment sure no discussion no well yeah we are but i haven't go ahead i have to finish yours yeah i haven't gotten to see my piece yet if that's okay part of what we discussed this this afternoon not this morning this afternoon is some of the concerns a lot of people have granted the concerns with what

232the company stands for or states and their policies and their websites and um sometimes i'm not a fan of some of the statements i've seen but i also know that some of the forwards and introductions have been of concern to people and i asked mr meyer this afternoon about whether or not those forwards or introductions can be not used for our pacing guides and for our pd mr meyer can you speak to that the ones that are concerned the chair uh yeah absolutely you know i think the the the focal point of our training will definitely be the uh what the students are doing right what what we are actually doing to cover the standards uh those those pages at the beginning um while i'm not trying to you know discount their importance uh they

233do speak to educational philosophies that you know some of our teachers may or may not share quite honestly but what i do know that the teachers do want to do is they want the students to have the the highest outcomes and so our focus in cni will certainly be around the materials the student facing materials the activities uh and not the stuff that's in the front not that you know i'm trying to pass judgment either for or against an agreement or disagreement with hmh i'll just tell you from a pragmatic standpoint we're going to focus more around delivering instruction that's aligned to the standards that gets the outcome so the governor has stated that there will be no crt in our schools how can we ensure that there won't be then well absolutely as as

234as i spoke uh this afternoon you know this isn't just an elementary ela um directive right we're going to have to provide professional development to all of our instructional coaches in every content area math science social studies uh to ensure that none of the material that we're presenting to students meets that and so as one of the the parents spoke that that feels that some things are already going on we we need to set up a process and procedure so that parents can notify us if that's occurring certainly through the materials that we are adopting and that we are pushing out the district level we would make sure that those do not contain that but but i don't discount the fact that you know there there may be an opportunity for you know bad actors

235as you say to potentially do things either intentionally or neglectfully not knowing uh and there does need to be a process to make sure that we can identify that if it were to happen okay and mrs rosario brought up a i'm not sure what it was it was a recording today about the website for hmh and her concerns about the website i do i did watch collier county's meetings i watched both of them um one because i wanted to see what it was like to run a meeting when you have a lot of people upset about a topic seeing that this was my first meeting to run but i also watched because i wanted to know they had selected hmh but there were so many concerns about it that they went to the company and

236they asked they wrote to the company a letter i guess and asked the company to write back answers to their questions and so the company did write a letter and i heard in there something about the concerns on the website for hmh and so i did ask mr meyer if he could talk to that letter for us about i don't know if you want to read the whole letter but about the concerns that um collier connie brought up with hmh would you like me to read the letter is it we can you know provide the link but as you stated it it is from the uh ceo of hmh to the school board chair of collier county uh dear mr carter thank you for your letter dated june 8 2021 concerning the public objections to

237collier county's board adopted k5 ela instructional materials hmh into reading florida i value and respect the feedback and opinions of the communities hmh serves including of course collier county all of us curriculum providers like hmh school districts classroom teachers and parents have a critical role to play in the education of children in our communities hmh into reading florida was built to support florida educators and confidently teaching 100 of the new best standards for ela unequivocally hmh's program neither contains nor teaches critical race theory nor is critical race theory embedded in hmh k-5 ela and structural materials in answer to your other questions hmh is adding language to the articles submitted by third-party contributors to our blog that makes it clear that the viewpoints expressed are their own moreover these views do not necessarily influence the

238development of instructional materials which are completely apolitical the statement concerning the value of black lives mate in june 2020 in the traumatic aftermath the murder of george floyd was not a political one rather the intent was to express our care and support for our black employees as well as teachers and students because we stand by this commitment we stand by our statement the purpose was to convey that we value black lives it was not to support or endorse the third party organization black lives matter hmh does not advocate for any particular ideology political organization or agenda our aim is simply to help teachers teach and students learn i appreciate your concerns you shared on behalf of families in your district and we agree that politics do not belong in the classroom hmh remains steadfast in

239our purpose to create high quality and structural materials that teachers can use with their students to help them realize their learning potential sincerely jack lynch ceo okay thank you so they addressed their concerns i really feel like amplify is going to get on the list i i really do i've had so many conversations in the last 24 hours um that i really feel like that's going to happen but in case it doesn't i do not want our students to not have a book and i certainly understand the fact that we have to do something that is approved by the department of education and for that reason we are kind of stuck in this position um you know both both books have high qualities to them i'm excited about amplify because of the trade books because

240of the rich texts that are there the multicultural text that is there the diverse learning that is there the tolerance that is there but i also know that we need a book and we can't just rely on the books we've had in the past because we have new standards and i think that's what people don't really understand is that you just can't stay in the past on this it's unfortunate we're in a tough situation and that's why i've been struggling and calling up to the doe so much because i just don't know if they've heard our our calls for help and i believe they have finally um so i'm just i'm really hopeful that we're going to have amplify in our schools in the fall so i'm at this point if unless there's any other

241discussion oh just one question so if we extend this dr moore to july 6 can you go over that timeline again when will we get the books when we do the pd when we start everything for our teachers through the chair we'll start everything on july 6th i would anticipate knowing on july 6 validating through the florida department of education it it's not like all of a sudden they're just going to appear on the list we'll be able to say it it is more than likely we will know friday after this meeting if it's anticipated or not but we'll still give to that six as we do with everything else we will task the assignments um over the next several weeks in order to ensure that we're ready for the opening of schools in terms

242of the delivery materials the professional development the vetting of the pacing guides thank you okay so i'm going to call for the vote on the amendment on the amendment thank you you're voting on the amendment only the amendment to july 6 back to july 6. yes okay so can i get a um a vote on the amendment right so we just vote no motion because that is the motion okay all those in favor aye aye aye aye okay so that's the amendment now you need to vote on that now we need to vote okay could you read that back because i have it written back several pages you have it absolutely the with the amendment it's if uh amplify is on the state list by july the sixth the superintendent is uh directed to order

243amplify as the k-5 instructional materials if it is not on the state list by july the 6th then the superintendent is directed to move forward with hmh as the adopted curriculum okay i'll ask for a vote all those in favor aye aye no all right okay that's four to one it passes all right and to clarify if the decision if amplify has to come down presumably by a certain time on the sixth right so if amplify is approved by 12 pm on the 6th that gives you if amplify is approved by 4 pm on the 6th that does not give you time um as the item is written i'm 100 confident we will we will be able to deliver okay thank you okay uh moving to superintendent's report i do have a a number of

244items and first and foremost uh madam chair want to acknowledge uh a your preparation for this board meeting and be the facilitation of the meeting absolutely outstanding in a very very hard time i think your remarks about how everyone conducted themselves is something as a community that we could be very very proud of also during the consent agenda very excited that we are able to bring on three new staff members director of student services our equity coordinator and our parent and community coordinator three high skilled individuals coming into our community who have been looking at the great things that are happening in this district so we're very excited to get them in here and begin to see some of the traction that they'll have in terms of supporting and improving the quality of instruction here

245in our county and those are the updates thank you thank you sir okay school board members matters dr schiff uh the only uh two things i have are uh attending fsba a couple weeks ago which was terrific i brought back a lot of good information one of which i had hoped to put on discussion for today but i knew it thank you for not the superintendent requested that i hold that because it was a very full day um but one of uh in fact it was the super it was the other presenter at the superintendent's presentation um who made a very interesting presentation about um student board members about having students uh sit on the board and i think doctor no i'm sorry you weren't there i was there you were there um but it

246was a really interesting presentation that i look forward to us being able to discuss as a board the pros and cons and if we see that as something viable for us um is there a board right now in florida that's doing that i'm just curious this was out of fl uh was flagler i believe wasn't it okay just because i want to watch one of the meetings okay i think it was flagler no what i'll do in preparation for that meeting flagler hat but flagler i'll be able to afford the presentation and you can watch a clip of that particular students but yes in my former district uh for the 24 years that i was there there was always a student who sat on the as a student advisor to the board thank you um

247so i know there's at least two counties and i suspect there's others um thank you for doing that research otherwise i'll do it or i'll support you in the yeah um there were other things um there was some really good presentation about mental health and mental health awareness for students what was i think most valuable about being there was the opportunity to come together with school board members from districts all around florida to discuss many of the things that we are commonly experiencing in this moment and to be able to have a chance because obviously i can't talk to any of you about it outside of these meetings but it was a really welcome opportunity to talk with dozens of school board members um from other places as i mentioned i was able also to

248talk with um jessica from rutledge senior i talked about that this afternoon so um huge amount of really productive conversations that came out of attending that meeting and i'm really grateful to have to have gone to it as well um the other thing i just want to mention is i was as dr jones mentioned earlier i was able to attend the dedication ceremony this saturday morning for gifford high school and i always i'm afraid i'm going to say it wrong josie park um josie schuman mark i really should get that in my head but it's late um which was a terrific dedication ceremony it was really i'm so pleased that we were able you know that as many people showed up from that event as they did tonight it was a real um testament to

249the significance of that event and to be able to participate in that to represent the board there was a real honor i then also went over to the festivities at gifford park for the rest of the afternoon which was very hot it was it was a hot humid pea soup day as i call them there were performances all day long but it was really particularly and i want to acknowledge um that we have a new federal holiday that was approved last week june juneteenth i am wholly in support of that federal holiday and i look forward to being able to do the things that are not simply symbolic but are substantive supports of what we need to do in this county and in this state and in this country to recognize our our history and

250um it was an honor to be at those events um on the first nationally recognized celebrated juneteenth event so i'm really grateful for that and that's all i have thank you mrs rosario yeah um i i did all the sentiments that dr schiff mentioned with regard to fsba it was wonderful i look forward to the um conversation to uh with regard to the student um board member representative other than that i've just had a few meetings that cancelled but nothing else to report okay thank you dr jones i attended the pd at sebastian river high school led by mr meyer and kelly basura with school improvement and it was excellent assistant principals and principals a lot of collaborative sharing good job i visited a couple summer school programs storm grow with the crossover mission and

251the math which was absolutely wonderful summer summer school cannot just be sitting in the desk and and this combination uh with crossover mission the basketball is absolutely excellent also visited a vpk at vero beach elementary and it's great to see the students getting ready for everything i want to commend dr moore and all of the district staff and all of our teachers and administrators i know we've just gotten the third grade scores back but just just in general for the year that you've had with a lot of challenges especially with covid but just very very proud of you for being in this district and i appreciate you and african-american students in third grade going up three percent dr moore and maintaining with 99 percent tested in third grade is exemplary i attended the equity committee

252last week moving forward i like the structure with mr browning and the team right now and kind of concentrating on one thing at a time but as dr moore said we are committed to this and when we do get unitary status we will make sure it's in policy so that we do not stop with these strategies for success for african american students be following that very closely and again the juneteenth celebration was really really wonderful hearing people like dr ron hudson and joe ida let speak warm my hearts for those of you who know a lot who knew a lot of people walked in the room tonight we had some legends here we had legends of this community and what they're doing for our students and again opening gifford middle and closing gifford middle six

253very very connected to that community and what they've done for inner river county school district and i'm just very very thankful for each and every one of them thank you okay mr barefoot um i don't really have anything other than that i thought that what dr jones just said in terms of the equity committee and focusing on one major issue at a time is smart and i think we'll we will make a lot of progress i would like to congratulate mrs barrenburg for running a great meeting you've done such a good job we're going to let you do it forever she's going to be new oh boy but i have nothing else to report very very good meeting very productive excellent tone thank you everybody okay thank you um i have a couple things uh

254i attended irc zoning planning meeting and um the liberty park has now been proposed and is going through liberty park surrounds liberty magnet school and i had some concerns i don't speak up at those meetings because i'm not a voting member but i do when it comes to schools and i did bring up my concerns voiced my concerns and they they said they were valid concerns so they are looking into them um i'm concerned about there's only one in and out right now they will be building a second one but that's towards their phase three and that's going to be a real concern for our flow of traffic for the school but also 66 avenues already messed up from during school pickup and drop off times and i believe it kind of interferes with a

255lot of the traffic going to the other schools too so that's just going to be even more fun but i'm not sure when that that project will start but it's not imminent it will start in a couple of years so we'll pay attention to that i did also attend pre-ignite um with administrators and i like the fact that you are streamlining all the plans thank you as a former principal because i don't know how many hours i spent on the weekends building plans and building plans and building plans that somebody may have not ever read so it's really nice that all the plans are being streamlined into with the strategic plan so i appreciate that because school improvement plan should be a living document they shouldn't be something sits on the shelf i also got

256in on the equity committee meeting i thought it was a really good committee meeting and they had a little bit of data to look at not quite a lot but they had a little bit of data to be able to go through so hopefully more and more data will come through for you to be able to share with them math camp i did get thank you miss bashore for touring me around math camp wow math camp and i think they're it's math leaps right i want to say that correctly because nobody wants to really attend math camp but they really had a great time and uh i went because i thought how many kids can you get to go to math camp it went from 20 kids in the past to 120 this year because

257they added crossover mission thank you for them and the tech ventures which i think was great kids got to choose between making robots or playing in the gym and me i would have had a really hard choice with that i wanted to do all of them i'm sure um and then the last thing i have is juneteenth coming from texas that's been a holiday in texas for a long time and uh when i moved here and no one knew what juneteenth was i was kind of surprised by that so um you know that's that's been something that we've known in texas for a while um because texas was the state that that that happened so um with that uh superintendent do you have a a closing um it's 1008 no i do not all right

258so i will adjourn the meeting at 10 08.