School Board Business Meeting 6 p.m. 6-8-2021

001this is the business meeting it's june 2021 and again if you if you don't have a seat there's plenty of seats outside but we don't want anybody standing around the the perimeter um if you're here for citizen input uh your name will be called to come to the podium to speak make sure that you've filled out a form and make sure that mrs esplin over there gets it ahead of time also during board meetings please refrain from clapping outbursts of any sorts and if you're not able to comply with that request i may have to ask you to leave the meeting at this point in time i will ask mr meyer to lead us in the pledge of allegiance of the united states one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh

002the first order of business tonight is the adoption of the orders of the day and i would also point out um before we begin we have two board members that are joining us on teams uh dr schiff and mrs rosario they're in tampa tonight for the florida school board association meeting which begins first thing tomorrow morning representing representing our district are there any items board members wish to move from consent to action hearing none can i have a motion to approve the orders of the day i'll second all in favor motion carries uh dr moore you're going to me for do you have any presentations i do not well i'm sorry i'm sorry all right yeah we do have presentations and for that i'll turn it over to our public information officer miss kristen maddox

003good evening everyone thank you for being here again tonight we just have a couple of brief presentations but very important presentations our first presentation is a video that we put together it's an end of the year wrap up just so you can see some important events that happen throughout the year [Music] right here [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] that was probably one of the longest videos my team has put together but it takes a long video to wrap up a very long year and that's only a fraction of the work that our district did under the circumstances that we were under so i'm personally very proud i know i speak for a lot of people who say that our next presentation we have some teachers here who

004recently completed the acp course the alternative certification program and i'm going to ask mr richard meyer assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction to come up and complete the presentation thank you ms maddox and actually i'm going to ask for some other people to come up here and help me complete the presentation dr colleen lord and miss terry beckham as you guys know we have phenomenal phenomenal teachers here in the school district of indian river county but unfortunately we cannot keep them forever they do earn the right to retire so we've got to keep getting new teachers in and through our teacher program we have some wonderful individuals who while they didn't go to college to become teachers they they're teachers in their heart and our staff works with them to help them make sure they

005complete all of their uh state required credentials so they can be uh full tilt teachers and i'll tell you um i do want to recognize one person dr lord you're pretty awesome but miss terry beckham i can't tell you the number of times like i've left these meetings at eight nine maybe later i don't know obviously seen you up there pretty late sometimes uh and she's still working with some of the individuals and it's just a no-quit attitude an army of one ms terry beckham has gotten so many teachers across the finish line so thank you for what you do terry and dr laura i'll let you go up here so we are delighted tonight to recognize teachers that have crossed the finish line they didn't start in college thinking i want to become a

006teacher some of us do when we're quite young but they took a different career path and they made the decision after a four-year degree to say you know what i actually want to go into the classroom i want to do something for the kids they were best by our kids here in indian river county and i greatly appreciate the fact that in these two crazy years that we've had the last two school years that they hung in there they've taken extra courses they've taken exams they've put together a portfolio and they have proven themselves in the classroom to be doing the right thing by our students and so tonight we are very proud to recognize we have 21 completers for state a state approved alternative certification program and so again we have 21 which is

007a record number we have for this current year 17 that have just entered but again congratulations to all of our teachers and the two people that work with them and terry beckham is is the primary person over acp program and as mr meyer said she is here till 10 o'clock sometimes on the phone she's gone to meet at restaurants at homes getting people across that finish line with the exams and just providing that extra support and as a new teacher in a classroom sometimes you just need that ear she's there all the time and right next to her is anitra cummings who also is our pd specialist both of them are pd specialists with the department of educator quality and they do a phenomenal job supporting all of our teachers again our job in curriculum

008instruction is to help all teachers and i just can't thank the two of them enough for what they've done for alternative certification teachers to get across the line just like we saw in the video it's been kind of a interesting year so kudos to them and again thank you for being here for choosing our county and for people watching hey you may have a four-year degree in biology but we can put you in a classroom with our science kids who are excited to learn so if you are interested i'm getting a little commercial now please don't hesitate to contact us because this is part of what we do here in indian river county it's part of the we promise that we support you we have mentors for them and we just want to make sure

009that we are successful and again congratulations i'm going to turn it over to terry beckham good evening everyone thank you school board members dr moore mr meyer mr dr lord it truly is such a pleasure to work with these guys um over the past several years we have had many teachers come our way with varying skill levels and they work tirelessly so if you've ever been a first-year teacher you know that into itself is a huge strain but never mind completing hours of course work preparing for ftce tests and then of course being me the nag that i am and nudging them along mentoring them talking all the time making sure that they're staying on track because they only have three years to meet all of their requirements on their statement of eligibility so if

010we could just go and just give them all a quick round of applause because i i am so proud this is like my class so i'm very very very very very proud and i could stand up here and probably talk for quite some time about each one of these individuals and then those that could not make it this evening but what i'd like to go ahead and do is just let them have their moment in the sunshine so without further ado jason tremble come on up [Applause] williams liliana barrett [Applause] alwyn gaines [Applause] leif mirrors jordan neely who was also my fourth grade student back in the day and last but not least for here tonight we have kelly reno we also have several others that could not be here this evening for one reason

011or another so i'm going to call out some names and if you could just hold your applause to the end valerie gerard amy russell pam schwartz amy wheatley beth broxma kevin kulp maritza lahodick kimbery lubin brian mosblek paula robinson chelsea steinhauer katie sarrett jeffrey white and brittany young nice going all right you guys must be very precise and that concludes our presentations for this evening all right uh congratulations all it has been a challenging year but uh everybody did it did a great job uh next item is citizen input i will read the guidelines each statement made by a member of the public shall be limited to three minutes duration persons will be recognized in the order in which the requests were received persons may speak for up to three minutes at the beginning of

012a business meeting during citizens input as indicated on the order of business and for up to three minutes to each action item agenda during the action agenda and each board member discussion item as indicated on the order of business persons may only speak once about any given item the time period may be extended by the presiding officer and only the individual submitting a speaker's form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded to other speakers and i would just remind you that we want everyone to act in a civil respectful manner and please address your comments to the board not to any one specific individual per our policy at this time the first speaker of the evening is angela love hello all um thank you school board members for your service and

013dr moore i am 44 hence why i have these glasses born 1977 born into a family that wore their racism like a badge grandfather wouldn't allow me to have any black friends when i dated outside my race my grandmother called me racial slurs i've seen black friends denied bathroom keys that i was allowed to have all sorts of blatant examples of individual racism i've also learned about how racism causes inequalities that can persist for generations redlining caused no access to mortgages denying homeownership and passing on generational wealth here in our school district in second grade my white daughter playing on the playground with a black friend of hers a little white boy came up and said oh i don't like black people obviously my daughter and her friend were stunned and then that little boy

014punched her in the face i reported it i think he had you know counseling the point of all of this is that racism is alive and well in individuals in institutions in organizations and it's very very easy for white people to deny that racism exists or that it is causing any problems or racism doesn't go away by ignoring it by sticking our heads in the sand by wishing it away it goes away by us learning more about it by us studying it by us fighting against it will we fight against it will we create a more equitable and just future will we in this room be on the right side of history i fear many in this room are not many in this room are on the same side as the kkk the nazis and

015other white supremacists your descendants may be embarrassed by your comments here in this room tonight by fighting against racism against hatred by working on equity so that all kids have the tools they need to succeed in our school district no matter their shade of skin and that should show in our statistics no one is proposing critical race theory in our school books that is a lie to get you guys to come out here the new textbooks are simply wanting to include everyone in a fair way so that all of our children are reflected and considered let's be on the right side of history let's trust the experts here in florida thank you thank you miss love the next speaker joseph parr good evening board members i want to tell you about two teachers that i

016had back in high school that really shaped how i see the world my ninth grade geography teacher miss emily walton and my dual enrollment irsc us history professor dr michelle kerrigan now now just to add some context to what i'm about to say i went to a private school that most of the time went with a history curriculum provided by the state this curriculum left out a lot of history i only really learned anything when i had teachers that went beyond the state curriculum miss walton and dr kerrigan were those teachers so miss walton and i should add right here that my class was one of her favorite classes that she ever taught that is a flex i will do to the end of time taught about history and geography from multiple perspectives and understandings

017this was there was this one day when she showed us a ted talk by chimamanda adichie about the dangers of a single story what she means by that is that the way the people events and cultures are perceived are affected by how stories about them are told i remember when miss walton taught us about european imperialism in african countries and she explicitly discussed racism because the context of racism is central when making sense as to why colonialism happened why belgium committed genocide in the congo why apartheid was created in south africa and to not talk about racism when discussing these topics if they're even discussed is a disservice to our students and when i when i signed up for dr kerrigan's course i was mostly excited about finally learning the nuances of cold war politics

018thought that was going to be the main thing i would remember from her class turns out that wasn't the case the main thing i ended up taking away from that class is the extensive history of systemic racism in this country we learned about how the slaughterhouse cases gave way to the black codes and jim crow we learned about the tulsa race massacre we learned about redlining before dr kerrigan's class i knew that racism was systemic but her class revealed the extent of how systemic it is miss walton and dr kerrigan both understood that the standard curriculum did not properly teach history i would say that i did not actually learn history until i had miss walton and dr kerrigan because they were courageous enough to talk about racism to talk about sexism imperialism and systemic

019injustice and i'm extremely lucky that i had a miss walton and a dr kerrigan and i wish everyone had teachers as amazing and courageous as they were but i'm afraid that if governor desantis and commissioner corcoran have their way students in our state no matter the school district may not ever be able to fully learn from teachers like them thank you thank you mr parr next speaker is christy milad malado excuse me good evening so this evening i want to share a story most of you know i work in dependency i had a child in the past couple years that was abused by her father in the worst way that you can imagine she was violated for years before a call was made the school made that call then a school worker not one but

020two school workers took that child into their personal home and one of them ended up adopting her these two people advocated for this child relentlessly asking for more resources asking for help for them so they could help the child they tracked her education and got her caught up and sometimes it bothered me because i had more than one case but they never gave up on her the child i saw in the beginning left me in tears day after day i left a party of hers the other day and that child's life has changed she is running around freely being a child something that she lost but the people at her school gave it back to her so when we are here and i hear political agendas words like inclusive or diversity or code for teaching

021crt i cringe inclusive is all kids diversity is all walks of life so when we talk about best interests of kids it can't just be the children that are ours it has to be every child we have a community of kids just like the one i'm talking about schools are their safety schools are their safe space we need to support our educators to ensure that every single child gets what they need to be successful the school is a part of our village give the teachers and kids support so every child has an ending like the one i just talked about your child is not the only child in this school district and we need our public schools and we need our teachers and our board to feel supported by our community thank you next speaker

022barbara jordan good evening my name is barbara jordan i'm a taxpayer and i vote for local elections i'm neither a democrat or a republican so that makes me pretty well neutral but about a year ago i heard governor desantis make a statement regarding the florida education system we were going to focus on reading writing arithmetic and civics a couple months ago i attended the school board meeting and your assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction mr meyer gave a lengthy presentation on how they came up with the hmh selection and at the end of his presentation several of you asked him questions so obviously he knew what was going on it was his department a salary that pays 115 to 123 000 a year but since that day i've looked at some of the curriculum and

023who the authors were and there's so many undertones in it it's so far deviated from reading writing and arithmetic that is plenty to keep the teachers busy so i think you need to find another assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction we could save the taxpayers 115 to 123 this curriculum stinks i i didn't hear anybody from this board push back or or want to talk about what they thought of the curriculum and how there was undertones other than miss terry but the rest it's just unbelievable so that's all i have to say thanks thank you miss jordan next speaker is sarah hill good evening my name is sarah hill i'm a resident of indian river county and i'm a retired teacher i'm here to ask for a timeout for students and teachers please august 2021

024the first day of school always creates a mixed bag of emotions this year will be different though post covet after a year or more of disruption and dramatic change in teaching daily attendance and learning students may show deficits and loss of knowledge and skills that will take longer and more thorough evaluations and assessments to complete teachers and administrators will be more stressed to give students the time to adjust feel welcomed and safe accurately assess the gaps and losses and begin a covered catch-up i suggest the school board members do everything possible to support teachers and students during this adjustment period this is not the right time for a curriculum change in the english language arts for grades k-5 by making such an impactful change each of you as leaders in our school community will be

025expecting teachers to complete assessments plan instruction and provide support for students with materials they are not familiar with and have not reviewed these expectations are difficult and very unfair after this pause i strongly suggest the hmf hmh into reading florida k to 5 series not be considered for adoption this series is driven by culturally responsive teaching methods which is closely linked to critical race theory it pushes a political agenda throughout its materials that is harmful and divisive to young impressionable children in this hmh series some fourth grade stories include negative exclusive and one story racist comments the scope and sequence of learning to read and write is extended through grades k to two basic skills should be presented early and in a continuous and skill building manner focus on social emotional concepts instead of basic

026skills can lead children to be frustrated and and discouraged in their ability and interest to read and write if hmh series is adopted parents will object to content in this series and expectations and they are and expectations that are not age appropriate they will be looking to the school board for answers and concerns implementing new and unfamiliar materials controversial content and impact on academic progress does not set the stage for a successful year i pray that each of you as school board members will think first of how you can best support indian river county students thank you for your attention and time thank you miss hill next speaker susan meal good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak mr meyer has been helping us with navigating through the process of selecting the curriculum

027and one of the things i just wanted to mention is that i have found it difficult to navigate online to see the materials myself i think it's i'm not surprised that maybe a lot of people don't do that and don't find out that there are objections and then have to relate them to a state statute and fill out a petition he also shared with me a rubric that the people fill out who evaluate the packages and i have to say that there are a lot of touchy-feely things in there to evaluate and not a lot about what sarah just talked about sequencing and skill development etc i think it seems to be designed to be interpreted in a number of ways that would elicit the outcome that one might want one of you admitted in

028a letter to our team that you aren't experts in this field and that you would defer to other board members who are that's very disturbing because i know for a fact when i voted for you i didn't anticipate that you would turn to other board members who i feel don't have the same principled interests that i do we have taken the time to do the homework and i expect you to do that too we cracked the book so to speak and we evaluated the materials and what we found was outrageous another person well this same person said that they would defer to existing district staff and another board member wrote that the existing curriculum you're using right now or did up until the end of this school year is so bad that i should be

029concerned about you taking a time out to find better curriculum we shouldn't have this material because it's so bad it should not be taught another second in our schools now based on the fact that that material was selected by probably some of the same people that are in this room tonight or are in the school district now does not give me a lot of confidence about the process or the material that's been selected we believe it's a time for a timeout because what we found in the hma k through five curriculum all with its discussion in current kindergarten of social justice and police relationships is just ridiculous we've also found that there's the tallahassee has its issues too and we're working with senator mayfield to address those because what we found is there's money and

030power there too long and the deep state in education is making some of the shots calling the shots and we don't appreciate that so we're asking for a timeout so that these so important reading and writing in kindergarten and first grade okay processes are addressed with the right curriculum and we'll help you find it thank you the next speaker greg maxwell good evening board members and thank you for your time my name is greg maxwell and i come to you as a concerned citizen i was a student of the indian river county school district from grades 7 to 12. i'm here tonight to ask the school board to vote against adopting the critical race theory curriculum or any variations thereof so what's wrong with critical race theory to be brief critical race theory is a

031hateful ideology one that judges people based on the color of their skin and not on other factors such as content of character or personality it only serves to widen the chasm between americans and install a racially charged narrative in our children are not all men created equal according to critical race theory we are not instead of peddling hateful rhetoric we should ensure our children are prepared for the real world by teaching them skills such as finance financial literacy vocational and trade opportunities and a thorough understanding of what it means to be an american our unity as a nation is at stake if we are teaching our children at a young age to view each other through the lens of racism thank you for your time next speaker ryan blade hello everyone my name is ryan

032blade i am the vice president of the indie river county conservative club uh there's a couple items that i'm a bit concerned about um the critical race theory i'm not really too favoring of this i'm fine it could worsen the already tense racial divisions we have in our country right now i've seen racism from not just white people from other ethnicities it's not as well known i'd like to remind everyone that we are all americans i want everyone to remember that we cannot be divided especially right now with the other problems we have going on this world right now the nature on curriculum not big fan of it um i know all the crook comes out no matter which one you pick it's gonna have some progressivism in it i ask that you please go

033and pick the least damaging one um i'm not paying attention jobs either as a local education expert i've spoken with dr karen hiltz um really smart about this stuff and you know these equity jobs they don't really do anything to actually bring equity or you know equality anything like that i know a lot of services i have spoken with are against racism and if there is any racism we're more than happy to stand against that i don't like racism i have four cousins not biracial i don't like racism or anything like critical race theory that basically says you know that you're less likely to succeed because you're skincare i'm actually half argentine plus i'm sending from two union uh civil war veterans from pennsylvania so on both sides of my parents families so i got

034a bit of a both worlds on that and the masking and uh contact racing i know at some point you guys are supposed to take a boat to for the fall i think it'd be best that the contact tracing is and masking when not all that's gone done i've spoken a couple medical individuals uh people treated percolosis in the operating room i've had you know over 10 procedures myself unfortunately in my lifetime um the only mask is really works n95 masks and you have to dispose them each time and people a lot of us including myself we use these masks when we have to use them so i don't know if it's going to create a lot of sanitation it's not like you know you're going to put negative pressure and you know lending us

035you know having to write down enough i don't i can't see that you know everybody goes and does that um and also to at least one thing i did remember from my education at university college is there are federal laws that are supposed to protect discrimination going back to the 1960s i would hope that those are being properly enforced you know we already have those in place but yeah i mean i just don't need more division amongst everybody now too i heard from extra princess uh visual i know this doesn't apply to everybody but governor desantis which i support all of you but this is well in the news that governor sands is not going to support people who are not seeing its critical race there in the masking i know you guys have been

036in a very tough spot because there's a lot of different viewpoints a lot of well-spoken individuals who have been here at these meetings but i would hope that perhaps you particular consideration there's a lot of advocates like jennifer pep and her group of parents that have been you know i'm sure hopefully been reaching out saying guys information you have any questions definitely uh reach out to them i'm sure they'll be we're happy to provide you guys information thank you thank you mr blade next speaker chris allen hi my name is chris allen and i'm one of the founding members of we the people in indian river county and a moderator for moms for liberty indian river florida uh dr moore what happened to the team approach to desegregating public schools i looked at the sdirc

037website and notice that you now have a coordinator equity position open the description is very similar to the february posting and uses the same sentences this to me is contrary to what you said in last month's school board meeting and in the newspapers dr schiff i hope she's listening you're quoted saying with new policies and procedures in place the school district is better than it has been in years those policies and procedures include viewing all actions through an equity lens the district has historically disciplined students of color two to three times the rate of white children she said enlighten me to you what is an equity lens where's the data to go along with the students that are disciplined did you look at color instead of causation you marginalize teachers good judgments by saying they've

038punished just by color i've heard a few concerning statements from these meetings at the school district i remember that these people are the equity are for the equity physician and the opinionated hmh curriculum aside from being called a kkk member tonight um because i'm not on her side someone else said that certain people aren't able to understand crt because you're they are white um imagine if there was any other race there except for white mostly you can see i'm not white and i'm not for crt so that's a not very good thing to say another one said i saw many concerns from parents that did not want content included in their children's curriculum because they don't want to feel uncomfortable or their kids feel uncomfortable for being descendants of oppressors my child is not a

039senate of an oppressor just because he's half white and i'll never have them think that way either we're all children of god i don't know why people have to concentrate so much on race when we're supposed to be one human race i'm going to say this [Applause] i'm going to say this again my child does not need your or those two people's version of social emotional learning that is my job my child will not be reduced to a descendant of an oppressor what happened to teaching normal subjects like math science english and et cetera instead of socially engineering children mischief gives examples um of children of incarcerated parents children with families don't have enough to eat is this really the majority of the school um you know how is this equitable when i first started

040school i didn't know english but they didn't teach the whole class spanish to english just because i didn't know it thank you thank you miss allen please next speaker larissa packlin good evening board members and dr moore i'm sorry i do not have a speech prepared today i just want to say that i'm a mother of two children one of them six and three my children don't know that people can be divided by skin color we do not live like this we do not divide people we have different friends we do not divide people by skin color by nationality by accent we like diversity we know that being different is it's a great thing because we are all different people so right now my kids are going to school and they will learn about it

041that people can be divided by skin color do i want it no do i live like this no we see person we see personality i do not understand why this board thinks that he it know what knows better than the governor of florida ronda sanchez who said that the critical race already will banned in florida and why do you want to implement this equity positions it's okay it is good to teach about marxism it is not good to implement school should teach children right not implement new lifestyle new political agendas this is not right i remember i was very excited when we moved and i my son went to school he's just finished kindergarten i was very excited that my kids will study in america right now i'm thinking it was a right choice because

042what i see for this year i am deeply shocked i had lived in a few different countries before i moved here and i quite sold and travel and quite so some differences in different countries i haven't expected that schools here in america are so much political that it shouldn't be that you try to implement something to the children's life create new society i don't think this is right and i don't think that i want my children be part of it because once dr moore told he wants to be children successful in the country i doubt it so much i doubt that these kids will be successful internationally with this school system that uh the curriculum that they are being thought i really having so much doubts and i if there will be no changes for

043better then i have to figure it out where my kids will be studying because i don't want my children will be part of it the other hand i'm so happy that there are parents who is speaking up here and getting together speaking for children i don't like how this world behave one parent has been fired from his job because she was talking speaking up for their children this is not good and i i think that this this board doesn't doesn't do right job i'm sorry i think i hope your places will be changed thank you thank you miss macklin [Music] the next speaker is jennifer pippen good evening my name is jennifer pippen i'm the chairman for moms for liberty of indian river florida and also one of the admins for we the people of

044indian river county today there was discussion during your meeting on how some of you want to silence or limit public comment mr barefoot you even said some people who come to speak are not well informed you are elected by us to serve it is your job to listen to the public i have a better solution i think that will accomplish more when do you have the most public input at your meetings it's when the public is so concerned about issues they take valuable time away from their family dinners ball games reading bedtime stories to their children to come before you and to be engaged as a productive member of society for our children you should applaud that encourage that and respect that every time we come to speak also when parents and community members trust

045that you were doing your job effectively you won't have tons of public input would you i was once that parent i believe that the people i voted for were going to be best by all children unfortunately because of these decisions you have made the disrespect you have shown parents you have lost something very valuable you have lost the trust and confidence of the people who would be your biggest asset parents your priority should be to restore faith and trust and self-examine your own service to our children this isn't about winning a political war it shouldn't be about pushing parents who speak out and colluding with the newspaper and lying to their employers to have them fired it shouldn't be about trying to take parents who speak out begging for their children to be helped and

046not support them this should be about giving children the best education which will never be accomplished the way we're going when you make children feel that they are in a broken system because you tried to silence their parents do better make this your priority everything you do as a board is our business and parents taxpayers community members we are part of your business many people who i hope that you're saying are misinformed never looked at those curriculum books out there so they have no idea what they're into or that the hmh is endorsed by black lives matter that is a racial issue that is a racial problem that our children don't need to have adult politics adult sexuality and adult problems for elementary middle or high school age students let the parents talk to their

047children about those issues and if there's a further issue then you get somebody else involved but the teachers they shouldn't have to deal with that for our children either not every student is college bound some are technical college bound family business please do best by all children thank you miss pippin the next speaker john karapi good evening how's everybody doing good did you get my email that i sent you get it good so let's read the letter we got here so john i'm john karapi by the way i'm the one that's been fired from his job for speaking out if anybody wants to know was in the it was in the paper today or the other day so your employment interior county chamber of commerce was suspended as of pay of may 20th 2021 to

048allow them to the board directors to find time to find out what i did wrong a major portion of my role at the chamber requires you to liaison numerous community partners throughout the county not least one is the india county school director we were informed last week by a school board official that you were you will not be permitted on any school campus in indian river county now i need to know who who said that who who told the chamber that i wasn't allowed on on school campus mr moore mr barefoot you didn't tell him you didn't say nothing it says it right here that a school board official said that i wouldn't be allowed on campus i was not suspended i wasn't uh trespassed i spoke to mr teske i wasn't trespassed i spoke

049to mr bass he said that mr moore spoke to the chamber and uh i don't know what he told them but i don't know where you think you can tell them that i don't know who you think you are but the bottom line is is that the people in this room right here they can't trust you anymore because you guys are lying you're lying to the newspaper you're lying to the chamber and you're lying to this community and you know it and now i have nothing else to lose now and i can't lose my job the only thing i could lose is my life that's it i got that's all i got left so somebody up here is lying and we need to find out today so who is it [Music] i got one minute

050nothing you didn't call the chamber i spoke with you you spoke to the chamber yeah you dr morge you speak to the chamber and who told him that i was not allowed on campus somebody did somebody did and we're going to find out because i'm not going away if i have to run for school board then i'll do that and i'll sit up there and i'll find out who did it that's what i'll do that's enough what what it means enough that's enough no i want to know you act i wouldn't believe i i i don't sit up there i actually before but now you've you've done it to yourself you called the newspaper you told him that i wasn't allowed on campus and that's a lie and you know it and it is a

051lie because i spoke to him and he said that you spoke to the chamber and said you just said you did too but nobody said that i was trespassed nobody called me from the school district said i was trespassed so i want to know who said it you got 10 seconds shame on both ears because both ears are lying and you know it and i'm going to find out and it's going to get in the paper eventually and it's going to be retracted because i don't care about the job it has nothing to do with the job it has to do with integrity and the truth all right you're you're finished tonight thank you very much i was finished a long time ago you're finished because you know what it's time for you to go

052and it's time for him to go end of story bye bye that's enough people i would tell you mr crappie that when you threaten people online as you did you absolutely threaten people house online you call this the john donald and use the disruptive force mr crappie you are out of line you're the one that did it you did it to yourself [Music] the next speaker is crystal mcintyre good evening mr chairman esteem board members superintendent moore teachers and staff until yesterday i wasn't going to come to the podium to speak but i've read something recently that just has me baffled apparently there is a small faction of this community who despite being reassured numerous times by almost all of the board members that crt is not being proposed they refuse to believe that they

053are not hearing you they believe there is a hidden agenda of some kind by the 600 teachers administrators department of education personnel and other invited curriculum reviewers to in their words indoctrinate our children sadly this information is not new to me nor the rest of you in this room we all aware why there's no seats lately but what is new to me and to dozens of other community members who are troubled by this is the list of keywords parents are being told to look for words and phrases being referred to as trigger words or keywords they see being used to slip in crt words such as equality inclusiveness culturally culturally responsive teaching social justice and critical thinking imagine that these words are being thought of as triggering who are they triggering certainly not our children

054what really drove me to speak tonight is the impact the opposite of these words can have if those previously stated words and phrases are considered to be harmful to our children what is the impact of the opposite of these words inequality exclusiveness culturally insensitive teaching social injustice passive thinking are those words not triggering do those words not divide a community and drive wedges between social classes and races and modern families how can this be where we are heading with our children instead of where we are quickly running away from equality is not a trigger word inclusiveness should not be a trigger word critical thinking is not something to be afraid of i just cannot comprehend this we do not have to be intimidated as parents by allowing our kids to acquire critical thinking skills as

055i've heard someone in this room once say equity in education requires putting systems in place to ensure that every child has an equal chance for success i came here tonight as part of a group of parents and community members who want to reassure you that we are here to support that system that you have our trust and that we are tired of a small part of the community inferring that just because they're louder than us and that they speak for us and our children please know that we stand with you in the essential task of fully educating our children we support you in whatever way you may need we are not here to bully you but to support you thank you for your time thank you miss mcintyre next speaker is cindy gibbs good evening

056thanks for your patience as i walk in i'm cindy gibbs i live in sebastian i was here at the last meeting i'm here to support the educators and the other staff in our county as a parent and a former educator one of the main talking points i wrote this long before i arrived sorry one of the main talking points we keep hearing about in florida these days is this concept that our teachers and our other educators in the k-12 schools are somehow bent on indoctrinating the students to hate their own race or to unduly question the differences among and between things and that having these discussions about controversial topics in the classroom might make some kids hate their country or their community they keep talking about how critical race theory is sneaking in somehow the

057governor has banned it so are we sure that these educators are somehow sneaking it in do we really think that every teacher in this school district is here to ruin children i mean come on they hardly get paid that's what they're gonna do people can yell about it and say that it is but that doesn't make it true we've also heard a lot of people say that we're all one race the human race as the great jane elliott the american diversity educator likes to say however that is often misappropriated and twisted to mean that we shouldn't recognize race and whatever experiences particular races or ethnicities may have had i'll step back for a second and be super simplistic about it when we study geometry in school no good teacher would say you know what kids

058they're all shapes we don't need to talk about how some have three sides and some have four you only need to know that they have shapes and that they're all important of course that's absurd we would never do that we would talk about how triangles are super strong building materials and how rectangles are everywhere and how circles don't have angles we can take another slightly closer analogy and say that no good teacher would teach children that we can just call them animals and not discuss that giraffes are tall herbivores and that horses once had toes but they've evolved into hooves again absurd and again super simplistic but the concept is the same to learn well we must pull things apart and look at them deeply and have lively conversation to work it out saying that

059diversity or inclusion or cultural studies or gender studies it doesn't mean indoctrination how can we expect children to stand every day and pledge the flag which might be called indoctrination but we can't allow them to talk and learn about the differences in conflicts that got us that flag and allow us to continue to fly that flag public education is the place in the u.s where children of all backgrounds regardless of who they are come for a quality education including everyone and we're lucky because our county and our country also has private schools with all kinds of mission statements where people can choose to send their kids if they're unhappy with the public school system we have a whole bunch right here we've got shiloh cross style glendale tabernacle just to name a few and there's

060homeschool groups we have everything so if you're unhappy maybe it's time to make another choice because at public school we teach everyone thank you for your time thank you miss gibbs next speaker kimberly westcott uh mr wescott you're next if she comes you can we'll fit her in [Music] good evening thank you for uh taking the time to hear from us um i'm going to rephrase i i think that it's time on this curriculum issue to tap the brakes i think others have referred to uh time out statute section one uh 1006 36 allows the district to request an extension of an existing contract that may one be one means you've already heard the issue with regard to restarting after the year that we had and the challenges associated with that why would we compound

061that by adding a new curriculum on top of it additionally someone referred to the statements of doc governor desantis it's going to be a political issue in my mediation practice sometimes i have to do a reality check i think the reality to check for us in the room is the likelihood that we're going to spend 3 million dollars plus on a curriculum and then have to go through and excise a good bit of it because it does have a good deal of social engineering and uh critical race theory elements to it the primary proponent or the individual dr tyrone howard who as i understand from looking at the hmh website is the spearhead if you will for this curriculum that's being considered has some writing on the website a quote the world is saying black

062lives matter and quotation marks capitalized let teachers build on this movement to say the same thing when it comes to schooling additionally a statement we believe the education system needs to change and we will continue to use our platform to make that change we commit to start at home amplify black voices leverage our scale lobby for change teach social justice the problem is woven in the fabric of this curriculum is a good deal of creating uh were activists social activists when the real solution to a lot of the problem this the school district responsibility in terms of improving academics is to improve academics plain and simple um i know that we've considered amplified and that was the first choice what i scratched my head uh how amplified could have been choice number one and hmh

063could be choice number two from the same committee that looked at this i would invite you all to explore every opportunity to give us more time so that amplified can be ratified by the doe so that you can adopt it like you told you wanted wanted to one of those vehicles would be 106.36 an extension of the existing contracts the other is if it's possible to delay the hearing process stretch it out give give doe an opportunity to do what we've asked them to do and that is approve amplified amplified does not do what this one does this one is weak on academics and it's it's social engineering i've previously provided my objections to the curriculum i think i send it to each of you i invite you to make sure that you read it

064don't waste 3.1 million dollars on a curriculum that you're going to have to gut probably is before too long anyway thank you mr wescott [Applause] do you want to address this at the end all right a lot of the these comments and questions we're going to address at the end so don't leave if you because we will uh mr meyer and dr moore will address some of your concerns but the next speaker is jane hayden hi good evening jane hayden and i'm here to support the parents and the teachers and all the concerned citizens that are objecting to the critical race theory curriculum i'm a taxpayer also a retired from a teaching profession as well as law enforcement and i think that it would be very wise and prudent for the board to listen to

065the parents and listen to the public that are intelligent that have taken a lot of time and energy to study this they're not just blowing hot air and i just think it would be very wise and prudent for you to also consider and at least research into the topics that they've discussed thank you thank you ms hayden the next speaker brianna i apologize i'm having a hard time welsh thank you hello how are you this is my first time at one of these meetings i didn't know about these meetings and i learned about it on facebook um being called a kkk member white supremacist is pretty um ignorant my son is biracial i was raised by two women my entire life i grew up in that environment and i say that to say that i

066didn't know anything different because we weren't taught it wasn't broadcast i think um critical race theory is atrocious i don't think that um teaching our children that they're different is appropriate um the women that spoke before me and the gentleman over there said it all i mean they're we're not different and teaching people that we're teaching children that we're different is the problem there's a problem it's called division and it starts from the top the people the adults are causing the problem we hear it over and over again united we stand divided we fall if we keep dividing and teaching that because of our skin color we're different it's not right i'm a college graduate i just graduated this past summer this past semester indoctrination is real it's happening i got zeros on papers because

067i refused to write about what they were asking me to write about i don't want to focus on that that's the problem focusing on the racism and black lives matter i want to focus on a solution and the solution is uniting coming together you know children are impressionable and they don't need to be coerced by liberal teachers it's not right um i hope that this isn't introduced into the into the school system because i would hate to have to pull my son out of school over something like this like it was said before allow us to teach our children about things like that i appreciate what you all do it takes a lot to be up here and we do appreciate what you guys do and i'm grateful i came tonight and i'll be at

068more of these meetings i like to be involved in what's going on in my school and i'll say this to end this i've gone to every one of my son's school parent-teacher conferences and they never tell us about what they're teaching our children they only tell us about how our children are doing and if i would have known what i read out there and those books would be taught to my children my child i would have had a problem with it then i probably would have been more involved then he's going in the sixth grade this year and now that i know what's happening i will definitely be more involved and i hope more parents get involved i think that's what the problem is thank you thank you miss welsh next speaker robert schmidt thank

069you everybody my name is robert schmidt and i'm proud to be here tonight to voice my opinion i agree with the gentleman i was here early about abilify is it abilify amplify amplify abilify makes you feel better right okay amplify amplify i agree with amplifier 100 my vote is for amplified as a us citizen my vote is for amplify as a concerned father my vote is for amplify there's a lot of talk going on around the nation about this critical race theory and it is defined as theoretical which means that it's not actual it's not substantial it is not true they favor the race conscious approach to social transformation relying on political organization crt critical race theory is not a rice-based remedies or social structure based on the ability of an individual i love individual

070freedoms i love my individual rights i love what a man once said i have a dream that one day my children will be what judged by the content of their character and not the color of their race martin luther king a great man crt critical race theory has roots and revisionist interpretations due to civil rights law that criticize the civil rights law of the united states as it is all it is the only way to improve the image of the united states throughout the world they wanted to make the united states look bad that it's a racist country well let me just voice one more thing that there are 195 nations in the world america is one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and it's the one nation that's being attacked

071from abroad and this attack took place in 1930 called the frankfurt school that started to buy his critical thinking how to destroy western culture destroy it from within go within it and rip it apart a lady just said divide you fall united we stand i think it's time that the school board as it's been said tonight to give a time out we beg you to give a timeout because our children are individuals they need to be taught that they are human and that they have a right to grow thank you very much thank you mr schmidt [Applause] next speaker is clear as carolyn klein pitter peter i am white i'm a white woman in case you didn't notice are you shocked well you're probably racist for judging me you're judging my skin um we passed

072this many many years ago if you don't recall why are we bringing it up again the first speaker spoke about the housing issue there is the equal housing act so i don't know why she brought that up uh guess what there are many blacks making more money than i could ever imagine there are blacks and jobs that i applied to due to the equal employment opportunity i was not picked because the diversity box had to be checked it had nothing to do with experience of the job it had to do with someone didn't want to be embarrassed or be called out because they hired a white woman there are blacks in that live in nicer neighborhoods than i their kids go to private schools my goal might go to a propagandized public school and some

073even are even former brain surgeons like dr ben carson so that what you are teaching what you want to teach is bs now i want to make one thing clear you're all racists and you're racist for putting this on the agenda you shouldn't even be thinking about this and the curriculum putting it in the curriculum too each and every one of you are racists if you aren't aware the head of the black lives matter movement had to step down an embarrassment because she lived in a mansion in a well-to-do neighborhood which if you remember she told her followers to burn down those well-to-do neighborhoods a year ago and she because of the hypocrisy she had to step down so it's a black lives matter movement disaster she was just taking the money she's also a

074safe self-proclaimed marxist hello and you want to teach her agenda in our schools you're taking her info and putting it into our children's minds that's warping their minds to make them think like little commie marxists just like her is it our superintendent pushing this is it the teachers union pushing this is a commie stealth teachers pushing this marxism and communism is void of god whatever it is you are continually shoving racist down our throats and we're sick and tired of your commie marxist propaganda your assault on the nuclear family your assault on fathers your assault on our children and pushing anal sex in the curriculum agenda at a young age your new language for pronouns your sexes by the way all kids have to go to the bathroom and they should know what kind of

075sex they are all right thank you you should be teaching reading writing arithmetic thank you music time's up you're welcome the next speaker mink tyner uh that uh miss tyner is the last speaker if she's not here we'll check and then dr moore and others will address many of the comments made here tonight well i i guess miss tyner's not here hold on here she comes so listen i do want to say thank you so much for giving me a phone call that really meant a lot to me um and it is greatly appreciated that you took the time and effort to do so so thank you so much um so listen um leadership 101 guys there's an issue with something and i know you guys have been spoken to on a great number of

076things but what it all comes down to is generalization leadership 101 you see an issue with your team um with your community you pay attention to it you focus on it you see what you can do even if some plans that are implemented at first might not be like the best see we can do to to divert and fix that issue so that everybody can elevate right um the school system here failed me okay by the time i hit the flick the biggest idea of any kind of involvement i had at school was having a school resource officer follow me around to see what they could expel me for okay that's that's not the kind of support that any of our kids need that's not the kind of support that i needed i've seen a

077lot of my friends fall through the cracks and they're still there they're still down there in adulthood i'm 36 years old now i turn my life around okay i've adopted three beautiful children i have four in total they're all in the current school system right now trying to do everything for them that was not done for me and it's hard it's really hard there's a lot of conflicting things out there um so one thing that i'm going to tell you guys and one thing i would like to leave you with is no matter what information is thrown at you i would like to caution you greatly against the information you absorb from local groups like moms for bigotry that seek to group people like me into groups with like necrophilia i've seen about myself my

078kids see this kind of stuff bestiality there's a lot of prop gand getting shoved around out there and um a lot of it i don't know if you guys are privy to it but it's it's not pleasant it's not a pleasant feeling for myself it's not a pleasant feeling for my children and it's it's just so depraved and demented at this point that it's it's hard to really grasp that there's people up here that are trying to shove things down other people's throats like that it's hard it's hard for me it's hard for my kids it's hard for kids like me and like my kids it's rough so please just exercise a lot of caution when you are absorbing information to that degree and i would like to take this opportunity also to offer myself

079to you guys as a reference okay i took up speaking at the alternative school um i have multiple businesses in the area multiple coming up i'm actually i'm creating safe places for abused women and children um i'm actually looking to get into guardian ad litem program there's a lot of things that i do as far as community outreach because i firmly believe in breaking the cycle okay that's what i'm here for i'm here for open rapport i'm here for communication i'm here for factual information okay and i'm here to be a resource for you guys i've offered myself as a resource to other groups ford mentioned and have completely been snubbed and pushed out of it and to be honest with you if we're gonna talk public school being for the public being for all

080children then let's be inclusive of all children okay thank you guys so much and mr barefoot thank you again thank you miss tyner all right that concludes um public comment i will turn it over to dr moore for some comments and thank you mr chair i have a few comments and i'll turn it over to mr meyer for some additional comments now the mic is on first and foremost there is no vote uh in front of the board this evening so there's nothing on the agenda regarding an adoption of any curriculum there is no vote tonight we are in the process of looking at two different curriculums as mentioned amplify being one which was the committee's first choice that uh curriculum was not placed on the state's list the state list in which we must

081select from one of five different curriculums that were on it now amplify is working with the state and we anticipate it being placed on the list completely out of our control in the meantime we reconvened and what this board approved was a very unique process which was the right process of approving amplify and approving hmh because we wanted to peruse or pursue a a parallel track so we were prepared regardless of what decision the state would make so we are in the midst of that particular window of time we do have a state board of education meeting that will be taking place wednesday there is additional rule language it's being proffered by our chancellor which addresses some of the issues that are put in place today which some ways protects districts truth be told when

082we look at that language that comes in doesn't make any shifts or modifications to the work this district is currently doing mr meyer will go over some of some of that language so no vote this evening um we are in the midst if anyone wanted to submit an appeal regarding the hmh we do have those petitions which we will hear at a later date that window closes and just to say it closes next almost a thursday correct closes thursday so right now we have four appeals which will allow us this upcoming up thursday yes yes i'm fast forwarding so in terms of time we do have that window of time a number of individuals referenced a pause i would caution the board and anyone who is listening that we're going into new standards next school

083year um and we do not want to be the system that teaches old standards to our students we want to ensure that we are providing instruction that are aligned to the standards in which our students would be assessed and currently where we stand as a system which we've all spoken about we had a strategic plan created in order to address where we rank across 67 counties and we rank in the lowest 50 50th percentile uh our strategic plan will take us to 10th uh in the top 10 in the next four years uh we can't do that when we're teaching common core standards that are outdated with 2014 curriculum that wasn't very efficient to begin with we cannot do that when we have all kinds of different curriculums and content throughout all of the schools

084so looking at what the state has approved allowing the state of mrs barenborg has said to respond to some of these same concerns the issue is at the state level they're looking at it and we anticipate some direction from the state in the coming weeks but to move away from a curriculum um that isn't aligned to the standards in which students would be assessed puts our students at a disadvantage and that's not something that i'm willing to do so we do look at curriculum very very seriously uh we have in a very very deep level looked at this i've had the opportunity to engage and connect with a number of superintendents across the state dealing with very very similar issues we're confident amplified we're confident hmh provides us the opportunity uh to provide quality instruction

085for our students uh with materials and resources that are aligned to the standards mr myers anything else you'd like to add through the chair yeah i think you hit most of it right i'm i'm proud of the work that the state has done proud of the work this district has done to eliminate common core we're very excited about the opportunity to get new instructional materials in the hands of our teachers to improve the outcomes for our students you know and knowing that the state had experts appointed by commissioner corcoran that reviewed these materials for accuracy for the unbiased gave us great confidence that they were appropriate for our students one of the speakers mentioned the rubric that we use it's the same rubric that the the state of florida uses right so it's not like

086our district is doing anything different um as you said dr moore with our first choice with amplify uh the work of 600 elementary teachers you know was selecting hmh second i don't believe that these teachers have critical race theory on their mind i don't believe that anybody wants that talk i'm excited about the proposed rule that the state board is bringing on i think it's thursday it's actually the 10th that says that we should efficient and faithful teach what's age appropriate using the materials and the teachers should not use their own particular point of view i think that's exactly what we want i think that we want to agree on the instructional materials and to make sure they're in use and as you mentioned dr moore we're happy to continue to hear from the public

087happy to hear any petitions the the hearing officer may find someone else may find that the materials need to be amended the commissioner could certainly amend any of the instructional materials or require them to be amended and if the publishers refuse to amend them can take them off the list they can do that at any given time if they if commissioner corcoran i guarantee you the the governor is aware of this whole issue and if governor sanchez felt like critical race theory was in any of these books he would instruct the commissioner to tell them to modify them which great gives me great confidence in going from the list that state adopted i think that that's the fear that i would have to not choose something from that list i would we wouldn't have someone

088to review that to ensure the critical race theory was not in the books because i'll tell you i just honestly i don't i don't see it personally i'm happy to have that conversation with people who feel the materials contain certain things the student facing materials i have not seen anything that meets the level of criteria within the statutes but happy to go through the process happy to receive the feedback from the state and we'll continue to keep everyone informed that's what we got go ahead mrs barenborg that's okay um having served on a state adoption committee it's an interesting process it takes over a year you are selected by your district your name is put forth on a list sent to the state the state then decides who they're going to pick because they want

089a cross-section of people they want and mr meyer when you send that form to the state that says we would like to nominate these people they're not always picked right but you're able to give have you been here long enough to know that process i'm just curious it's a little different now but yes and so so so the people that because one of the comments that was made to me and i read it this week was that this committee is made up of state people and indoctrinated people and that is not true i was one of those people and i was a teacher here in our county on a state level to go up there several times to tallahassee and choose a science adoption which if you think this is interesting conversation that's going on

090just wait till we get to science and civics so what was interesting about it though is that there's a cross section of people that are picked for this committee they pick um the district nominates and i don't know what to do now but when i did it it was they nominate teachers they nominate a principal or an administrator they can nominate a board member they can nominate a citizen and there is a cross section when i served there were several people on the committee and they were all different types of people they weren't all educators they were a cross and that i want to put out there because i think people are um under the impression that this committee was self-selected by a state person and that they're indoctrinated in the system it was very

091much a cross-section of people very differing opinions which i think is important when you're looking at something like this we were tasked with looking at the standards and looking at the specifications that were given through law from legislature agrees on those standards they agree on those specifications those specs they call them are now given to the publishers to create the books that's how they create books and then from there then those books are put up for the adoption list and it's a very competitive process to put your book on the adoption list this is why amplify is going through a lot of i think hassle because for some reason i don't know what the reason is they didn't hit one of the standards that they have to hit and so um that's the process because

092i've read something this week that said that's not the process so i'm going to tell you that is a process i've been through it and it's a good process because it does give a good cross-section of people i also know that when they were going through this particular committee process crt wasn't prevalent in the nation's talk and so now that all of a sudden it's prevalent in the nation's talk after this committee has already gone through their work so i do understand that the fact that now that there are concerns by people now it's in the hands of the governor and the um doe to like you said which is what i did is call up there and ask you know are those books being vetted again are they being reviewed for the things that

093people are so concerned about yes we need to teach cultural respect yes we need to be respectful of each other but we need to be respectful of each other and all the races that are represented and for one race to be told that they're wrong compared to another you know we're in a race war now and and school districts should not be in that we should not be involved in that and so i think that you know it's going to be interesting what happens in the next 10 days with the doe we are monitoring it i am monitoring that i know mr meyer is i think i ask you almost every day every other day what's happening with amplify um because it is i love amplify as far as the fact that it uses trade

094books that's the other thing is that you don't understand the teachers love is that you know the fluffy stories that we've been teaching about dinosaurs and dragons and things like that to kindergarteners and first graders are going to be replaced with trade books that are out there that have been in the public eye for years and so i think that's that's why i like to amplify so much is that kids are going to actually get real stories and aware of people and kind of interesting things there was another comment that was made about a couple things about miss hills mentioned something about racist comments and one of the stories i would love to know a story referring to so miss hill i will call you later mr blade masking i saw you walk back in

095mr blade masking has been uh we voted last meeting about that so that is optional for next year so that's not going to be an issue as far as the quarantining part that he brought up again that is not something the school district does that is something that the public health department does and believe me we went on and on and back and forth about whether or not we could actually take on the public health department with our attorney and i believe that conversation went on all fall and we were told no we can't do that so that's something that is a little bit out of our hands it was a little frustrating too the last one was the comment um and i'm not going to repeat the comment but miss klein peter i'm going

096to call you about the one that you made a comment about because you said that something's being taught in our curriculum that i cannot believe is being taught in our curriculum please don't speak right now i will call you i will call you we can't have that back and forth right now okay it's not allowed so i will definitely call you about that because i want to know where it is i want to know okay as the board members my job somebody's saying something like that i want to know where it is so i can address it okay okay anyway um you know i understand the passion here on both sides i understand it and um you know it's frustrating to try to do a good job as a board member and you're not gonna

097obviously you're not going to make everybody happy and that's not my job but my job is also to keep politics out of the schools this is where it can happen this is free speech but we've got to keep politics out of the schools and that is what we've been tasked to do and it's on both sides politics need to be out of the schools so that's all i have to say um mr meyer do you know if amplify has a shot at getting approved or have you heard any feedback on that yet to the chair it seems very favorable generally with this you know the publishers have an opportunity to ask what they need to amend and the doe is very specific about the requirements and as long as the publisher is willing to make

098those those changes um they make the changes and they get on the list and so everyone is saying they're working together together to get that done there's not any animosity or refusal or anything like that so i don't want to make the comment that it's not if it's when but right everything seems to be moving towards that so the sooner the better clearly in our instance to you know get across that finish line and i think it's so important that everyone remembers that that was our first choice and we didn't want to take a chance of not going for something that wasn't state adopted because once it stayed adopted we cert certainly assumed that it's meeting all the standards that we need need to have our students and what dr moore said earlier we we

099just cannot take a chance on keeping the same curriculum we're dealing with now with the new standards because we've got a lot of work to do in the academic areas and i think it's very very important and is what miss berenborg said you know we're listening to all sides and uh we we want a school district where we can come together do the best for our students in every every respect and i certainly um thank the parents who come out and speak and then we get emails from those who can not come out and speak so we do our best to listen to everyone and we want to keep the academics in the system we want to keep the focus of academics and if one gets adopted or over the others and we could look

100at the supplemental material but i mean i i wish teachers some more teachers were here to speak because they're not out there saying well we're going to teach critical race theory or we're going to teach at one race is better than the other or we're going to teach division that's not happening so let's just keep focused on what we need to do for our kids once we get that whatever adoption that we get maybe we'll get amplify then we can look at the resources with the teachers to see you know what areas that people may have be uncomfortable with once we have it but if you look at the standards and what we have to do on a daily basis and any current teachers and principals out there know this they don't have a minute

101to breathe i mean there is no fluff in this curriculum with the language arts obviously with the literacy we talk about that all the time what we need to do to get our students ready for kindergarten you know i'll show my age here but i went to kindergarten to learn now these kids take a test see where they are and what we need to do and i think it's just very very important that we keep that focus and continue to move on thank you i understand dr schiff can you hear you're i think you're on mute sorry i thought i i heard the whole time sorry i'm echoing here just here i don't know if i can fix that you're good we can hear you okay on my so i'm not sure how to fix

102that um i i'm not going to respond to citizen comment here i've been listening to all of it the the my only question right now is dr moore addressed the academic implications of going with outdated curriculum from standards that are no longer taught i'm also curious and i don't know if you have the answer to this what are the legal implications of selecting curriculum that is not approved by the state that does not teach to the standards required by the state and what are potentially our legal responsibilities and obligations to students who may then not be be being academically prepared to meet standards they're required to meet by the state i don't know if there's a a legal issue but it would be absolute incompetence and if we were to put ourselves in a situation

103when we asked our educators who go above and beyond to do the absolute best by kids on a daily basis who have been champions in teaching our children over the course of the last year uh to equip them with subpar uh materials and resources is an absolute disservice so i don't know if there's anything legally that could be done but morally i just say that would be wrong i i actually meant legal liability to have to have a child who may not meet standards in a school district system um because what we're teaching is is not state approved and does not meet those standards i meant our liability more than anything uh mr agreste you want to comment yes thank you dr schiff the the issue that you're referring to is essentially an educational malpractice

104cause of action which is not recognized in the state of florida so my initial comment to you is no there is not an educational malpractice cause of action in the state of florida but separate from that we we have to remember our last instructional material adoption was to select materials from the state approved list so the issue that we may run into is if that original contract from three or four years ago has expired at the state level then we really don't have a contract mechanism to continue to buy those other books [Music] thank you all right uh anything else dr schiff not not right now thank you okay thanks all right well that um anything mr barefoot is miss rosia i'm sorry mrs rosario hi i have had my hands up so thank you

105very much first i want to apologize to everybody for coming in a little bit late i got caught in a lot of traffic so i i do apologize for that um i have a question for mrs d agresta uh mrs d agresta what are the um the legalities or um the process i don't even know how to ask the question about implementing or um wait let me think of how i want to ask this mr paul westcott came up and he stated uh quoted a florida statute one zero zero six three six and he said that there was a two year waiting period um can you speak to that do you know what that is what does that mean if a district chooses a two-year waiting period man yes mr chair mrs rosario the statute

106that was cited during public comment is a statute directed to the state board of education and the commissioner of education it provides them with authority to do or not do certain things with regard to the state level curriculum adoption it is not a statute directed to the school board so am i to understand that we do not have an option to extend any time period to further vet any other curriculum mrs rosario the school district goes through a a a school board policy process that the school board approved in order to comply with your statutory obligations of how you adopt instructional materials and district staff are in that process now if at the end of that process the recommendation from the superintendent to the school board is rejected by the school board then the district

107starts over with that process and and and looks at whatever other materials may be available there there really isn't a a like a a deadline for this other than the administrative deadline of you must really make a decision at some point to allow time to order the instructional materials to have them here for students to use and for employees to be trained to use them i mean i think that might be the deadline that you're thinking of but it's not an instruction materials deadline it is an internal management requirement of needing time to order receive and train on the materials before that august date when students come back to class thank you i think i i hope i answered your question no i think you did i think you did we we're other than the

108process that we're going through right now there's really nothing else um that hinders us um from moving forward essentially um or not so um i suppose we'll all see what happens on the 22nd um but i do understand what um what is being mentioned uh or the concerns of the community with hmh hmh has committed publicly to racial literacy and racial justice in education and so if that's their public commitment um the understanding is that those are the items that will show up in their curriculum um collier county has already gone through their process and have had multiple objections submitted for the same reasons we are not an anomaly this is happening in districts all over uh dr moore was correct west palm beach has uh citizens as concerned as indian river county i just

109mentioned collier county same thing the objections that were submitted or rather let me go back to collier county right now they are currently they have already appointed um here and hearing officer to take a look at all of the objections that were submitted which are on their website so anybody is free to take a look at those but governor desantis has on saturday this past saturday made another declaration that he gave orders or directives rather to the commissioner of education to go to the department of education to ban critical race theory and any departure from it or any departure from our standards so i i don't have any um doubts that that's not going to be coming around the corner i mean that we should hear very very soon several weeks ago i i propose

110that we create a policy in our school district to ensure that we uh do not uh support critical race theory in our schools um but i'm sure that you know with with a ban from our governor um you know our policy would would um would actually mirror whatever the band is that i'm i'm positive is coming very soon my only concern is that is the time limit and the overlapping of all of this you know we're moving forward um but it seems the district i mean the district the um the doe with regard to amplify is kind of at a standstill so i i'm worried about moving forward with hmh or the district moving forward in that area and and and we may miss an opportunity for amplify i don't want to go ahead and

111purchase i want us to get it right i don't want us to spend you know a whole lot of money only to find out that we shouldn't have purchased the curriculum that we purchased i'd rather us wait and get it right than than anything else but that's for um i guess that's for a future conversation um with regard to john karapi um i just want to say that it is um it's really unfortunate all of what has happened to him is just incredibly unfortunate um no one deserves to lose their job no one and i am um you know uh the way that i was talked to at our last meeting was despicable and yet there's there's there's no backlash front story um over the way that i was talked to at that meeting um

112so i i just think that there is a an incredibly unfair um double standard and and it's just not right so um i i'm not approving uh any behavior that will disrupt our board meetings i'm just saying nobody deserves to have their job taken from them anything else mrs rosario no sir thank you very much all right there's really nothing i can add um obviously we keep our fingers toes and whatever else you can cross here over the next several days and hope that amplify is put back on the list and if it is we're in a good position assuming that the recommended recommendation continues to be to approve that at the next board meeting but i'm sure there will be plenty of information coming from tallahassee to the district and ultimately through to all

113of us on the school board here over the next several days all right the next agenda item is the consent agenda and i may i have a motion to improve the consensus yes on item 6b extend a day fee there is a verbal modification i need to make we discussed at workshop having the 10 registration fee versus the 20 for employees it was initially changed but not uploaded correctly so it's just adding for the employees a one simple line that says the registration fee for employees is ten dollars versus twenty which was discussed at workshop okay all right so thank you thank you dr moore um so may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so move um mr rosario second i'll second uh all in favor aye aye aye aye can i

114have the floor more time opposed motion carries i believe you voted dr schiff i did i think it was drowned out by other board members okay 5-0 thank you mr chair if i could yes yes sir i did want to acknowledge two individuals that were just appointed on our consent agenda uh who are in the room and we'll be stepping up to the plate and serving the children and the community of our district and i don't want to put them on a spot but i'm going to ask them to come up here and speak anyway um mitchell miss rachel moray who is uh the now former principal of pelican island uh just went through a very in-depth interview process and now uh has accepted uh based and you have approved her appointment as the director

115of exceptional student education uh and we couldn't be any prouder of the role that she's going to fill so ms moore if you can come in and give your charge to the board we'd greatly appreciate it good evening board members dr moore um everyone here tonight thank you so much for this opportunity um i am beyond thankful that i got to spend the last two years at pelican island elementary it's an amazing school i am so proud of the work that we've done there and i know police will do amazing things keeping it going and this new adventure is one that i'm very proud to do as well i come from a family of educators my mom is an esc teacher and has served he has these students for her whole career i'm very excited

116to follow in her footsteps and hope to make her proud and this district proud fighting the good piper students so thank you and our second appointee he was here and i'll bring the others and future board members when their uh board meetings when they are available um just finished her first year as assistant principal at treasure coast and was assistant principal other schools prior to that she is our current assistant principal of the year for the entire district and every time i see her i've always called her a principal in waiting but she is not waiting anymore i'd like to bring to this podium miss hepburn who is now serving as principal at pelican island all right good evening i was gonna say good morning but good evening good evening i'm just gonna you know

117after all the citizen input i'm just gonna leave my little speech in my purse and just speak from the heart um but i just wanna say thank you to dr moore thank you to school board members for giving me the opportunity to serve in this capacity as principal i'm so excited for the opportunity it's been a long time coming and waiting so i'm very happy and excited i also want to thank my family my friends my biggest supporters who have helped me along the way throughout my career i'm just excited to you know begin the work at pelican island as principal i'm excited to meet the students and the families and the community members and all of the you know stakeholders at the school ready to begin the work and do what's best by kids

118thank you all right um the next item on the agendas of public hearing and adoption of volume 21 number two and this item deals with the adoption of new and revived school board policies and so dr moore have you documented that this public hearing was properly advertised in accordance with state statutes i have there we now will recess this meeting to conduct the public hearing as advertised the public hearing is now in session dr moore are there any written responses to the advertised public hearing to be read at this time no the public is invited to address this issue at this time is there an individual representing an organization or his or her own personal or public interest who wishes to speak the chair concludes at the announced public hearing on the adoption of the

119new and revised school board policies that conducted has been conducted pursuant to notice and that ample opportunity to address this issue has been been provided to us so at this point the board meeting is reconfirmed it is reconvened and i guess we need a vote may i have a motion to approve so move and a second second uh all in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero moving right along the next uh item is a report from the superintendent just a very brief update uh to the board as you know we opened up summer school monday very successful opening as we've said a number of times before we are tripling the amount of support we're providing to students over the course of the summer so very very happy to kick off summer school being

120led at a number of schools throughout our district also just to recap this morning we had the opportunity to kick off 37 new initiatives all aligned to our district strategic plan as well as well as highlighting some of the innovative things that are happening in each of our schools so if you hadn't seen the business meeting that kicked off bright and early at 8 30 this morning i would encourage everyone to go back and take a look regarding uh the new initiatives that this school system is rolling out to ensure that we meet the objectives defined within our strategic plan really to be a world-class educational system uh where we will be at the top ten of all educational areas within the state of florida thank you the next and final is school board matters

121and i will invite our guests from tampa to begin mr rosario would you like to comment on any matters that you may have and you can be followed by dr schiff uh thank you mr barefoot i don't have anything significant to report except i'm just happy to be here at the fb fsba conference um it's um it's going to be until friday the conference until friday rather and so i'm just excited about it it'll be the first time that um i'll be here during a summer conference because usually we just make the december um conference um so it it's good i do want to say apart from that that this morning the board we all met to begin discussions for our board board protocols and that has been for me um really a long time

122coming i think we pushed through we had good conversation [Music] we agreed on on many items we we disagreed on some but that's okay that's all um part of working together but we came to consensus on many things and i i just wanted to thank you board members or for today it could have went in a million different directions but we all work together to kind of stay focused um i believe that we got at least half a quarter of the way through what um we are proposing to be protocols for us and for the public protocols are not policy they are just the um the functioning and the the behavior expectations of board members um for things like you know how we um uh receive communication or give communication with staff or you know

123run our our our business meeting um so i i just wanted to say thank you to you all for for today i know our time was cut short but um we did quite a few we we came a ways this morning so thank you all thank you dr chef i don't have much to add i think for me what was most notable about this morning um is as dr moore mentioned uh that we are finally getting to work that should have been done decades ago so i'm glad this board will take that on the only other uh thing in terms of events or happenings was this past week the district sponsored a fantastic appreciation lunch at american icon brewery um thanks to our sponsors for that mrs barrenborg you'll know the name uh which i

124is escaping me right now paul jackson sons yeah thanks thanks to our sponsors uh when it was originally put on our calendar for three hours i was sure that was a mistake um but it wasn't because mrs maddox had all kinds of things planned for that amount of time um and we actually had a terrific time and it was really nice to spend some time appreciating and acknowledging our principles and assistant principles but mostly getting a chance at the end of the year to just all let our hair down on a little bit um and just hang out and have a little fun with each other so thank you to all of the principals and assistant principals who attended and who i got to speak with and spend a little time with thanks uh mrs

125maddox for putting that together thanks district staff thanks to our sponsors it was a really fun event and a nice way to end the year and that's all i got thank you thank you uh dr jones thank you after our high school graduations i was able to attend some drive-throughs dodgertown fifth grade was absolutely phenomenal fellsmere kindergarten i mean those kids looked great um you know even covet threw us some curveballs we also came out of the box on some other things and it was fun i attended the attendance committee one of our early warning indicators ms stampier and dr packard and dr mcmahon and you know when we talk about early warning indicators attendance is huge because if you're not there you're not getting the instructions so i'm looking forward to being a bystander

126on that um as far as our responsibilities i have attended the value adjustment board with the county and that really really has been a great learning experience and hope to continue there the felsmere city council we've been doing those meetings on zoom but again just to know what the communities are thinking planning you're not on city council for both okay well i'm a zoom member and they think i am [Laughter] and then the economic development council that was really really interesting on a lot of community members and again just looking to see how it affects us the school board and our school district the initiatives this morning very very very refreshing you know everything works toward our strategic plan and just a few of the highlights academics with the algebra 90 by ninth grade that's

127we've got to do that i think that's wonderful the really positive recruiting we're doing in hr now the after-school programs that are bringing it together to see what areas we can all work on together the finance and getting it to the principals deciding their budget and we used to do that mr fagan and it was good it was a really good ownership and i think we all talked about the inclusion with the playgrounds and i you know i think about that with our schools and hopefully we can talk about that within our community and see where we can go with that but i want to say again thank you to all staff members district support administrators for a job well done this year if if you went in if you went to our schools and

128went into classrooms we weren't stopping with covet and mass we were we were moving forward and i know these new initiatives dr moore you might have a normal year we're hoping and i can't wait to see where we go thank you mrs barenborg sure um steamventure this morning was fun um sorry that i didn't get to visit all the schools i wanted to but i was pulled into our board meeting this morning so i apologize to the two schools i didn't get to see but i was really encouraged by what i saw it was a lot of fun it was really encouraging to see i guess encouraging isn't the word it was interesting to see community leaders coming to us and attempting to do some of the things that's all i'll say indian river virtual

129graduation was wonderful even though they only had two graduates and one in attendance they made it important and special for that child so i think that was wonderful that that was done that way dodger town graduation was wonderful one of my schools so i really appreciate it going there and then um i sit on indian river county planning zoney that's what you wanted i am on it you're you're you're on fellsmere's county planning zone belton county you're on fellsmers planning zoning i'm on indian rivers two affordable housing projects have been talked about and approved now and are moving forward and i asked because one of them was specifically designed for because it's going to be near the hospital was designed for medical staff and i asked hello can we have you know school employees also

130um try to live there because this is affordable housing right on 37th and and 11th i think it's a new new road they're building through you'll see it through the hospital area they're going to build a new road it's going to be where the entrance of the ambulances are that it's going to extend north so that is affordable housing that our teachers and other employees can look into so i thought that was quite interesting and then the other one is out west of town um but there are more scheduled so and it's busy busy let me tell you sometimes planning zoning you know they cancel meeting cancel meeting cancelling lately it's every other week or every week so i'm going to another one this thursday and then the end of the year celebration for the

131administration was wonderful and i was going to publicly thank paul jacqueline and sons who i know personally and it's really nice to see people in the community wanting to step forward and say what can i do to help and that was a wonderful thing that they did to help i gotta say another thing just because i want to say it and he probably doesn't want me to say it but thank you to mike jacqueline for stroking a nice check for a boy that deserved it matthew um and and it's nice when community members listen for those pleas for help for kids that really really need it and deserve it so i appreciate that uh looking forward to attend tomorrow pre-ignite um at sebastian river high school uh interested because thank you for listening to me

132today and and giving us an invitation right away um i think school board members need to be aware of the presentations that are being done for our administrators and our teachers not everyone but i think when it concerns professional development and things that community members are concerned about we need to be listening to it for ourselves so i i'm excited about going to that tomorrow thank you all right well i i don't have really anything to add other than to say the i'm i'm sure i speak for everyone i'm delighted that the school year is finally over but thank you to all the teachers principals staff custodians and the like that really did a hell of a job getting us through a very very challenging and i think if you look at the bright side

133you know challenges are really a code word for opportunity the opportunities that were presented were a lot of people have learned how to be effectively teaching virtually and there's going to come a point in time when there may be there's elective courses that could be offered in the evening for young people and i think that the teachers have learned how to navigate the various platforms that deliver content that might be something certainly the college community has learned how to do that they've been doing it for a long time but i think this is this is brand new all over the country hopefully that will will be able to put those skills that have been developed to work in the future um but it's been a great year and i think that uh at the uh

134lunch last week for principals and assistant principals some of the stories ms maddox asked each of the principals to bring a story that was memorable most of which were are repeatable a couple of which not so much but it was hilarious actually to listen and everybody had a great time and of course there was no alcohol served so there was no exaggerations i mean it was it was just good clean fun but it was a lot of fun and i'm glad to see um sometimes you know i think we all tend to take ourselves too seriously and in the the year that we've had maybe it's been hard to have some fun a lot depends on how you define fun i guess but um i'm looking forward to a summer of relaxation to the extent

135that it's possible and uh next year besides continuing on the goals that are laid out in the strategic plan let's have some fun along the way absolutely and uh so dr moore do you have any closing words of wisdom no just um we'll have the opportunity to present thursday at the state conference mr rosario and dr schifrin so looking forward to sharing uh with other uh superintendents and board members how we have engaged our student voice in our decision making process uh through the superintendent's esc i'm sorry another council uh the advisory council to be a superintendent student advisory council so just an opportunity to share some of the work that that we are doing and just in terms of of reflecting and closing out the school year just continue to be encouraged about the

136progress that we have made um and as i said this morning uh there are just a great group of individuals who are leading our schools teaching in our classrooms and districts staff who stand behind them preparing paving the way to ensure that we're providing a their resources the maps to ensure that every student has the opportunity to be successful so where we are looking 15 months and being the superintendent with basically 13 months under a pandemic just so proud of how we have pushed through haven't allowed the pandemic to get the better of us but continue to work towards the strategic plan that most people said well that's just too aggressive but each and every single day continue to be reincar encouraged that we're going to be able to hit those targets so looking forward

137to data coming back this particular school year i think as you'll see in pre-ignite the level of focus and strategy that has been put into what is taking place over the summer our principals are going to engage in i would say 56 hours of development uh during the month of of june and that's just a june june and july and that's just a reflection of we know if you gotta educate and grow ourselves in order to be world class so you know i just very very encouraged by who is here uh their effort and their desire to be in service of our community and children all right well that does it everybody meeting adjourned at 8 16.